Page:God Manifest.djvu/110

100 the sense of smell! What sweets for the taste, and nature's velvets for the touch! Let us select one of these, and note it, as a specimen of all. Music, for instance! how wonderful a thing, when we reflect upon it, is music! A certain succession or combination of sounds,—which are in themselves merely impressions made upon the ear by agitations of the atmosphere—is found to be most grateful, delightful to the mind: we cannot tell why, but we are charmed by it. The very breathing of the wind among the trees—nature's Æolian harps—is a pleasant sound, and its roar through a forest is a sublime one. Then the lowing of cattle at evening, and even the distant bark of the watch-dog baying the moon, have power to call up pleasing associations. Still sweeter is the music of birds. But the human voice, that fine instrument of God's making, is richest of all; this, no artificial instrument approaches. The great Haarlem organ had indeed a stop, called Vox Humana, and which was meant for an imitation of the human voice; but it was such an imitation as showed it plainly to be but the work of "one of nature's journeymen,"—as indeed all men, at best, are. When, in the evening circle, we listen to a song, poured forth with feeling by a sweet voice, what power has it over the soul! what power to wake up tender memories, to lull passions and anxieties, to warm the gentle affections, and to lift the spirit to God! And when, sometimes, in the silence of the night, we are waked from sleep by the sound of distant music, whether of instruments, or voices, or of both in unison, we seem rapt into heaven: those delicious harmonies, which had entered and mingled themselves with our dreams before we awoke, and had seemed to us then like music from