I. ALL KINDS OF INSTRUMENTS MAY BE USED IN PRAISE. Only sentiment ever puts limitations on the instruments that may be used for Divine worship. Sentiment imagines some kinds to be more solemn and reverent than others. Curiously, those which some regard as specially solemn, e.g. the organ, are wholly repudiated by others (the Scotch). No instrument is in itself unsuitable. The kind of use man makes of it, and the kind of associations man causes to gather round it, may make an instrument unsuitable. In this matter the good sense of Christian people must decide.

II. THE PRAISE IS NOT IN THE INSTRUMENT, BUT IN WHAT THE MAN EXPRESSES THROUGH THE INSTRUMENT. With our temptation to rest in things, we need this reminder for every age. The praise is in the man's soul. And the most exquisite musical expression is worthless as praise if it is soulless. - R.T.

1. Albeit the typical ceremonies of musical instruments in God's public worship, belonging to the pedagogy of the Church, in her minority before Christ, be now abolished with the rest of the ceremonies, yet the moral duties shadowed forth by them are still to be studied, because this duty of praising God, and praising Him with all our mind, strength and soul is moral, whereunto we are perpetually obliged.

2. The variety of musical instruments, some of them made use of in the camp, as trumpets; some of them more suitable to a peaceable condition, as psalteries and harps; some of them sounding by blowing wind in them; some of them sounding by lighter touching of them, as stringed instruments; some of them by beating on them more sharply, as tabrets, drums and cymbals; some of them sounding by touching and blowing also, as organs: all of them giving some certain sound, some more quiet, and some making more noise; some of them having a harmony by themselves; some of them making a consort with other instruments, or with the motions of the body in dancings, some of them serving for one use, some of them serving for another, and all of them serving to set forth God's glory, and to shadow forth the duty of worshippers and the privileges of the saints. The plurality and variety, I say, of these instruments, were fit to represent divers conditions of the spiritual man, and of the greatness of the joy to be found in God, and to teach what stirring up should be of the affections and powers of our soul, and one of another, unto God's worship; what harmony should be amongst worshippers of God, what melody each should mike in himself, singing to God with grace in his heart, and to show the excellency of God's praise, which no means nor instrument, nor any expression of the body joined thereto, could sufficiently set forth; and thus much is figured forth in these exhortations to praise God with trumpet, etc.

(D. Dickson.)