1 Corinthians 14:15 What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit… We are commanded to sing with the understanding; and yet if we did, four hundred and ninety-five out of five hundred pieces of music that are published for singing would have to go to the dirt. I will defy anybody to sing with the understanding the music that is trashily printed and trashily performed, whether it be inarticulate on stringed instruments or whether it be vocalised to words. Music has a relation not simply to sensuous pleasure, which is the lowest kind of pleasure, but to imaginative pleasure, and to pleasure of the understanding as well, which it rises up round about as the atmosphere rises round about the pine-trees and the oak-trees on the mountain side, washing them clean, and making them stand out in majesty and beauty. Music cleanses the understanding, inspires it, and lilts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. |
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