Something Lost, Something Gained

Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now":

Something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

Rowland Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, p. 187:

On August 20th, 1608, the great scholar, [Isaac] Casaubon, was going with his wife [Florence Estienne, daughter of Henri Estienne, granddaughter of Robert Estienne] to the Huguenot worship at Charenton in an open boat on the Seine, singing psalms as they went. They had finished Psalm xci., and had reached verse 7 of Psalm xcii., when a heavy barge struck the stern of his boat and threw his wife into the river. Casaubon saved her, after almost losing his own life in the effort. But, in doing so, he dropped into the river his Book of Psalms, given to him by his wife as a wedding-present, and for twenty-two years the constant companion of his travels. They reached the Temple, and were present at the services. When the chant of the Psalms began, Casaubon put his hand into his pocket for his book, and for the first time discovered his loss. He did not recover himself till the congregation had finished more than half the 86th Psalm. The verse at which he was able to join in the singing was the end of the 13th: "and thou hast delivered my soul from the nethermost hell." "I could not but remember," says Casaubon in his journal, "that place of Ambrose where he says, 'This is the peculiarity of the Psalter, that every one can use its words as if they were completely and individually his own.'"

Weeping for Joy With David

Augustine, speaking of his first encounter with Ambrosian Psalmody in Milan, writes, Confessions 10.50:

50. On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind of deception, I err out of too great austerity. Sometimes I go to the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs to which David’s Psalter is adapted should be banished both from my ears and from those of the Church itself. In this mood, the safer way seemed to me the one I remember was once related to me concerning Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing.

However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of thy Church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus I vacillate between dangerous pleasure and healthful exercise. I am inclined--though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject--to approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood. Yet when it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned wickedly, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now what a condition I am in! Weep with me, and weep for me, those of you who can so control your inward feelings that good results always come forth. As for you who do not act this way at all, such things do not concern you. But do thou, O Lord, my God, give ear; look and see, and have mercy upon me; and heal me--thou, in whose sight I am become an enigma to myself; this itself is my weakness.

Howard L. Rice & James C. Huffstutler, Reformed Worship, pp. 103-104:

What were the effects or impact of Calvin's psalm singing? A letter from a young man from Antwerp, who had sought refuge in Strasbourg during Easter week of 1545, indicates what it meant for some to hear the Psalms sung in their own language:

On Sundays...we sing a psalm of David or some other prayer taken from the New Testament. The psalm or prayer is sung by everyone together, men as well as women, with a beautiful unanimity, which is something beautiful to behold. For you must understand that each one has music book in his hand; that is why they cannot lose touch with one another. Never did I think that it could be as pleasing and delightful as it is. For five or six days at first, as I looked upon this little company, exiled from countries everywhere for having upheld the honor of God and His gospel, I would begin to weep, not at all from sadness, but from joy at hearing them sing so heartily, and, as they sang, giving thanks to the Lord that he had led them to a place where His name is honored and glorified. No one could believe the joy which one experiences when one is singing the praises and wonders of the Lord in the mother tongue as one sings them here.

Who'll Sing A Psalm?

Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD. (Ps. 150.6)

"Improvement in Psalmody," in The Home and Foreign Record of the Free Church of Scotland, Vol. 4 (1853), p. 114:

Music is universally diffused through all nature. It is the accompaniment of all utterances. All creatures, so far as our observation goes, have received from their Creator constitutions which enable them to relish it, and dispose them to be powerfully affected by it. Are we to conclude that there is one domain from which music is to be banished, and one service, and that the highest, in which it can give us no aid? There is music in the sighing of the wind: there is music in the murmur of the stream: there is music in the notes of the bird, in the roll of the billow, in the thunder's awful peal: and is it in the temple alone that the voice of melody is to be silent? Is all nature to be vocal? Are the floods to clap their hands, the little hills to rejoice, and the valleys to sing? and in the midst of this universal chorus is gladness to be banished from the sanctuary, and there alone shall silence reign? Shall the birds of the air praise God with loud and melodious notes, and shall his own redeemed people celebrate his greatness with discordant sounds, and voices harsh and unattuned?

Charles Spurgeon on Ps. 98:

Do we sing enough unto the Lord? May not the birds of the air rebuke our sullen and ungrateful silence?

Ambrose, Hexameron, V.12:

Who is he, bearing the sense of a man, which is not ashamed to end the day without singing of Psalms, seeing even the little birds, with solemn devotion and sweet notes, do both begin and end the day.

The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin:

Who'll sing a psalm?
"I," said the thrush,
"As I sit in a bush.
I'll sing a psalm."

Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts, p. 6:

The Twenty-Third Psalm is the nightingale of the Psalms. It is small and of a homely feather, singing shyly out of obscurity; but, oh, it has filled the air of the whole world with melodious joy, greater than the heart can conceive. Blessed be the day on which that Psalm was born.

Henry Van Dyke, The Story of the Psalms, p. 36:

It has been said that this psalm is like the nightingale, whose music charms the world. But the nightingale sings only at night, and this is a morning song. There is another bird whose melody gives us a sweeter and brighter comparison. The first time that I ever heard the skylark was on the great plain of Salisbury. Sheep were feeding and shepherds were watching near by. From the contentment of her lowly nest in the grass the songstress rose on quivering wings, pouring our a perfect flood of joy. With infinite courage the feathered atom breasted the spaces of the sky, as if her music lifted her irresistibly upward. With sublime confidence she passed out of sight into the azure; but not out of hearing, for her cheerful voice fell yet more sweetly through the distance, as if it were saying, "Forever, forever!"

Matthew Henry on Ps. 84:

The word for a sparrow signifies any little bird, and (if I may offer a conjecture) perhaps when, in David's time, music was introduced so much into the sacred service, both vocal and instrumental, to complete the harmony they had singing-birds in cages hung about the courts of the tabernacle (for we find the singing of birds taken notice of to the glory of God, Ps. civ. 12), and David envies the happiness of these, and would gladly change places with them. Observe, David envies the happiness not of those birds that flew over the altars, and had only a transient view of God's courts, but of those that had nests for themselves there.

Maximus the Confessor on Ps. 135:

While songbirds are excellent paradigms for people's praise of God, we should not be like the owl and see the darkness of the world but be blind to the light of our Savior and divine matters.