Any one listening to the pieces of an orchestra practicing separately and alone would be surprised at the peculiarly jumbled and unconnected results. If he heard the flute there would be a run or two here, then several bars rest, a few "tootles" now, another rest, and another run, and so on, and in listening to the basses, he would almost laugh at the idea that those "pom, pom, poo-poms" could find any place in a sensible and musical-minded man's plan for the presentation of music. Yet, brought together, and obedient to the baton of the conductor, the symphony as a whole stands out clear, coherent, a work of art, beautiful, and a source of joy to all concerned. But, you ask, who hears this Universal Symphony? What is its purpose? Who composes its audience?

Questions that are wise and right. Let me endeavor to answer. When man listens to the grandest symphony man ever produced it is a limited composition and performance. Granted it is given in the largest hall ever erected, or in an open air theater to a hundred thousand persons it is still limited, still restricted, as are all things purely human. There may be a hundred, two, five hundred performers, with a score, two score special stars or soloists, still it is limited. And yet, even in its limitation, every instrument, every voice has its decided, needed and essential place. Here are the first and second violins; between them the 'cellos; then come clarinets, flutes, piccolos, oboes, saxophones, bassoons, opheclides, and

other reed and wood wind instruments; next we have the cornets, French horns, English horn, euphoniums, tubas, trombones, with, on one side, the double bass stringed instruments, and on the other the tympani, cymbals and the like.

The vocal chorus is equally well arranged. Soprano, altos, tenor, bass, soloists-all have their respective places. All are under the eye of the conductor; all are able to see his baton and are supposed to watch it constantly. Each performer has his score before him and each is supposed to have studied it and to know it. At the given time, when the audience is assembled, the conductor appears, raises his baton, demands attention, gives the signal, and at once the performance begins. It lasts one, two, three hours, and when over performers and audience disperse. Three, five, seven-more or less-compositions have been rendered, and from the human standpoint it has been a wonderful performance-a perfect success.

Granted! But is it not apparent that, throughout, the whole thing has been limited? Few performers, few compositions, short time, few to hear.

Here, however, in the Universal Symphony, all Nature and every man, woman, youth, maiden and child is a performer-all Time is engaged, Life itself is the theme with its infinity of variations, and God the Creator, is the Conductor. He has made everything in Nature to sing: Rocks, mountains,

canyons, foothills, deserts, valleys, islands, trees, flowers, insects, animals, forms, colors, odors, sunrises, sunsets, creeks, rivers, oceans, lakes, fishes-all, all are vocal. Nothing is silent. Listen to what David the psalmist wrote about this, centuries ago:

Make a joyful noise. . . . all the earth; make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing . . . . with the harp and the voice of a psalm; with trumpets, and sound of cornet, make a joyful noise. Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together.

And elsewhere we read of the mountains and the hills breaking forth into singing and all the trees of the field clapping their hands.

What is it that makes a great leader, a masterly conductor? Why were (and are) August Manns, Sir Michel Costa, Charles Halle, Damrosch, Theodore Thomas, Tomlins, Wild, Hertz and others able to direct so powerfully and to bring out so fully the musical qualities of so varied a body of men? Is it not that they possess in a high degree, first of all, a perception of what a composition should be as a whole, of the innerness of the music itself, and then they can hear and determine how far each individual member of the orchestra supplies his share of that great whole?

How imperfect, inadequate, almost foolishly childish and incomplete would be this definition of a great conductor as applied to the Divine leader of the Universal Symphony. He have a clear perception of

the composer's intent. He is the composer Himself. It is His own music. And He hears the music of each performer! He Himself is that music-inspires it, creates it, puts Himself into it. Hence when one sings, makes his own music, apparently, seemingly, he is, in reality, but voicing the melody God has given to him, and in which God Himself is manifested. Therefore, he cannot fail, so long as he continues his song, to go through life with God.

In her simple yet beautifully fundamental poem of truth, entitled Out in the Fields with God, Elizabeth Barrett Browning unconsciously voices this fact. When she got out into the fields and became responsive, sang in her own heart, to the manifestations of God she found there, all the little cares that fretted her, the foolish fears, the ill thoughts, disappeared, and good only was born.

How the great Conductor reconciles, harmonizes, balances the various and apparently conflicting music of Earth, let alone of the whole Universe, is, at present, beyond our conception. But that He does do it we can conceive, and also, that as our own spiritual hearing develops we shall hear.

Enough that He heard it once,
We shall hear it by and by.

CHAPTER II

WHAT IS "SINGING THROUGH LIFE WITH GOD?"

MANY times, during the writing of this book, I

was asked: What is your new book about? and when I gave the title, while some minds responded to it immediately, others, of a different mental type, asked: What do you mean by "Singing through Life with God?" It is a reasonable assumption that there may be others who will pick up the book, or see its title, to whom, naturally, the same question will arise.

There is an immense amount of sorrow, sadness, poverty, failure, wickedness, disease, pain, distress and fear in the world. When one looks at these things alone shuts out the other side he is appalled, horrified, saddened almost to despair. Let any ordinary mortal spend one, two, three months, doing nothing but visiting the city and county jails, the orphan asylums, the insane asylums, the homes and hospitals for the incurable, the reform schools, the institutions for delinquent boys and girls, the juvenile courts, the objects of the charitable institutions of the cities, the hospitals for the rich and well to do, and the burden of the sadness, wickedness,