Editorial February 20, 1909 Issue

MELODY IN THE HEART

Annie M. Knott

From earliest times mankind have sought to express their deepest feelings and emotions by means of music. Thought ever seeks expression, and it is right that all true thought should be expressed not only in one way but in many ways. It goes without saying that we must be good before we can do good, before we can even think good. The "vile person" may be "called liberal," and "the churl said to be bountiful," to quote Isaiah, but this does not make it so in either case; and sooner or later this fact will be disclosed, because Truth's demands are both absolute and unceasing and they are forever calling us to account. Not even the deceptions of material sense can long resist God's eternal demand for perfection, which is felt in art, in science, and in religion, but most of all in our daily living. What is it that makes mortals so dissatisfied with so-called human life but the failure, on their own part as well as on the part of others, to come up to the demand, "Be ye therefore perfect."

In no other way, perhaps, has humanity better expressed its unsatisfied striving after love and truth and freedom than in music. The pity is that the splendid efforts to express perfection in music should stop there, that any should fail to see that the highest form of musical expression is but an echo of the truth and the beauty which are inseparable from man's being when spiritually understood. Well says our revered Leader: "Music is the rhythm of head and heart. Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing either discord or harmony according as the hand, which sweeps over it, is human or divine" (Science and Health, p. 213).

A Christian Scientist once received a call from a lady who was wont to argue for the reality of disease, although her belief in its reality afflicted herself grievously. She was, however, a musician, and on this occasion the Scientist was able to give her a most helpful lesson by simply pointing to a piano which was silently awaiting the touch of one who understood how to evoke melody from its keys. The critic said eagerly, "Do you mean that this is the same as one whose life is not touched by Christian Science?" The Scientist replied by repeating the lines just quoted from Science and Health, and by reminding her of many instances, within the knowledge of both, where the human instrument had been giving forth only tones of sorrow and suffering until the chords of hope and faith began to vibrate under the life-giving touch of divine Science. This argument could not be gainsaid, nor can it ever be. Today, as in the far past, when God comforts Zion, "joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody;" then, too, "sorrow and mourning shall flee away."

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