Lately, we’ve dealt with a few terrible tragedies. First, we’ve had this terrible incident with the missing girls out of Evansdale. Then, we have this shooting out of Connecticut. It’s hard for people to understand why this stuff happens on earth. As a historian, I’m no stranger to old books. I found the following passage in an old song book from the late 1800’s. The prose is a little different than that which we use today, so it may be a little more difficult to follow along than a more modern passage, but the message is quite clear. I have found comfort in it several times as I’ve come to grips with some of the terrible things that just happen to happen in everyday life.
Let the reader note, in the following passage, the author mentions “Thalbergs”. This is in reference to a piano virtuoso who was very famous at that time of this writing. To use his name as a noun like this is like calling an automobile a “Ford” for Henry Ford, but in this case, Mr. Thalberg was considered to be the best of the best. The author of this piece is just listed as “Beecher”.
A grand mistake of the old reasoners in their arguing for the goodness of God, was that they tried to prove that in the world there is more evidence of design for happiness than there is of design for pain. Now that position cannot be maintained. There is just as much evidence of a design to produce pain as to produce pleasure. For every adaptation of pleasure that you will show me I will undertake to show you one for pain. This life is clearly rudimentary. Men are here to be hammered into something of worth in the next state of existence. Pleasure is to be desired or expected, but as incidental. Earth is not the place for pleasure. It is the place where men are fashioned for eternity. A piano factory is not the place to go in order to hear music.
Suppose a man were to start for some great piano manufactory with the expectation of being enchanted when there by innumerable Thalbergs. He goes along dreaming of the divine harmonies which will greet him when he approaches the place where these sweet-toned instruments are made. He anticipates as much more of delight than Thalberg had given him, as there are more instruments in the factory than were on the boards of the concert hall.
“I am going to the place where all those pianos are made," he says as he hastens on. "They turn out hundreds of them in a day. Oh! How will all sweet, bewildering sounds entrance my senses when I draw near. Hymns and songs of never-wearying melody will sing out to me from every door and window."
He comes in sight of the building, and instead of hymns and choral melodies, he hears harsh noises. There are heavy poundings, gratings, sawings, and raspings. There are legs, uncouth and clumsy to be worked into proper size and gracefulness. There are strings to be tried, and separate parts to be fitted and knocked together; there are great, heavy packing-boxes to be made, and various other awkward and noisy work to be done. Tools are thumping about; cords and tackling rattling; plenty of confounding noises, but no music. The man stands and sees the workmen ply the hammer, and saw, and file, and punch, and chisel and auger; he sees dust, boards, and shavings flying in all directions. Clatter and clatter surround him. From the windows come broken bits of board, wire and iron; also all the different notes of racket and din; but he hears no sweet melody.
Then the man says in astonishment, “Do they call this a piano manufactory-this confused place, full of all jangling noises? No, no; this is no piano producing establishment. This is only a dusty and noisy workshop."
Yes, it is a workshop, where are being fashioned the instruments which, when touched by skillful fingers, have power to enchant the world. But it is not the platform on which they are to be played. Not there are they to give forth their sweet harmonies. We are in the workshop of humanity. We see evidences of this, turn which way we will. We must feel the mallet and the saw; the punch and the bore. We must be split and ground and worked smooth. The pumice and the sandpaper are for us, also, as well as for the things we fashion; and at last, when we are all set together, polished, and attuned, we shall be played upon by the music-waking influences of Heaven - Beecher
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