Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 03:3 (Fall 1962)
Article: Towards a Christian Philosophy of Education - Part 3
Author: Frank E. Gaebelein

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GJ 3:3 (Fall 62) p. 19

Towards a Christian Philosophy of Education - Part 3

Frank E. Gaebelein

III. The Place of Music in Christian Education

We turn now to “The Place of Music in Christian Education.” “But why,” someone asks, “single out one subject, and why choose music for that subject?” There are several answers to the question. For one thing, it is logical to consider a particular field at some length rather than to deal more superficially with various areas of knowledge. Again, of all the subject areas, music, along with English and speech, is closest to us all. Not a day goes by when we do not hear music; not a school day passes on the Christian campus when students do not participate in music through singing in chapel. Music is as constantly with us as food and drink. Even the student who never takes a single course in it, nevertheless to some real extent lives with it daily. A woman once said to her pastor, “The strange thing about life is that it is so daily.” That is true also of music.

Moreover, music is united to Christianity in the closest kind of bond. Of all the great religions of the world, Christianity is the most musical. The essential handmaid of our worship is music. It accompanies some of our deepest experiences. Recall the quiet but eloquent service it renders after an evangelistic sermon as when the organ plays, or the choir sings such a hymn as “Just As I Am,” or those who come forward join in singing, “Where He Leads Me, I Will Follow,” or some similar hymn of commitment. Luther called music “a noble gift of God next to theology”1 and said: “We must teach music in schools; a schoolmaster ought to have been well exercised in music.” It was Goethe, the greatest of German writers, who said, “If the rainbow stood for a day, no one would look at it.”2 So it is with music; because we live with it, we may forget it’s wonder.

To define music is a subtle and difficult problem. Let it simply be said, quite apart from an attempt at definition, that music is the greatest of the arts. Nor is this merely a private estimate. Its dimensions are more than this-worldly, for it is identified, as is no other art, with time, the most mysterious and fluid thing we know, the element of our experience that impinges most closely upon eternity. It is no accident that there is more in the Bible regarding music than about any other of the arts. According to the Book of Revelation, music will be heard in heaven. Observe in these passages the survival in eternity of music, both instrumental (typified by the harps) and vocal.

“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wa...

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