This description had often awakened the enthusiasm of Helon, but now he saw it realized, in the most impressive service ever performed in Israel—that of the morning after the Passover. There stood the high-priest, spiritual and temporal sovereign of the people, on the mountain of Jehovah, in sight of his sanctuary, and looked through the lofty portico, full upon the curtain of the most holy place. On the other side, through all the courts even to the foot of mount Moriah, was a countless multitude, all occupied with prayer and praise, all waiting anxiously for his blessing, and expecting to be purified by his offering. Around him were all the priests of Israel, obedient to his nod, ministering to him in the most sacred employment of the people, their appearance before Jehovah. He himself, the man who bore the name of Jehovah on his brow, with every thing that oriental splendour could accumulate, lavished on him, in honour of that name, surrounded by the flames of the altar of burnt-offering, which flashed up to heaven! It was a sight to awaken every sublime religious feeling of such a mind as Helon’s. The Hallel was sung. The priests, stationed on the pillars near the laver, accompanied the song with the sound of their trumpets and the Levites on the fifteen steps sung it, with their cymbals, cornets and flutes. David had appointed four thousand Levites for musicians and singers, and their number was probably not much smaller now.[118] The multitude responded, with its hundred thousand voices, to the song of the choir; and when the Hallelujah, with which the psalms begin and end, was thrice repeated with the united volume of vocal and instrumental sound poured forth at once, a less lively imagination than Helon’s might have fancied that Jehovah himself appeared in the flames of the altar, to receive the homage of his people. It was here only that one of these psalms, so full of the boldest flights and of the deepest emotion, must be heard, to be fully felt. Such a moment had inspired them; such a moment alone could revive that intensity of feeling, which is necessary fully to comprehend them. Footnote 118: 1 Chron. xxiii. 5.