The Church of God has been and is a singing church. This was true in the antediluvian centuries, which was its seminal period, for some of its canticles have survived. In its pupal stage, the Old Testament church life developed both the form and the content of the future hymnody. To the solo forms of the preceding period, the Mosaic social and religious organization now adds both the choral and the congregational forms of vocal worship. To the fear and awe of previous generations, the Christian development of the Church of God has added the intimate phases of adoration, of gratitude, of love, based on consciousness of communion with the Triune Deity. Outside of the Israelitish Church and its Christian consummation, there has been little or no song in religious worship. The heathen deities were honored only with rude vocal and instrumental noises made by temple singers and players. It is the Church of God under all dispensations which was a singing church. To this day the voice of sacred song is practically absent from heathen temple. _The Impulse to Sing Is Constitutional in Man._ In the beginning, song was a spontaneous expression of feeling, being based on man’s original constitution as fully as breathing or speaking. Its exercise did not rise high enough in the consciousness of men, nor so conspicuously affect the current of events, that account should be made of it in the sketchy outlines of the early history of the race. None the less do we hear unrelated echoes from Lamech and Jubal,[1] and from Laban’s complaint that Jacob gave him no opportunity to bid farewell “with songs, with tabret, and with harp.” [2] During the great Exodus, these echoes multiply and become more articulate at the Red Sea,[3] at the digging of the well at Beer,[4] about the walls of Jericho,[5] Deborah,[6] Barak,[7] and Hannah,[8] and the school of the prophets,[9] developing a grand _crescendo_ which culminates in the full-voiced chorus and orchestra of the times of David and Solomon.[10] Undoubtedly all these were surviving manifestations of the unbroken tide of social and religious song that flowed on through the ages. The Hebrew church carried on the model constructed by the organizing instinct of Samuel and the musical and literary genius of David, through the succeeding ages, and passed on the devotional impulse to the Christian Church. _Biblical Authority for the Singing of Hymns._