“But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise… The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least…

“I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that is magnificent? The Psalmists telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise when we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

“Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes the laws.”

“I am convinced that congregations learn more theology (good and bad) from the songs they sing than from the sermons they hear. Many sermons are doctrinally sound and contain a fair amount of biblical information, but they lack the necessary emotional content that gets hold of the listener’s heart. Music, however, reaches the mind and the heart at the same time. It has the power to touch and move the emotions, and for that reason can be a wonderful tool in the hands of the Spirit or a terrible weapon in the hands of the Adversary.”