The same restless disposition that prompted the Israelites to make a golden calf when they thought Moses was too slow to lead them, also prompted many good men and women in the church of Christ today to go beyond what is written, to try to work when they see the indifference manifested by many churches that we find all over Texas.

      God has ordained we should teach the gospel. He has also ordained we should teach and admonish each other in hymns and spiritual songs.

      No one can teach by singing until he learns to sing, and in order to learn to sing it is just as essential to have some one to guide us as it was for the eunuch to need a guide to understand the Bible when Philip joined the chariot and taught him along the way.

      There are organs in many churches today, and many members who oppose the organ have quit the churches and gone to the devil who could have kept the organ out by remaining with the church and using half the energy they have used in fighting the organ since they quit the church to employ some man to teach the congregation how to sing.

      I call to memory one church which did not seem to care for an organ, yet they could not sing. They needed help and wanted instruction. They had a wealthy member who was able to employ a good music teacher at any time who could have taught them how to sing and have killed out all desire for the organ. But said member would do nothing of the kind. They met for worship; their singing was a failure; they had no leader and did not know how to sing, but had the old unscriptural elders, a set of men who could not teach nor control their families, yet they were "God's ordained means of controlling the church."

      Said elders would meet every Sunday and half read some chapter and get down and pray so low one-fourth the congregation could not hear them, and they would break bread and half sing some old song without any animation or spirituality in the same; and when some of the younger members who could improve the singing by the use and an organ and help build up the church, and placed the organ in the house, the above said wealthy member and elder have never been in the house since, but are now serving the devil and spending enough money each year for whisky to support a good man to teach a class in music and keep out all instruments if he had been disposed to serve God rather than man.

      So I attribute the introduction of half the organs in the churches of Christ today to covetousness, ungodliness and indifference on the part of many of the members who did not try to do their duty in hiring some man to teach the church in song service.

      If the churches had been thoroughly aroused to their duty, if there had been good men put in all our congregations to teach the young vocal music, if these men had been supported by the church as are our evangelists, and had all the old members attended these schools with their children, our singing without the organ would have been so much better than singing with the organ that three-fourths of the members in the congregations would have opposed the organ; for vocal training will increase congregational singing, but choir singing will kill our congregational singing in almost all churches.

      I have closely watched the introduction of the organ in many churches, and in almost all places where the division came I found about one-fourth of the church on the working side, about thee-fourths on the complaining side and unwilling to do anything. The working side usually took the house and the organ, the complaining side went down on a back alley out of town if they could do so, and got a little hall where they knew few decent men and women wanted to go.

      They would meet there four or five months and curse the organ party until many of their members became disgusted, went back to the organ party, not wanting the organ, but rather work with them and tolerate some evil than not to work at all.

      The other crowd worked for awhile, then quit entirely. Many then turned to the world, and drove their children to the organ party or sectarianism, because the children could see the parents were doing nothing and knew they could not be saved in following in their footsteps.

      I have often heard the charge made by Baptists that it was just as essential to have a "Campbellite" church in a neighborhood to get all the trash and waste material as it was to have a slop bucket in the kitchen to get all the crumbs, bones and pieces of refuse bread; and I sometimes think our past work justifies the charge.

      My observation has shown me that in nine-tenths of all church troubles over the organ that all the complainers, all the scabs, all the covetous and all the self-willed, all the do-nothing kind, all the fault-finders, and all who strive about words to no profit, you will generally find, about eight our to every ten fall over on, the so-called Bible church plan, and instead of coming to the front and boldly demanding a part of the church property, and fighting the battle out on many principles, about half of them quit, and the other hunt for a back alley, over across the branch, or away out back of the graveyard, or around behind the stock pen, where they can put up a little house and get off to themselves, where they take the Bible alone as their guide, and there, where no one can find them out, they set out to convert the world and unite all on the Bible.

      Many years ago, in one of our largest cities, where the loyal brethren could have captured the church property on a prominent street and have built up a large congregation if they had tried, about eighty pulled off and quit. They then met from house to house for a number of years, until many of the members who saw they were doing nothing, quit. Then the rest went away back in the woods out behind the graveyard and built a little house to meet in, and a young lady teacher told me a short time ago that she was in that city and started to hunt for that house on Sunday morning and got lost in the woods and had to pay a man 50 cents to carry her to the house, as they were so obscure she could not find them. While this occurred in a city of 20,000 inhabitants, yet I know of some larger and some smaller towns in like condition in Texas where we once had good congregations and could have had today if the Firm Foundation influence had been more toward educating in music and building up instead of such a continual fight against the organ. The object of war is to overthrow and tear down, but never to build up; and many of us have spent too much time in fighting and too little time in building.

      When Nehemiah went back to rebuild Jerusalem his men fought with one hand while they built with the other. But too many of us have quit building and are spending our whole time fighting.

      On this point has been one of our great failures. Thereby let us profit.--J. D. Tant