In 1702 the inspector of the "Catholic Mission for the Conversion of the Huguenots" took his job seri­ously, for he tortured and killed all who refused to be converted. Finally the Protestant peasants of Cevennes, France, driven and hunted like wild beasts, turned on him, killed him and released their comrades from his dungeons. The revolt of the hon­est mountaineers had begun. They were led by Jean Cavalier, who at the age of eleven had been impris­oned for repeating something he heard in a Reformed sermon.

Cavalier was seventeen when he began leading the Camisards, as they were called, in their guerilla war of defense. By the time Jean Cavalier was twenty-one he had routed the finest mar­shals Louis XIV could place on the field. When attacked, the Camisards fell on one knee and sang Psalm 68, arose, and rushing at the enemy fought furiously.¹

Do you sing that Psalm of the Huguenot Camisards? If you sing Psalms in church you know it begins:

God shall arise and by His might
Put all His enemies to flight...

You probably sing it to the same tune as the Camisards did, since the tune (#124 in the Psalter Hymnal) was com­posed in 1526.

Sing you warriors, Sing⤒🔗

The history of the Protestant faith is the history of fighters and Psalm-singers. Gustaphus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, Protestant hero and brilliant general, led his forces of Swedish, German, French Huguenot, Scottish and English with a mighty Psalm resounding from the ranks to batter the Roman Catholic armies of Count Tilly.

Cromwell's army of Roundheads, patterned after his own Ironsides regiment, was mockingly called, "those Puritan Psalm-singers". Yes, you could poke fun of them, but under your breath please, my boy, for those troops were never bested on the field of battle and were feared throughout Europe as well as in England. And who shall count the Scottish Covenanters and the innu­merable company of saints through all the pages of histo­ry, who went to the rack, the gallows and the stake with a Psalm on their lips?

Today again we need to put muscular Christians back on the field, to fight, as the old hymn says, "as the saints who nobly fought of old." When you have catechised them, placed the invincible sword of truth in their hands, engaged them in practice so that it becomes an extension of their arm, give them a song in their heart. Put steel in their back­bone. Teach them to sing Psalms.

Let me list the reasons why you should include Psalm-singing in catechism.

One I have given already. Jan Smelik in "Theology and Music" adds it up to this:

Sung praise is a mighty weapon against the devil and his powers. That is why, according to the Reformers, praise has such great value for the life of faith. Where there is singing, the devil is put to flight.²

Center the Psalms←⤒🔗

Another reason: God placed the Psalms in the middle of His Word, and they should be central in our lives as well. The Psalms cover the full range of Christian experience. "What do the Psalms speak about?" asks one Catechism of the children. "The Psalms speak about our awful sin, God's wonderful grace, and of our praise and thankfulness to God."³ They speak to the heart, and from the heart of every child of God.

Teaching the children to sing the Psalms is important. When the children learn to sing Psalms, they are singing the most popular music any­where. "Popular?" you say. Yes, popular. "Popular" is another of the many English words perverted today. "Popular songs" today means all the varieties of Rock, from the so-called soft to the Satanic, and designed to appeal to teenagers.

But the word "popular" means "of the people." So a popular song is one that everybody knows and likes. It is an old-fashioned scene with Grandpa and Grandma, Dad and Mom, and all the children around the piano singing. "Popular" means everybody enjoys it, not just one thin slice of humanity. (My "everybody" means the whole covenant community.) In a covenant home and church the Psalms are popular.

Breaking into the Charts←⤒🔗

Popular means more. Usually today the popular song of yesteryear is forgotten (except perhaps in a nostalgic way, for example, to the Elvis crowd). But the Psalms are not only trans-gener­ational, they bridge both time and culture. The Psalms are the most popular songs in history.

Ponder this. When you sing "O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come", you are singing a versified Psalm 90, written by Moses, and contin­uously sung by the covenant family of God for 3,500 years. The Psalms have been translat­ed into more languages than any other song in the world. Every Sunday from Argentina to Austria, from Zambia to Zillah⁴,  Christians sing the Psalms.

The top two←⤒🔗

But should not our children have something more up-to-date, in contemporary lan­guage and rhythm? I have taught six-year-old children for twenty years and have never met one of them who did not love to sing the genuinely popular songs, the Psalms. I never cease to be amazed at little children. Do you know what two songs receive the most requests from the first and second grades? Number one is from Psalm 103:

The flower is withered by the wind
That smites with blighting breath;
So man is quickly swept away
Before the blast of death.⁵

Picture those eager, shining little faces singing that song. The second is —

Abram believed the promised grace
And gave his child to God;
But water seals the blessing now,
That once was sealed with blood.

Songs are poetry, and poetry is the language of vividness, learning and memory.

Songs are also music and music is evocative; that is, music draws out emotions. It does not only evoke emotions, but to one familiar with the songs of the faith, music brings words into our souls. When I hear Haydn's String Quartet (Opus 77, No. 1) I don't think of Franz Josef Haydn, but the majesty of Psalm 98 marches through my soul —

Sing a new song to Jehovah For the wonders He has wrought...

The way I Do It←⤒🔗

Let me show you the place and practice of singing in my cate­chism classes. Again, I do not intend my practices to be your rules, but to illustrate the prin­ciple of singing.

The catechism books I use begin with grade one children. For that year and the next three, in addition to the ques­tions and text, they memorize one song (mostly Psalms) a week. Their capacity for mem­orization is enormous (the only exceptions usually are children fed a TV diet, that great destroyer of memory and attention). Each week then we sing it, and each one recites it.

Then we review; that is the secret. For the first ten to fif­teen minutes of each class we go around for their choices from the past. In that way we can easily go on, especially later, for twenty minutes and sing twenty to thirty songs. For you see, after four years and twenty-five songs a year, faith­fully reviewed, they have a hundred by heart. And of course, so does the teacher. Yes, I do know all one hundred tunes and words by heart, as I should after twenty years.

We all have to start some­where and the way to reach one hundred is to start with one. What do you want the children to say? "We do not sing because our teacher does not know the songs"?

Sing, my Christian friends. Make it an integral part of cat­echetical training. Let's muster more Psalm-singing soldiers under the banner of the cross.

Let God arise and by His might
Let all His foes be put to flight;
But O ye righteous, gladly sing,
Exult before your God and King.

Psalm 68, Psalter 122:1