There are many references to music throughout Mrs. Eddy's writings, and she has given music an important place in our church services. For the Sunday service she has included a prelude, solo, offertory, and postlude in addition to three hymns as a setting for the Lesson-Sermon.
It's not surprising, then, that Mrs. Eddy uses the word "tone" in a metaphysical as well as a musical sense in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900. In that address she sets the standard not only for the music to be played or sung but also for the thinking of those responsible for the music in the church service. She writes: "I want not only quality, quantity, and variation in tone, but the unction of Love. Music is divine. Mind, not matter, makes music; and if the divine tone be lacking, the human tone has no melody for me."Message for 1900, p. 11;
The members of the congregation, as well as the church musicians, should heed this wise admonition. It's just as necessary to harmonize our thought for receptivity to the musical message as it is to prepare ourselves for the lesson.
