Music

252 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

This same John came in these last days and conferred the — Aaronic Priesthood upon two men Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey —neither of whom had been baptized. At the same time that he conferred this power, he commanded them to go and be baptized, and gave them instructions that Joseph should baptize Oliver, and that afterwards Oliver should baptize Joseph. This they did as they were commanded. (See Pearl of Great Price pp. 105, 106.) There needs must be a beginning to all things on earth; and when the Lord opened a new gospel dispensation, he permitted necessary departures from established rules, even if thei Holy Spirit had to baptize a man, or the man baptize himself, or angels be sent to confer the priesthood, as in this latter dispensation; but there was no necessity for such departures on the occasion that Jesus ministered to the Nephites.

MUSIC.

It has been observed, "A man often forgets his friends, his native land, and sometimes his language, but the songs of childhood and youth never fade from his memory." Goethe bears testimony that in music the worth of art ismost apparent, since it requires no material, no subject-matter whose effect must be deducted. It is wholly good and pure, raising and ennobling whatever it expresses. "It is a strange thing," fitly exclaims Lady Eastlake, "the subtle form and conditions of music. When the composer has conceived it in his mind, it is not there; when he has committed it to paper, it is not there; when he has called together his orchestra and choristers from the north and south, it is there, but it is gone again when they disappear. It has always, as it were, to put on immortality afresh. It is forever being born anew —born, indeed, to die and leave dead notes and dumb instruments behind. No wonder that it should have been men with shallow reasoning powers and defective musical feelings, who in the fugitiveness of the form have seen only the frivolity of the thing and tried to throw contempt upon it accordingly."