study, public witnessing and shepherding privileges.

Of course, music must be taken seriously to make it worth listening to. But if taken too seriously, quite likely there will be some spiritual loss. Instrumental music cannot take the place of personal study or public witnessing, nor should one’s enjoyment of a district assembly be based chiefly on the pleasure of playing in an orchestra. An individual who for many years made arrangements for and conducted the music at large assemblies stated that only afterward did he realize how much his musical activity had cut down on his benefiting spiritually from these assemblies. By keeping balance, such loss can be minimized.

Mourning and Funerals​—For Whom?

IT HAS been truthfully stated: “No known human group . . . simply throw[s] out its dead without any ritual or ceremony. In stark contrast, no animal practices burial of dead individuals of its own species.” “Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness.”a​—See Genesis 23:3, 4.

Those words of the contemporary Russian-born scientist Theodosius Dobzhansky throw light on why King Solomon counseled some three thousand years earlier: “Better is it to go to the house of mourning than to go to the banquet house, because that is the end of all mankind; and the one alive should take it to his heart.” Yes, because we do have a sense of self-awareness and death-awareness humans usually arrange some kind of service for a deceased friend, fellow believer or relative.​—Eccl. 7:2.

Does the fact that Solomon says it is better to go to the house of mourning mean that it is right and proper for Christians to go to any house of mourning and commiserate with the survivors? Is it proper to mourn the death of every kind of person? What does the Bible, God’s Word, indicate?

The Bible gives us many examples of mourning for dead persons. There was proper mourning on the part of Jacob and Esau when their father Isaac died. Jacob mourned because he thought his favorite son Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. When the patriarch Jacob himself died there was great mourning, not only by his own household, but also by the Egyptians. The Israelites deeply mourned the death of their leader Moses. Though King Josiah was killed in a battle that he unwisely entered, there was great mourning