In the rough marble beauty hides unseen;
To make the music and the beauty needs
The master’s touch, the sculptor’s chisel keen.
Great Master, touch us with the skilful hands;
Let not the music that is in us die!
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let,
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie!”
A beautiful scrap of instruction out of old rabbinical lore tells us that there are in heaven two kinds of angels – the angels of service and the angels of praise. The latter are of a higher order than the former. No one of them praises God twice, but having once lifted up his or her voice in the song of heaven, they cease to be. They have perfected their being. Their song is the full flower and perfect fruit of their lives, that for which they were made. They have now finished their work, and their life is breathed out in their one holy psalm.
There is in this delightful fancy a deep truth, that the highest act of which immortal life is capable of praise. The un-praising life has not yet realized its holiest mission. It has not yet borne the sweetest, ripest, best fruit, that which God’s sight is most precious of all. In heaven all life is praise, and we come near heaven’s spirit only as we learn to praise.
No other duty is enjoyed so often in the Scriptures as praise. There are not so many texts about prayer as there are about praise. The Bible is full of music. The woods in the summer days are not so full of bird-notes as this sacred book is of voices of song. Christian life can realize the divine thought for it, only by being songful. The old fable of the harp of Memnon, that it began to breathe out sweet music the moment the morning light swept its chords, has its true fulfillment in the human soul, which, the instant the light of divine love breaks upon it, gives forth notes of gladness and praise.
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