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THE MUSIC OF A SACRED HARP
Text: “And be not drunk with wine wherein is
excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody in your heart to the
Lord.”—Eph. 18:19.
HE harp somehow has always been re
garded as an instrument of sacred use!
History tells us that the harp was one
of the first musical instruments ever in
vented, and that it was invented by
Jubal, and from that day, through the
whole history of Israel, the harp was in
great evidence. It was the instrument
used among the cultured and refined, as
T
well as among the rabble. It was used to celebrate
all kinds of victories. Its special use, however, was
in the worship, when the great crowds sang the an
thems of praise to the God of heaven whom those
people worshipped.
The harp met perhaps its greatest success in the
days of King David, himself a great harpist. In
my judgment there is no sweeter instrument touched
by the fingers of man than the harp.
THE HARP OF THE SOUL.
But it is not with respect to this kind of harp
that I desire to speak. 1 desire to speak to you of
the harp of the soul, for rest assured the soul has
within its embrace a harp—a sacred harp, a harp
which, when its strings are tuned, can make the
sweetest music that ever mortal man had the pleas
ure of hearing. The Apostle Paul recognizes this fact
in this text when he speaks of making melody in
your heart unto the Lord. He is here impressing
upon the church the fact that within its heart,
within the heart of the individual members, there
is a harp, and that upon the strings of this harp
the fingers of the Spirit of God are to play the mu
sic which is not only to gladden the world, but to
make glad the City of God. It is about this harp
that I desire to speak.
Like any other harp, this harp is made up of
its scales and its chords and keys, and it is just as
essential that it shall be properly keyed and tuned
that it may make music, as it is that the instru
ment upon which we play shall have its keys and
chords and strings in tune. I want you to catch
as practical a vision of this harp as I can give you.
I want to present to you an imaginary harp—
a harp without strings, the harp of your soul and
the harp of mine, and we shall find it our business
with this imaginary harp before us to string it,
tune it, and let it play.
The first string of this harp of the soul is the
string of salvation. There can be no music where
there is no salvation. We may have our ears ever
so keen in their appreciation of the sounds of the
instrument or the human voice, but, after all, so
far as real soul peace is concerned, it is like sound
ing brass and tinkling cymbal until there is salva
tion in the harp.
I w’as reading some time ago the confession of one
of our greatest philosophers who recently wrote his
own autobiography to be published after his death.
It seems that some parts of this autobiography got
out before he died and got into print, and this is
one thing that he said that impressed me: “I
found, after wandering in all sorts of places and re
sorting to all sorts of methods with this world, that
all of its charm had absolutely nothing in it that
could satisfy and give peace, and in that helpless
and undone state I dropped before the feet of Him
who died to save me, and I found my soul instant
ly flooded with that peace which this world cannot
give. ’ ’
That is salvation. That is the first chord in the
harp of the soul, and if there is a man here this
morning restless, tossed like a bark upon the sea,
hunting for some place where peace can be found,
I want to say to you, my friend, in the words of
the philosopher, “This world does not contain
enough to give you the thing you desire until you
have first made your peace with God your Savior.”
The Golden Age for February 27, 1008.
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Wrought on, J). T).
Stenographic ally reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
THE DISCORD OF DOUBT.
The next string in the harp of the soul is the
string of assurance. One may have salvation, but
until there is a full and complete assurance of the
fact, there is no perpetual peace. There cannot be,
so long as there is no perpetual peace. There can
not be, so long as there is any doubt as to the ac
ceptance of Jesus and His salvation from sin. One
can never have perfect, undisturbed peace until
this is settled.
Some time ago I was called in to see a sick girl,
a beautiful child, who was very low. She was
wrestling and fighting in delirium. She was begging
to be taken home to her mother. I took her by the
hand and said, “You are at home, and this is your
mother.” She looked and said, “Am lat home?’!.
“Yes,” I said, “don’t you know these old walls
and those pictures? Don’t you know this bed?
Don’t you know that this is your mother?” She
looked at her mother a moment, and then said,
“Yes, that is mother.” Then she was as quiet and
as calm as a placid lake on a still morning, but aft
er awhile there crept over her again the suspicion
that she was not at home —that someone had re
moved her to some other place, and she began fight
ing and fretting and begging to be carried back to
her home and back to her mother.
My brethren, it is so with the Christian so long
as there is in the soul perfect assurance; so long as
there is nothing between him and God-; so long as
he can look Jesus in the face and say, “I know in
whom I have believed,” there is in his heart the
music of peace; but so long as there is reigning in
his soul the devil of doubt ; so long as he is not sure
of Jesus; so long as he is not sure that this is the
house of God, there is fretting and worrying and
unrest to get back to where he knows Him.
The next string in our harp, the harp of the soul,
is the string of dedication. One may be saved; one.
may be assured of his salvation, but yet, so long
as he is conscious of the fact that there is some
thing that God wants him to do that he is not will
ing to do, there is no opportunity for the music of
peace to be made in his soul.
I think we have an excellent example of this in
the life of Jacob. Those years that Jacob was run
ning from God, conscious of the fact that God had
something for him to do, and yet he was not will
ing to do it, those were the bitterest years that
Jacob ever saw. Any time during that experience
if you had called upon him and asked him to give
you a testimony, he would have been forced to say,
“My life is one tossed by angry billows; no peace
within or without.”
But that day when Jacob met God in the person
of the angel at the Ford of Jabbok and wrestled and
fought it out and got the consent of his mind to let
God have His way in his life, that moment the
harp strings of his soul began to respond to the
finger touch of the divine Spirit, and from that
moment on through the rest of his life his soul
was one great music emporium in which the music
of the skies was made; and so, my brethren and
sisters, I want to say to you that if there is in
your soul today one single, solitary “no” to God,
there can be no peace in your life. There may be
a spurious peace; there may be a peace played on
one string, but there is no perfect peace. There can
be no perfect peace until the soul is in perfect and
absolute accord with the law of God for the life.
My brethren, I believe that the greatest problem
today that can possibly be presented to the human
soul is the problem of God’s will for the human
life. God is a great, eternal, everlasting, all-power
ful sovereign. Man is no accidental creature; man
is here because the sovereign God put him here, and
the sovereign God put him here because the sov
ereign God wanted him here, and He wanted him
here that he might fill a divine and specific purpose
in the economy of God’s kingdom, so that God has
a plan and a place and a purpose and a destiny for
every human life. Oh, that our young people might
realize it before the sin scars are made! Oh, that
you might realize that God has a divine and specific
plan and purpose for every life to fill! If we real
ized that fact and put ourselves by definite dedica
tion into His will to be used according to His plan
and purpose, how different would be the result of
our lives!
THE POWER FROM ON HIGH.
Then again in this harp of the soul there is the
string of fullness of the Spirit. Os this the apostle
speaks in the text when he says, “Be not drunk with
wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spir
it.” One may have salvation, assurance, dedication
to the will of God, and yet not have perfect peace
because he will not have necessarily the equipment
of the power of the Holy Ghost. This is separate
and distinct from the others of which we have
spoken.
This was true of those members of the Ephesian
church. They were all saved, but Paul found it
necessary to speak to them with respect to their
being filled with the Spirit. This was true in the
life of the disciples. They were all saved men, but
Jesus found it necessary to command that they
tarry in Jerusalem until they were imbued with
power from on high, and when the imbuement, or
the filling, or the baptism of this Spirit power came
upon them, they were enabled to do things that
were so out of the ordinary that they themselves
became a standing interrogation point to the world
of sinful unbelievers that environed them.
So if there is to be perfect music, perfect har
mony with the will of God, there must, in addition
to the salvation and the assurance and the dedica
tion, be the domination of the Spirit of God. The
Spirit of God, my brethren, is the representative
of God upon the earth today. When Jesus left, He
came to take full charge of the matters of govern
ment of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish,
and just as it is necessary that we shall look to
Jesus for salvation, so are we to look to the Holy
Spirit for mastery and government and direction,
and just as we find that He, the Spirit, in the days
of the apostles, took direct and personal charge of
the government of the lives and the conduct of the
people of God, so today this same Spirit, this same
representative of heaven among men, is longing to
have the right of way, that He may step in and
take charge of the life, direct its thought and con
duct, and through it make music that shall glad
den the hearts of people and make heaven to re
joice.
THE STRING OF SERVICE.
But after all these there is one string that I
must speak of and that is the last. This is the
string of service. One may have salvation, assurance,
divine dedication to the will of God, filling of the
Spirit and yet if that is all, if he sits down and
folds his arms and lets the world go on in its sin
and wickedness and makes no effort to check it,
he will soon find that the strings of his harp refuse
to respond to the touch of the sky, for it is only
to the obedient child that music is possible.
I think we have a glorious illustration of this
in the life of Jesus. The one thing in the life of
Jesus that I love to meditate upon perhaps more
than anything else is the transfiguration scene.
There is so much in that scene. There Jesus was
with the most intimate of His disciples upon the
Mount of Transfiguration. As they stood there,
Moses and Elias came, Moses representing the law
and Elias representing the prophets, and Christ
representing the gospels. All three of them came
upon that glorious mount, and there came down
upon them that mysterious light which transfigured
them, or, as some one says, there went out from
Him, rather than came down from above, a light
that transfigured them. And remember that they
were all transfigured on that delectable mountain,
an experience so glorious that Peter, speaking for
the rest, said, “Lord, this is so good. This is so
glorious, so delightful. Let us build here three
