not: whether in the spontaneous exercise of individual souls, "singing
as they shine" with hymned voice, and fashioned instrument of golden
harp or angelic trump; or only by the rapt gaze of a spirit absorbed
in "still communion;"--and whether in heaven as on earth there may be
great days of the Lord on which the sons of God, gathered from afar,
will come specially before the exalted Redeemer, when their joy,
uttered by outbursts of harmony, shall wake the amphitheatre of the
skies with impassioned hallelujahs,--who can as yet tell! But it
_must_ be that each soul in heaven being for ever full of love, will
for ever be full of praise. Every new sight of grandeur or of beauty,
and every new contrivance of the Creator's wisdom or power, will but
prompt the beholder to praise the wondrous Creator. Every intellectual
height reached in the infinite progress of the soul, onward and
upward, must awe it into a profounder sense of the glory of the great
Intelligence. Every active pursuit will swell the tide of gratitude
and praise to Him the ceaseless worker, in whom all persons and things
"live, move, and have their being;"--while the loving and holy soul,
ever consciously dwelling in Him who is everywhere present, must
derive from increasing knowledge of, and communion with the infinite
and glorious One, a source of exulting, endless praise--praise which
will be intensified by the sympathy and song of the great minds and
great hearts of the "innumerable company of angels," and of "just men
made perfect!" But if in that voiceful temple any one song of praise
will, more than any other, issue from a deeper love, or express a
deeper joy, that must be the song of the redeemed! For that is a "new
song" never heard before by the angels in the amplitudes of creation,
and which the strange race of mankind alone can sing; for there are
peculiar notes of joy in that song which they alone can utter; and in
their memories alone can echo old notes of sadness that have died away
in the far distance. And what shall be their feelings, what their