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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OF 
 
 STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 
 1943 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arV17738 
 
 The new song in heaven 
 
 3 1924 031 245 727 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031245727 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
* 
 
 THE NEW SONG 
 IN HEAVEN 
 
 RIGHT REV. 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 
 
 LATE BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE 
 OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 ♦- 
 
 NEW •YORK 
 E. P. DuTTON & Company 
 
 3 1 West Twehtt-Third St. 
 
Copyright 
 
 E. P. DuTTON & COMPAMT 
 
 1907 
 This Sermon was written in 1867 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. 5. i.. 
 
THE 
 NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 3tnb tde? ^ans bjj it tnete a neu jiong 
 6Efott tie tl)tone. — Bev. xiv. 3. 
 
 Saint John does not tell us what 
 the song was that he heard in his 
 vision, but only that it was " a new 
 song," which no man could learn 
 but the four hundred and forty and 
 four thousand who had been re- 
 deemed from the earth. He was 
 not yet one of those redeemed and 
 glorified himself, therefore even he 
 could not learn the song. It came 
 to him out of a higher region, and 
 while he felt its sublimity and 
 beauty he could not fully under- 
 stand it. It was in heaven and he 
 was on earth, and so he could only 
 know of it that it was ' ' a new 
 song " and that much of it was 
 
2 THE NEW SONG m HEAVEN 
 
 past his comprehension and recital. 
 He must have felt about it as we 
 sometimes feel with regard to na- 
 ture. Are there not with all of us 
 times when we love nature most 
 and are most in harmony with her, 
 and yet feel that all her notes, her 
 winds, her buds and streams and 
 waving trees, have meanings that 
 we do not fathom, are a new song 
 before the throne of God which we 
 vaguely love but cannot learn ? 
 
 Some of our best inspirations 
 and helps come to us from such 
 songs above us. We hear their 
 music, we discern their spirit, but 
 their exact sense is hid from us. 
 The character of St. John's vision 
 seems to be repeated in every exal- 
 tation that we gather from the life 
 and character of any fellow-being 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 3 
 
 which fills us with admiration and 
 a desire to imitate it, while the law 
 and method under which it is lived 
 jer too high for us to reach. The 
 ambitions of the best minds, the 
 self-sacrifices of the best martyrs, 
 the prayers and ascriptions of the 
 best saints, perhaps more than all 
 the purity of the- purest childhood, 
 — with each of these we live, con- 
 tinually listening to the song that it 
 is singing before God's throne. I 
 say, especially with children, for 
 there is nothing that reproduces the 
 celestial harmony upon our unce- 
 lestial earth so nearly as their lives 
 do : "Of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven . " In the unworldliness , the 
 ready affection, the pure tastes, the 
 impulsive faith, the fresh, hope- 
 ful enthusiasm of the truest child. 
 
4 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 where is the man, past his own 
 childhood, who does not hear a 
 music that from day to day en- 
 chains his love and mocks his 
 comprehension ? 
 
 And so it seems to be with 
 every man's life who is led into 
 any higher devotion or holiness 
 than his fellowmen. His acts and 
 words become songs that they hear 
 in visions, and that tempt them on 
 to where he is. I feel about any 
 one of our soldiers who lived and 
 died as bravely and purely as the 
 best of them did, that, much as I 
 love to think of him, I do not com- 
 prehend him. I could not unless 
 I had been what he was. I feel 
 that his life sang a song of duty 
 before the throne, which none can 
 learn but they who have been re- 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 5 
 
 deemed with him into the same 
 great privilege and glory. 
 
 So when you and I listen to the 
 words or watch the lives of the 
 nohlest servants of God, when we 
 read Wesley's hymns or Robert- 
 son's sermons, when we live with 
 Franke in his, Orphan House, or 
 walk with Mrs. Fry through the 
 prisons and lunatic asylums, the 
 nearer we draw to them the more 
 we feel how largely their lives 
 are incomprehensible to us, for the 
 like can only thoroughly know its 
 like. Their words and works 
 come to us like songs from far 
 above. Or have you never felt, — 
 when you have heard a holy man's 
 thanks to God for a day which 
 outwardly you and he had lived 
 alike, when you marvelled at the 
 
6 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 richness which he had gathered 
 out of what seemed to you dry 
 and dead fields, — have you never 
 felt that you were listening to a 
 song which it was hopeless to try 
 to learn till you had learned first 
 the spiritual condition out of which 
 it sprang ? 
 
 Alas for the man who does not 
 feel something above him always, 
 towards whose comprehension he 
 is always struggling ! Alas for 
 him who is not every day striving 
 for the comprehension of some new 
 song ! For every true song must 
 be a new one. We cannot praise 
 God rightly in the mere crooning 
 over of old liturgies, into whose 
 barred and narrow doors no new 
 meaning ever intrudes. Not that 
 the words need to be always new. 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 7 
 
 but the psalm or prayer must 
 always be. Have you never felt 
 as you came into church some 
 special Sunday, shrouded with 
 some special sorrow, or jubilant 
 with some new joy, that some of 
 these old prayers and thanksgivings 
 became as new to you as if you 
 had never heard them before ? — 
 the prayer for a sick person, for a 
 family in affliction, the litany or 
 the general thanksgiving, or, most 
 of all, that wonderful group of 
 petitions as new and old at once as 
 human need, the Lord's Prayer? 
 
 Look at the Psalms : three dif- 
 ferent times David begins a psalm 
 with, ' ' sing unto the Lord a 
 new song." Another time it is, 
 ' ' I will sing a new song unto thee, 
 O God ; " and when one of his 
 
8 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 greatest deliverances had come to 
 him, he who had praised God a 
 thousand times before cried, " He 
 hath put a new song into my 
 mouth, even praise unto our God." 
 All praise was new to him. Each 
 reached a little higher, and shaped 
 the old familiar gratitude into new 
 forms. 
 
 So may it be with us. As we 
 learn more of God, as Christ 
 grows dearer to us, as we learn 
 some new application of His infi- 
 nite helpfulness to our infinite need 
 from day to day, as always grow- 
 ing humbler we grow always 
 richer, and always more conscious 
 of weakness become more strong, 
 may each new thanksgiving take a 
 deeper depth and reach a higher 
 height than any that has gone 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 9 
 
 before It. He is not the Christian 
 that he ought to be who, with no 
 increase of insight or earnestness, 
 prays the same prayer or offers the 
 same praise twice. The need re- 
 curs, but in the meantime the 
 needy soul ought to have learnt 
 more of what it is for such as 
 it to ask of such as God. Always 
 a new song before the throne 
 then I There was one unlearnt 
 last night which perhaps our souls 
 may sing this evening, and so go 
 on from learnt to unlearnt con- 
 tinually, till at last we are ready 
 for the great "new song" which 
 only they can sing whose redemp- 
 tion is complete. 
 
 Now let us look at this promised 
 new song. We have seen that no 
 man can learn it yet ; still, we may 
 
lo THE NKW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 know something about it, for it is 
 to be the song of the redeemed. 
 The condition of learning it is to 
 be this — that a soul shall be "re- 
 deemed from the earth." The 
 song, then, must be the flower of 
 the perfected redemption. It must 
 be the triumph of the complete 
 work of Christ. And so we can 
 tell what will be some, at least, of 
 the .elements that make it up. 
 
 First, there will be in it the 
 saint's pure joy in the Savior's 
 glory. In the condition of saint- 
 hood that will come first. The 
 soul will rejoice for Christ before 
 it rejoices for itself. The first use 
 it makes of its crown will be to 
 cast it at His feet. It will test its 
 harp by striking it to His praise. 
 As the first joy of the successful 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN ii 
 
 child is that the father will be 
 pleased, of the successful scholar 
 that the teacher will be honored, 
 of the successful soldier that his 
 country will be saved, so the saved 
 Christian's first delight is not, as 
 we are sometimes told, to find that 
 he is safe, but to know that Christ 
 has triumphed and is glorified. 
 
 And what will that glorification 
 be? The ends of the earth shall 
 have been gathered in. The ene- 
 mies shall all have been subdued. 
 Peace will brood like a great, deep, 
 loving atmosphere over a whole 
 harmonized creation. The plans 
 of Eternity will be accomplished. 
 The rounded and finished purposes 
 of that wonderful Life and Death 
 shall be all returned and held fast 
 in the Savior's hands. His work 
 
12 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 shall not have returned unto Him 
 void, but shall have prospered to 
 complete success in the thing 
 whereto He sent it. 
 
 On all this, no doubt, the re- 
 deemed soul will look with joy. 
 Over all this triumph he will lift 
 an exultant song. But, when with 
 his new insight he looks for the first 
 time clearly into his own nature, is 
 it not reasonable to think that there 
 he will see a glorification of his 
 Lord's redemption which will be 
 more interesting and inspiring to 
 him than all the rest? We do not 
 understand the glory of redemp- 
 tion now, because we do not fully 
 know this human nature which is 
 being redeemed. We do not know 
 Christ because we do not fully 
 know ourselves ; just as he who 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN i3 
 
 did not know anything about the 
 boys it was intended to train, could 
 form but a very poor idea of any 
 teacher's system of education. 
 
 But let the redeemed man fully 
 understand himself. Let him 
 trace the working of each noble 
 power which, clogged once by sin, 
 has been again freed to action. 
 Let him see how noble and great 
 man, in his first idea and in his 
 restoration, is. Let him discern 
 the delicate adjustments, the patient 
 endurances, the mighty impulses, 
 by which that restoration has been 
 brought about; and he himself, 
 redeemed Man, as he stands there 
 in his humility, wiU seem to him- 
 self the noblest and most glorious 
 trophy of the whole. Out of the 
 new Creature, at wonder before 
 
i4 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 itself, will spring the new song ; 
 and a part of it at least will be, 
 ' ' Thou art worthy, for Thou hast 
 redeemed me." 
 
 Whatever prodigies of power may 
 come from other worlds to bow be- 
 fore the Throne we do not know, 
 but this at least will be there. I 
 welcome every new enterprise of 
 science which, in these days, is dis- 
 covering both in the body and the 
 mind of man the grandeur of the 
 ground-plan of humanity. It all 
 seems to me to be getting ready the 
 materials for the new song. Men 
 may not use it so now. They may 
 feed their human vanity and pride 
 upon it ; but the final use of it 
 must be different. The moral con- 
 dition of man — his corruption and 
 unspirituality and sin — no science 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN i5 
 
 can extenuate or deny. That makes 
 redemption necessary, no matter 
 what perfection there may be in the 
 physical and mental natures within 
 which this sin runs riot. But the 
 sin once cast out, redemption once 
 achieved, then let man find himself 
 as noble as he may ; let every sci- 
 ence come to tell him of his king- 
 liness. Every new glory of his 
 nature is a new glory of Him who 
 first made and now has harmo- 
 nized and renewed that nature. 
 Every new crown that his increas- 
 ing knowledge puts on the renewed 
 man's head, goes in a moment to 
 the Savior's feet. You cannot ex- 
 alt man too much, if it is only al- 
 ways the Redeemed man that you 
 magnify ; for to exalt the redeemed 
 is to exalt not him but his Re- 
 
i6 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 deemer, and so to swell the great 
 "new song." 
 
 Behind this joy in Christ's tri- 
 umph there will come, as the sec- 
 ond element in the new song, the 
 soul's own joy in victory and fin- 
 ished struggle. That will follow 
 after Christ is praised, or, rather, 
 will melt in with the soul's rejoic- 
 ing in Christ's joy. And remem- 
 ber what the true Christian expects 
 when he looks forward to heaven 
 as a place where struggle will be 
 over. It is not that aspiration is to 
 cease, not that labor will be done; 
 it is only that aspiration and labor 
 will be freed from uncertainty, and 
 furnished with sure standing points 
 from which to work. The victory 
 of the Christian's eternity must be 
 this — that when he reaches after 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 17 
 
 new truth there he will be certain 
 of attaining It; when he attains it, 
 he will grasp and hold it perfectly ; 
 when he sets out in any new work 
 (for we can form no attractive and 
 worthy idea of heaven that does 
 not dower and fill it full of work 
 for God), his eager hands will not 
 be weakened, as they are contin- 
 ually here, by two doubts : first, 
 whether the thing ought to be done ; 
 and, second, whether there is any 
 use in his trying to do it. This only 
 will be the difference, but how im- 
 mense this difference is I Put this 
 certainty into the best part of hu- 
 man labor, and you have almost 
 made heaven. You have cut the 
 weights from wings of energy that 
 at once spread themselves broad 
 against the sky, and sweep upward 
 
i8 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 to flights they never have dreamed 
 of. 
 
 True, this uncertainty cannot be 
 safely taken away now. We see 
 its use. We see how faith and 
 patience and trust are fed upon it. 
 But there, in heaven, when the new 
 supply of God's personal presence 
 is provided, iSrhen the immediate 
 sight of Him becomes the source of 
 trust and faith and patience, then 
 uncertainty may safely sweep away; 
 and, standing on the limits of the 
 new life, all ready to leap into the 
 glorious atmosphere of certain truth 
 and unhindered duty, the soul will 
 look back upon struggle and dis- 
 trust, and sing its new song before 
 the throne. 
 
 So far as we may know it, this 
 will be the difference between work 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 19 
 
 and growth in heaven and vvork and 
 growth on earth. It will not be a 
 new nature, but the old nature freed 
 from every incumbrance and in- 
 cited by every help. It will not be 
 a new plant that blooms in the 
 Lord's garden, but the old plant, — 
 the same humanity, transplanted 
 from wilderness to garden, freed 
 from tangling undergrowths, with 
 light let in upon its darkness, with 
 a new soil about its roots. The 
 clear perception of this truth makes 
 heaven more soberly but more truly 
 beautiful to us than any glowing 
 pictures of angelic being that our 
 fancy paints, and gives us a higher 
 and truer keynote for the new song. 
 Think of it just in one point 
 only. Picture a soul that long and 
 patiently has studied and struggled 
 
ao THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 and stumbled after truth, a soul 
 whose one longing while it lived 
 on earth was to get the real apart 
 from the unreal, and see it in its 
 pure beauty. Suppose that soul 
 has crossed the line. It has en- 
 tered within the veil. It has gone 
 to God, and in Him, lo 1 the long- 
 sought miracle is done. As it looks 
 back, truth falls into harmony, and 
 doubt, separating itself from the 
 substance of which it seemed a 
 part, like mist off from a morning 
 landscape, lifts and floats away. 
 Bits of truth which have not fitted 
 together, by some strange, simple 
 impulse, quietly turn their right 
 edges to each other and join into 
 one perfect piece. Unvalued pieces 
 that the soul has swept aside into 
 a corner come out and take their 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN ai 
 
 places in the very centre, and are 
 found to have a magnet-povvrer about 
 which all the others group themselves 
 at once. Other pieces that it tried 
 to make much of, and force into 
 central places where they did not 
 belong (some of our darling doc- 
 trines, it may be), drift out of sight 
 like the big chaff from among the 
 little grain upon the barn floor as 
 the wind sweeps over it. There, 
 just across the threshold, just be- 
 fore the throne, the soul looks up, 
 and lo 1 the truth that it has worked 
 for, clear, compact and solid, stands 
 before it. No more struggle, no 
 more doubt — is it not a time for 
 a new song? What sun, breaking 
 upon the darkness where the lost 
 traveller wanders, deserves a greel^ 
 ing such as this? It seems as if we 
 
aa THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 could almost hear the delighted and 
 triumphant mortal as he stands and 
 sings out clear and strong and true 
 his glory in the new-found truth, 
 until it fills all heaven, and strikes 
 against the jasper w^alls, and rolls 
 back to lay its trembling waves of 
 gratitude at the foot of the throne 
 on which the great Truth-Giver sits . 
 The third strain which we can 
 trace, by anticipation, in the new 
 song of heaven is different from 
 these with which it mingles, and 
 adds a separate beauty of its own 
 to complete their melody. The 
 soul in heaven must sing not only 
 for joy at Christ's victory and at 
 its own graduation from struggle, 
 but also for the continual delight 
 of its Savior's realized presence, 
 its perfect communion with Christ. 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN aS 
 
 This is a lower and sweeter strain 
 than the others. It does not 
 mount into jubilant expression ; it 
 sings itself, like all true aflFection, 
 through the eyes and the whole 
 face aglow with love, more than in 
 articulate expressions of the lips. 
 It has little to say ; and what it 
 says, as very holy, it says in whis- 
 pers and low, broken words. It 
 is a song like a summer's day — 
 quiet because so full of harmonious 
 life. It sees Jesus entirely, and 
 loves Him entirely, and is perfectly 
 satisfied to rest in His aflFection. 
 
 To very many believers, to most 
 believers doubtless, this thought of 
 heaven is the most familiar — to be 
 with Jesus. That is the descrip- 
 tion that the Christian hope has 
 given of itself in every age, from 
 
24 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 Stephen and Paul down to the 
 saint who is waiting impatiently 
 for release to-day. Thus every age 
 has embodied in its Christ the 
 highest idea of friendship that it 
 has attained ; and every separate 
 believer has seen in the Christ he 
 hoped to meet the satisfaction of 
 his own peculiar longing in his 
 Friend. One has looked for 
 Christ the enlightener of igno- 
 rance, another for Christ the cor- 
 rector of sin, another for Christ the 
 consoler of sorrow, another for 
 Christ the stimulator of energy, 
 another for Christ the pure ' ' lover 
 of the soul," in that long-dreamed- 
 of Savior whom he knew was 
 waiting to lead him into heaven. 
 It seems to me that in this vari- 
 ety of Christian anticipation, there 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN a5 
 
 is a great tribute to the essential 
 divinity of the Gospel picture of 
 our Lord. How is it that all sorts 
 of men have been able to idealize 
 the personality of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, and find in Him a satisfaction 
 for all their infinite variety of 
 want? Does it not bear witness 
 to a certain universality in the 
 picture that the Bible gives us, 
 which is nothing less than divine ? 
 Only the whole God can satisfy 
 the whole man and all men. Can 
 you conceive of any other of the 
 great helpers of the human race 
 being idealized with such infinite- 
 ness of help ? When we see how 
 the times and the minds which, 
 mentally, morally, and spiritually, 
 have had the largest and the keen^ 
 est appetites, have been perfectly 
 
a6 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 satisfied with the anticipation of 
 a heaven in which they should see 
 Jesus and be with Him, must we 
 not own that there was in His 
 earthly life some suggestion of this 
 mysterious and divine abundance 
 which has gathered around it, and 
 which mankind has found in it ? 
 
 When we speak of this part of 
 the joy of heaven, — joy in com- 
 munion with Christ, — that part of 
 the description of the new song that 
 none can learn but they who have 
 been redeemed becomes peculiarly 
 intelligible. It has passed into a 
 region where only the personal ex- 
 perience can follow it, the region of 
 most intimate personal companion- 
 ship and love. None but those who 
 love Christ can rejoice and sing for 
 His presence. Nay more than this, 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 27 
 
 — since each redemption is a sepa- 
 rate and peculiar thing, since each 
 redeemed soul passes through its 
 experience of grace, a new feature 
 enters here into the singing of the 
 new song, — that, though the song 
 will be but one because redemption 
 is one, it must also be many be- 
 cause redemptions are so manifold. 
 Each voice that sings will sing like 
 all the rest, and yet sing differently. 
 Each singer will sing to his own 
 Savior. Each will remember his 
 own calling, his own gradual con- 
 viction, especially the moment apart 
 from all other Christians' holiest 
 moments, when Jesus made the 
 covenant with his individual soul. 
 Each song will ring with peculiar 
 memories of the paths, the open 
 plains, the dark mountain passes, 
 
a8 THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 when it was practised alone upon 
 the upward journey. 
 
 And thus there will be forever in 
 the new song of the redeemed that 
 mingling of singleness with mani- 
 foldness, of combined unity with dis- 
 tinct personality, which is the beauty 
 of all music and character and life. 
 
 These things, we know, must all 
 be in the new song which Saint 
 John heard, and which, if we trust 
 in Christ and live to Him, you and 
 I will hear some day. It is a won- 
 drous song. It is the consumma- 
 tion and completion of the songs of 
 earth. It is the groaning and tra- 
 vailing of the Creation suddenly 
 bursting into music. 
 
 I hope our hearts have been lifted 
 a little way above the earth while 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN ag 
 
 we have been listening. I hope 
 our cares and troubles, the things 
 that worry us and vex us and make 
 the earth seem dull and voiceless to 
 us, have been swept aside a little 
 while. Now let us come back to 
 the earth again and see if we can- 
 not bring the new song of heaven 
 into the midst of it. Is it a thing 
 entirely of the other world? Let 
 us not think so. If we do think so 
 and do not try to sing it till we get 
 there, when we do get there we 
 shall fail and be silent and ashamed. 
 All the world is practising it, — in 
 hoarse, unmusical and bitter tones 
 very often, but still intently and 
 truly. Werever duty is being at- 
 tempted, and truth sought, and love 
 rendered, and prayer offered, and 
 discipline accepted, there the new 
 
3o THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 
 
 song is being slowly, hardly learnt. 
 If we can hear it, care and vexation 
 are easy to bear because of the 
 promise that is in our ears. 
 
 It is a wonderful and holy life — 
 mysteriously holy most of all to him 
 who lives it — when one feels him- 
 self day by day growing into the 
 knowledge of the everlasting song. 
 If we are always more and more 
 glad whenever Christ gains any vic- 
 tory and is glorified anew, if we are 
 being led up out of doubt to truth 
 and out of restlessness to peace, 
 above all if it is more and more 
 our joy to get near and to keep near 
 to the Lord, — then, though our 
 lips and lives seem silent, they are 
 shaping the melody of the new song 
 and shall some day burst forth with 
 it before the throne. 
 
THE NEW SONG IN HEAVEN 3i 
 
 Some people's religion has very 
 little song about it, new or old. 
 It wails and groans. True religion 
 sings here, and will sing more here- 
 after. Distrust your religion unless 
 it is cheerful, unless it turns every 
 act and deed to music and exults 
 in attempts to catch the harmony 
 of the new life. "Let the saints 
 be joyful in glory; let them sing 
 aloud upon their beds," — that was 
 David's exhortation . Blessed be our 
 Christian faith that does not let us 
 creep dolefully along the path, but 
 turns each new advance into a new 
 hymn of triumph, and bursts the 
 walls of the narrow way with the 
 triumphant voices of the pilgrims, 
 and keeps before us always the 
 promise of the new song before 
 the throne!