without end, throughout the ages of ages.
There is but one spot whence no hallelujah comes up—the lake of fire. Praise is silent there, and nothing heard to all eternity but weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. O man of God! is your soul filled with thankfulness that you shall never enter that region of woe, nor taste that second death, where there is no praise; as it is written, "The dead cannot praise thee, neither they that go down to the pit"? And, O sinner, can you bear the thought, that the only place in all the universe where there is no praise should be your home for ever? Oh, the darkness, the desolation, the wretchedness, of such a home; a home where God is not, save in his wrath; a home into which all evil things have found their way, and from which all good things have departed; a home where, instead of praise, there is lamentation, and mourning, and woe!
Yet, strange to say, even in the neighbourhood of this place of torment, a hallelujah is heard; for we read that when the smoke of the destroyed is seen ascending, a great voice of much people is heard saying, Hallelujah. The hallelujah of the heavenly host is echoed back from the very gates of hell. Can any picture be darker or more terrible than this? Wailing within, hallelujahs without! Blasphemies within, praises without! I do not say hallelujahs over the torments of the damned, but hallelujahs over the righteousness of that righteous God, that by terrible things in righteousness has at length avenged his Church's cause.
4. How long is it to be sung?—For ever, even for ever and ever; world without end, throughout the ages of ages.
There was a time when there was no hallelujah. Praise was unheard, for there were no creatures to praise. He to whom all praise belongs existed; but there were no lips to be opened in his praise.
Praise then had a beginning, but it shall have no end. The long silence has been broken, never to be resumed. There shall always be creatures, and voices, and instruments; nor shall these ever be dumb, or wax old in song. Hallelujah shall be eternal. There will be many
changes in the singers, and many variations in the tune; new voices added, and new themes continually coming up; but the hallelujah itself is for everlasting ages. An eternal hallelujah! How blessed the thought! For surely this will compensate—nay, infinitely more than compensate—for the dishonour cast upon Jehovah, and the blasphemies that have drowned the mention of his name, during these brief ages of earth. He will get enough of glory to make up for all. The profanities of time will soon be forgotten in the eternal hallelujah. It is not praise for a day, or for an age, but for ever and ever;—ages without end. God is now preparing themes, and providing instruments, and tuning voices; and when all this is accomplished, then shall that hallelujah begin, in all its fulness and compass, which shall never either flag, nor jar, nor end. How full of blessedness is the thought of an eternal hallelujah!—a hallelujah reaching as truly through endless duration as it shall do through the infinity of space.
Let us practise this hallelujah here. It will be a "song in the night" to us, and a prelude of the coming day when the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs. Let us practise the new song oftener, alone, or in concert; and let us learn even on this old sinful earth to sing that hallelujah with which we shall, ere long, make the new heavens and the new earth resound.
"Sing unto the Lord a new song!" Again and again that summons shall come forth, calling the heavenly citizens to praise. And when it is heard, like the voice of Israel's trumpets bidding Jerusalem assemble for the solemn feasts, then shall the redeemed take their harps and join in the song, and there shall be heard a voice "as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder, and the voice of harpers harping with their harps" (Rev. 14:2).
"Sing unto the Lord a new song!" How shall these words ring through the golden city! And when the summons is obeyed, and the song flows out,
"Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices uttering joy,"
how glad and glorious will be the burst of melody; and how will the ripples of that melody widen outward and still outward, till they break upon the farthest orb of space, or die in vacancy beyond!
As we pass through this land of strangers, let us break forth into praise, provoking one another to this, and saying, as we "go from strength to strength," "Sing aloud unto God our strength;" so that, though few in number, our voices may be heard everywhere, as the voice of unearthly harmony, making the astonished world to stay in its headlong rush of vanity, and listen, wondering and asking whence can come such sounds.
At present much of our song pertains to what is yet to come, for here we receive but the first-fruits of the Spirit, the earnest of the inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession; but even this is worthy of a new song. So many sins forgiven, and so many hopes lighted up within us to cheer the way! So many joys possessed, and so many more in reserve for us! Such fellowship now, and such assurance of fuller, closer, fellowship hereafter! Shall we not say to ourselves, "Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem"? (Zeph. 3:14.)
Is it not a very little while and we shall, with "a pure lip" (Zeph. 3:9), and with an undivided heart, sing the full song which we have been aiming at so poorly here, and in which we have so often failed? The moist, cold, desert-air untunes both our voice and the strings of our harp; but when former things shall have passed away, there shall be no such complaint as to either voice or instrument; all shall be in tune.† That which is perfect shall have come, and that which is in part shall be done away. The rebuke shall be no longer—"What! could ye not watch with me one hour?—what! could ye not praise one
hour?" Weariness or satiety shall have then no place. Our eyes shall not be blinded by beholding such glory, nor our ears deafened by hearing such praises, nor our lips grow parched in singing the song of Moses and the Lamb.
Ours shall be a song which angels may listen to but cannot join in; a song which restored Israel in millennial days cannot reach to; a song such as we ourselves can hardly understand on this side of resurrection—the song of completed deliverance, and victorious battle, and heavenly citizenship, and irreversible triumph, and everlasting joy. We sing it here, to cheer our exile by the rivers of Babylon, or amid the rocks of Edom, or in sojourning for a night in some of earth's defiled cities, or in passing along its rugged highways; but we shall sing it soon in the upper Paradise, and by the banks of the pure river, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. It sounds well even here; it will sound better there. It is sweet to sing it in anticipation of the glory; but it will be sweeter to sing it in the midst of that glory. It is a song of wondrous power, and compass, and grandeur, even when sung by the scattered handfuls of the little flock in the family meeting-place, or in the sanctuary, or at the Master's table; but how inconceivably magnificent will it be—how much more wondrous in power, and compass, and grandeur—when sung in all its fulness by the whole innumerable multitude of the redeemed at once; Jesus himself leading the choir, either in the pavilion-cloud, where first they rest when caught up to meet their Lord in the air, or at the marriage supper, or within the walls of the holy City!
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The Eternal Day, by Horatius Bonar, Copyright © 2021
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