THE MINOR AND THE MAJOR.
By S.
IN the great Song of Triumph there are no minor strains; for these are the echoes of defeat and sorrow. They appeal to our souls now only because of our sadness for sin. There are times in the lives of most people when they like to be by themselves and feel sad. They are extracting sympathy from defeated purposes. The cheer of the victor has no minor strain. In the song of triumph it would be an incongruity. It comes in with sad sweetness when the victors are burying the dead; and there it is in its right place. But when the last dead have been buried; when the last defeat has been swallowed up in eternal victory; when the scars of sin have been at last erased from the entire universe, and all is perfection and beauty again—when there is nothing more in all the universe to be sorrowful for—we will bid farewell to the sweet, sad minor, and join in the great, glad strains of the major chords. And that will be no more monotonous than the glad, sinless lives of the saints will be monotonous. He who knows how to give glad variety in the life of a ransomed soul will also know how to give joyous, harmonious variety to the music that has in it none of the memories of sin, sorrow, and death.