The Soul's Harmony
Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name.’ — Psa.m Ciii. 1.
‘* ALL that is within me!” It is when all things within me are in harmony that the soul exults in lusty and delightful health. But how to bring these independent and somewhat rebellious things into unanimity is the most serious problem in life. It is not always easy to get unanimity in a meeting which has been called to consider some question of public interest. Some would go this way, and some that way, and oftentimes they travel in quite opposite directions. It is not easy to get unanimity in a church. There are cranks whose erratic minds will never accept suggestions from other minds, and indeed they will not long be loyal to their own. It is not easy to get unanimity in a home; there are diversities of faculty, and mood, and temper, which are prone to strike discords rather than harmonies.
But perhaps the most difficult of all things is to get unanimity in soul. To get the soul to pass a unanimous resolution! ‘“All that is within me”? at one! My soul is often like a tumultuous meeting, with interruption, and disturbance, and opposition, and I cannot get a unanimous decision. Or my soul is often like a disorderly orchestra, where each member is pursuing his own desire independently of all the rest. There are many members of the orchestra, and unless there is unity and community it is nothing less than pandemonium. Recall some of the members of the orchestra: affection, reason, conscience, will, humour, indignation, emotion, veneration, and all the varieties of the passions. Unless there is order among them, and mutual respect and dependence, and a common controlling purpose, there will be absolute chaos, and life will be ‘‘ like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.” Yes, the most serious problem is this — how to get unanimity in the soul, how to get the ‘‘all things”? to work together as one thing.
Well, this was the Psalmist’s aspiration. He longed for unanimity in the movements of the soul. He wanted the “all things” to be strongly and sweetly co-operative in the service of praise. He wished every faculty to contribute its note in the harmony of worship. He was ambitious that the ‘“‘all things’? should be all there when he sought the Lord — all his thoughts and imaginations, his conscience and reason, his desires and his will — all moving together like some splendid band of music advancing toward the home of aking. ‘“‘ Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name.”
A disorderly orchestra is a fearful thing. Independent musicians, in the spirit of rebels, each playing his own instrument in sheer indifference to all the rest, fill the room with noise, and they add the burden of discord to all the other burdens of the hearers. And a disorderly soul is a fearful thing! When will acts in deliberate antagonism to reason! When passion gets out of bounds and comes into conflict with conscience! When imagination is out of tune with reverence! When humour acts independently of love! What a scene it is! It is a condition of civil strife. Everything is “‘ at sixes and sevens.’ There is no music, for there is no community. A stray faculty may pipe its praise, but it is thin and powerless, and the worship is nothing worthy of the Lord, who is “great, and greatly to be praised.”
How are we to get this desired unanimity, so that “all that is within me ’’ may “bless His holy name”? Well, an orchestra must have a strong and dominant conductor, to whom every member must render the tribute of obedience. What a transformation takes place when the conductor appears, and raises his baton, which is the sceptre of his realm, the symbol of his authority and power! At once every rebellious instrument is silenced, every indifferent member of the orchestra is awake, attention has a single mark, and purpose has but one goal. All the members become as one member, and they wait the will and preference of their leader.
And all my faculties need authority and leadership. There must be strong and vitalising control. There must be an ego round which my powers gather like bees around their queen. The ego must rise above its members in undisputed sovereignty. Yes, the innermost self must reign; its rule must make orchestral harmony.
Yes, but how? I am as weak as a lath among my disorderly members. I stand before them like a babe before a disorderly orchestra. This is the secret of all my impotence. Any faculty can flout me, and act in sheer derision of my control. It is just here that the Lord Jesus comes in, with the amazing helpfulness of His divine grace. “Be strong in the Lord!” Yes, and that word is more correctly translated in the passive, throwing us back entirely upon God: ‘“‘be strengthened in the Lord!” We can get our very self, our central, innermost personality filled and braced with the mighty spirit of Christ. Self can be so divinely controlled that it can control anything. The conductor can be made so imperious and so vital in Christ Jesus that every faculty will be constrained to do His bidding. Let the inner self and the Lord become as one, and “all that is within me”’ will come into tuneful order and harmony.