HARP, THE, AS A SACRED INSTRUMENT
The harp is by common consent supposed to be the musical instrument of the angels, and many a clerical metaphor has been made regarding “the celestial harps,” “the golden harps,” etc. The metaphor is probably taken by very few as a fixt truth, but is nevertheless to the musician an interesting and also a reverential one. At the time that the Scriptures were written the harp was the finest instrument possest by man, and in ascribing it to the angels an effort was made to represent the music of heaven by the noblest tones of earth. Were we to imagine celestial music to-day it would be the roll of heavenly orchestras, and some of the old Italian painters scarcely made a musical error in depicting their angels as playing on violins. The violin is the noblest earthly instrument, and is far beyond the harp in its representation of bliss. Meanwhile, Schumann and Berlioz (in Faust) have used the harp to picture celestial joys, while Wagner has used the violins in a soft tremolo in highest positions, combined in sweet tones of wood wind. Nevertheless, association of ideas is much in music, and the harp must always call up the idea of heaven in the minds of many. (Text.)—Boston Musical Herald.
(1354)
HARSHNESS, FAILURE OF
What harshness in fathers, who fear to praise their children! What severity in some teachers! What bitterness in our muck-rakers and reformers! How seldom do we find a man who can speak the truth, and speak it in love. Yet there are some things that harshness can not do. In February the clods are hard, the seeds dead, the roots inert, the boughs leafless. Now let nature speak in terms of power. She lets loose the north wind, to smite the branches; she beats the bare clods with hail and snow. In a tempest of fury she commands the earth to awaken. But power is impotent; not a root stirs, not a seed moves. Then, when the storms and winds have published their weakness, the south wind comes softly wooing. Summer speaks in love. The mother heart caresses each sleeping seed, and wakens it with bosom pressure. And every root and bough answers with beauty and radiant loveliness. Amid this is the parable of influence, that rebukes man’s harshness, and smites those who turn justice into cruelty and cause their good to be evil spoken of.—N. D. Hillis.
(1355)
Harvest—See [Fertility].
Harvest Failures—See [Choked].
HARVEST FROM EARLY SOWING
A little girl had been promised a handsome Bible for her birthday. On hearing a missionary tell of the need of Bibles in India, the child asked if she might not have two Bibles, each half as handsome as the one her mother was planning to give her. Her mother consented and the little girl wrote her name in one of them and gave it to the missionary to send to India. Years afterward a lady missionary was telling the story of the love of Jesus to a few women, when one of them exclaimed: “Oh, I know all about that. I have a book which tells me these things.” She brought the book to the missionary, who, on opening it, saw with astonishment her own name on the fly-leaf! It was the very birthday Bible she had sent out years before as a little girl and it had led to the conversion of its reader. (Text.)