"There are songs which can only be learned in the valley.  No art can teach them; no rules of voice can make them perfectly sung.  Their music is in the heart.  They are songs of memory, of personal experience.  They bring out their burden from the shadows of the past; they mount on the wings of yesterday.
 

St. John says that even in Heaven there will be a song that can only be fully sung by the sons of the earth---the strain of redemption.  Doubtless it is a song of triumph, a hymn of victory to the Christ who made us free.   But the sense of triumph must come from the memory of the chain. 
 

No angel, no archangel can sing it so sweetly as I can.  To sing it as I sing it, they must pass through my exile, and this they cannot do.  None can learn it but the children of the Cross.
 

And so, my soul, thou art receiving a music lesson from thy Father.  Thou art being educated for the choir invisible.  There are parts of the symphony that none can take but thee. 
 

There are chords too minor for the angels.  There may be heights in the symphony which are beyond the scale---heights which angels alone can reach; but there are depths which belong to thee, and can only be touched by thee. 
 

Thy Father is training thee for the part the angels cannot sing; and the school is sorrow.  I have heard many say that He sends sorrow to prove thee; nay, He sends sorrow to educate thee, to train thee for the choir invisible.
 

In the night He is preparing thy song.  In the valley He is tuning thy voice.  In the cloud He is deepening thy chords.  In the rain He is sweetening thy melody.  In the cold He is moulding thy expression.  In the transition from hope to fear He is perfecting thy lights.
 

Despise not thy school of sorrow, O my soul; it will give thee a unique part in the universal song."
 

Written by George Matheson, (1842-1906), the "Blind Preacher" of Scotland, author of "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go."
 

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
 

O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.