Prayers of the Saints-The Aromas and Songs of the Night

And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints. 
And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof:
for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue,
and people, and nation; 
And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. Rev 5: 8-10 

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 shadow of the past; they mount on the wings of yesterday.
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John says that even in Heaven there will be a song that can only be fully sung by the sons of 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 molding 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. -- (George Matheson--Streams in the Desert)

A Song of Triumph
​"Is the midnight closing round you?
Are the shadows dark and long?
Ask Him to come close beside you,
And He’ll give you a new, sweet song.
He’ll give it and sing it with you;
And when weakness lets it down,
He’ll take up the broken cadence,
And blend it with His own.

"And many a rapturous minstrel
Among those sons of light,
Will say of His sweetest music
’’I learned it in the night.’’
And many a rolling anthem,
That fills the Father’s home,
Sobbed out its first rehearsal,
In the shade of a darkened room."
Anonymous
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​​The New Song

“They sing” are the opening words of the text. Who are “they”? If we look back at the preceding verse, we shall see that those who swelled the chorus of the new song are divisible into two companies, two types of life. There are, first, “the living creatures,” the representatives of nature animate and inanimate, now “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” Then there is redeemed manhood. These united together to swell the new song, which extolled the accomplishment of human redemption. As such it was the continuation and final close of the hymn to the incarnate and suffering Redeemer which had ruled the psalmody of heaven and earth from the Fall. When it began in heaven we know not; but we hear it throughout the Scriptures which testify of His coming. It is the melody which the Bible makes everywhere in its heart to the Lord. It first proclaimed from age to age a coming Deliverer; that song became old, and a new one extolled His Advent; and now the hymn of the Incarnation, which indeed can never become old, receives its perfection when it glorifies the attainment of the great end of the Incarnation—the redemption of the human race. That song began in heaven; for only a few upon earth knew the mystery of the Passion, and none knew it in all its meaning, when the Redeemer left the earth. Nor can we extol the finished work of the eternal wisdom and justice and mercy with the same insight into its glory as is vouchsafed above. The song of creation can be magnified worthily only in heaven. Much more is the song of redemption reserved for that higher scene. There only can it be set to fitting music; and hence the new song, “Thou wast slain and didst purchase with thy blood” remains the standard and text of our feebler echoes upon earth.

We know not upon how many points Redemption touches; what unseen worlds, what unborn generations, what undeveloped forms of being it embraces. We know not to what Warfare, to what Accomplishment our Lord referred when He spoke those words, “It is finished.” We know not, in short, as Butler says, what in the works and counsels of God are ends, and what means to a further end, or how what appears to us as final may be initial with Him. But we see enough around us, and within us, to show that it was necessary that Christ should suffer many things, and after that enter into His glory. Enough to learn that we shall find no higher thing above, shall pierce to no deeper thing below, than the Cross and its solemn and tender teachings. If we would climb up into heaven, it is there; if we would go down into hell, it is there also. He alone among men who has clasped this great mystery of grief and love to his bosom sees, if it be as yet but through a glass darkly, how pain and love, yes, joy also, all things that have a living root in humanity, come to bloom under its shadow; how love that cannot die and faith that grows to certainty, and hope that maketh not ashamed, root themselves about it, with all fair things that wither in life, and noble things for which it has no room.  
​(Note: Dora Greenwell, The Patience of Hope (ed. 1894), 33)

Corresponding verses:
​Psa 33:3  Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise. 
Psa 40:3  And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD. 
​​Psa 96:1  O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth. 
Psa 98:1  A Psalm. O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. 
​Psa 144:9  I will sing a new song unto thee, O God: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee. 
​Psa 149:1  Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. 
​Isa 42:10  Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. 
​Rev 15:3  And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. 

​The Song Of Moses with Lyrics by Paul Wilbur
https://youtu.be/Rwx0NxMX3bQ?si=QlTY7EMnoE4e26NB

The Value of Man

Wherein consists the value of man as man? The text calls our attention to two salient points which are to be found in that valuation, two capacities that belong to us all.

​Man can think; man can pray; man can live; man can will. That power of thought, that power of will, above all that capacity for affection, leads you to a truth of your nature which is witnessed in the Passion of the Lord. The Passion of Jesus was never more majestic, although it may have been more moving, than at the moment when He stood before the insolent impudence of Herod or the miserable cowardice of Pilate, speechless in the one case, speaking in the other; and as He spoke in the majesty of His sorrow He witnessed to the capacity of sovereignty in man. Man was born a king: "He hath made us kings unto God."

But the Passion witnessed to one point more. The Passion, as the world would phrase it, was a failure; it was the witness of the tremendous failure apparently of a matchless mission. Why? Because it was the consummation of that most fruitful and eloquent act of which man is capable: the act of sacrifice. It is a commonplace to repeat that by sacrifice you are born, by sacrifice you are educated, by sacrifice you succeed; but remember that to limit your success to the horizon of time is to cramp that capacity. The Passion appeared to be a failure because the reach of its achievement went further than the horizon of time. Man, in full view of the Passion, is reading the lesson of his great humanity; he is expounding the principle of self-sacrifice; he is acting as a priest to God. Act as a king, conquering self, ruling your passions; act as a priest, sacrifice self rather than give way to what is wrong; and you will ever see before you the witnessing picture of your Divine Redeemer, strengthening you by example and grace.  (W. J. Knox-Little, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 257)

​The End of the Redeemed

Such a vision as that of the text is intended, we cannot doubt, to form a ground of hope and of encouragement in the progressive advancement of our spiritual life. Our nature is possessed of an instinct ever looking forward to the end of our course, with power to brighten the scenes with imaginative pictures. It is the life of hope, and every faculty is stimulated and sustained by its influences. The Revelation is the one book of Scripture that specially feeds the yearnings of souls who live on the promised inheritance of the redeemed. When a man is returning home after long wanderings, he anticipates the scene, the old haunts, the faces, the voices, of early days; and his heart springs up and burns within him. The revelations of John were intended to tell us of this far home of faith and to quicken a similar spring of exulting anticipation, to cause the same glow of hope to spring within every one who is disciplining himself patiently in the midst of these earthly trials, waiting for the fulness of the manifestation of Christ.

These visions, moreover, involve the existence in disembodied souls of active, living energies. There are those who tell us that souls separate from the body pass into an unconscious sleep; that the dead are consequently losers in comparison with those who remain on earth. But the saints are represented in the visions of John as no less actively engaged than the angels who appear in the same visions. This may in part explain the calling away of many whom we think we can ill spare, leaving us in their full strength and spiritual maturity. They have other service in higher worlds; they are needed where alone more blessed tasks of love can be accomplished.

These visions raise us to a higher view of human life. The outward scene around us deceives us; the thought of the faithful who are gone before us is calculated to counteract our fearful downward tendency. They trusted all to God, and they have found Him true. We may have many ends; they had one: we may have divided hearts; they had given all their heart. This unity and consistency distinguished their course; and as they lived, so they died, in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. The standard of our earthly life rises as we look on their present existence with God.  (T. T. Carter, Sermons, p. 31)