Is there perfect music without the underchording of the minor? Not to human ears. For they are attuned to life as it has really come to be. And the minor chord is in real life, never quite absent; and the minor chord is in the true human heart, never wholly absent. And only the music with the minor blended in is the real music of human life. Only it can play upon the finest strings of the human heart. But this sort of thing, the getting of beauty out of ugly threads, the getting of music where there is discord, the upward turn again of the valley road, all this is a bit of the touch of God upon life, where the hurt of sin has come in. Only the Lord Jesus can make music where sin had brought in and wrought out such discord. Only He can change the weaving into beauty, where the ugly slimy sin-threads have come in. He can lead up again out of the depths, but only He. His blood, Himself, is the thing added that makes music where no melody had ever been a possible thing; and gives the weaver's threads the transforming touch that works beauty where there was only the ugly; and pulls you up again to the higher levels. The good never comes out of bad. It comes only by something radically different coming in and overcoming the bad. In Seoul they showed us the great bell hung at the crossing of certain chief streets there. And then they told us the bell's legend. In early twilight times an artisan had made a great bell at the king's command, but the tone of it was not pleasing to the royal ears. So a second one was made, and a third, but neither was satisfactory. Then the king said that if the man did not make a bell with pleasing tones his life should be forfeited for his failure. This was very distressing for the poor unfortunate bell-moulder. His daughter, a young girl in her teens, either had a vision, or felt within herself that a sacrifice was the thing needful to give the bell its true tone. And so she resolved to give herself to save her father, and with rare fortitude one night she plunged into the great pot of molten metal. And the tone of the bell was so sweet and musical that the king was delighted. And the maker, instead of being killed, was highly honoured. So ran the simple bit of Korean folklore. We ran across legends quite like it in other parts of the Orient. They all seemed to point, with other similar evidence, to the feeling deep down in human consciousness of the need of sacrifice. Is it a bit of an innate instinct in our common human nature, that only through sacrifice can the hurt of life be healed? However this be, it certainly is true, that the touch of Him who gave His life clear out for men, that touch is the thing, and the only thing, that can make music where there was only discord. It is only His pierced hand upon weaver and web that touches ugly threads into beauty as they are woven into the fabric of life. Only He can lead us up out of the valley of death up to the road of life along the high hilltops.