The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1872-06-21
The Lesson of the Sky.

1t is strange thing how little q
general people know about the sky.
It is the part of creation in which
nature has done more for the sake
of pleasing man, more for the sole
and evident purpose of talking to
him and teaching him, than in any
other of her works, and it is just the
part in which we least attend to her.
There are not many other works IN
which some more material or essen
tial purpose than the mere pleasing
of man is not answered by every part
OF their organization; but every es-
sential purpose of the sky might, SO
far as we know, be answered, if once
IN three days or thereabout a great
ugly black rain-cloud were brought
up over the blue, and everything
well watered, and 30 all lett blue
again till next time, with perhaps
film of morning or evening mist or
dow. And instead of this there Is
not a moment of any day of our lives
when nature is not producing scene
after scene, picture after picture, glo-
~ after glory, and working still up
SUN anu COnbbAub
ciples of the most perfect beauty,
that it is quite certain that it is all
done for us, and intended for our
perpetual pleasure. And every man,
wherever placed, however far from
other sources of interest or of beau
ty, has this doing for him constant
ly. The MODEST scenes of the earth
can be seen and known by but few;
it Is not intended that man should
live always in the midst of them, he
Injuries them by his presence, he
ceases to feel them if he be always
with them; but the sky is for all
bright as it is, it is not too Upright
aud good for human natures daily
food;" it is fitted in all it's functions
for the perpetual comfort and exalt-
ing of the heart, for the soothing
and purifying it from its dross and
dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes
capricious, sometimes awful, never
the same for two moments together;
almost human in its passions, almost
spiritual IN its tenderness, almost
divine in its infnity, its appeal to
what is immortal in use is as dis
tinct as its ministry of ehastisement
or of blessing to what ID mortal is
essential. And yet we never attend
to it, we never make 1t subject OF
thought, but as it has to do with our
animal sensations, we look upon all
by which it speaks to us more clear
ly than to brutes, upon all which
bears witness of the intention of the
Supreme, that we are to receive
more from the covering vault than
the light and the dew which we share
with the weed and the worm, only
as a succession of meaningless and
monotonous accidents too common
and too vain to be worthy of q mo-
ment of watchfulness, or a glance o.
admiration. If in our moments o.
utter idleness and insipidity, we TURF
to the sky as q last resource, which
of it's phenomena do we speak Of
One says it has been wet, and an.
other it has been windy, and another
it has been warm. Who, among the
whole chattering crowd, can tell me
of the forms and the precipices, O.
the chain of tall white mountains
that girded the horizon at noon yes
terday? Who saw the narrow sun
beam that came out of the south anC
smote upon their SUBMITS until they
melted and moldered away In a dus
of blue rain? Who saw the dance o
the dead clouds when the sun light
left them last night, and the wes
wind blew them before it like with
cred leaves? All has passed unre
GREETED as unseen; or if the apathy
be ever shaken of, even for an in
slant, it is only by what is gross o.
what is extraordinary; and yet it Ii
not in the broad and fierce NANTES
tations of the elemental energies
not in the clash of the hail nor tn
drift of the whirlwind, that the high
est characters of the sublime are de
veloped. God is not in the earth
quake, nor in the fire, but in the still
small voice. They are but the blunt
low faculties of our nature whicl
can only be addressed through lamp
black and lightning. It is in quie
and subdued passages of unobtrusiv
majesty, the deep, and the calm, anC
tho perpetual-that which must b
sought ere it is seen, and loved er
it is understood, things which tn
angels work out for us daily, an,
yet very eternally, which are neve
wanting, and never repeated, whic,
are TO be found always, yet eac
found but once; it is through thes
that the lesson of devotion is chief
taught, and the blessing of beaut
given.-RuSkjn.