Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1893-07-07

| And we would do well TO have a hymnOIogy
| for all changes of condition. You may sing
| your woes into peace and rouse your joys
| into greater attitudes. Upon every condition
| of body and soul let US try the power Of song.
| The multitudinous utterances of grove and
| orchard and garden and forest suggest most
| delightful possibilities.
Some of the most deeply impressive songs
| we ever sing are family songs. They have
come down from generation to generation
| You were sung TO sleep in your infancy and
childhood by songs that will sing in your soul
! forever. Where was II, my brother my or sis
| ter, that you heard the family song-on the
banks of the Ohio OK the A.aharna or
| the Androscogg1n, or the Connectlcut,
| or the Tweed, or the Thames, the
| Raritan? That song at eyentide. when you
were tired out-indeed too tired to sleep,
and you cried with leg ache, and you were
| rocked and sung to sleep-you hear it now,
| the soft voice from sweet lips, she as tired,
perhaps more tired than you, but she rocked,
| and you slumbered- Oh. those family songs J
Mothers, he careful what you sing your
| children to sleep with. Let it be nothing
| frivolous or silly. Better have in it some
thing of Christ and heaven Better have in
| years from now to bear up under the
| bombardment of temptation. Better have in
| it something that will help that daughter
thirty years from now when upon her come
| the cares of motherhood and the agonies o.
bereavement and the brutal treatment of one
who swore before high heaven that he would
cherish and protect.
These family songs are about all we keep
Of the old homestead. The house where Won
were born will go into the hands of strangers
The garments that were carefully kept as
relics will become moth eaten. The family
Bible can go into the possession of only one
OF the family. The lock OF gray hair may be
lost from the locket, and in a few years all
signs and momentoes Of the old homestead
Will be gone forever. But the family songs,
those that we heard at two years of age, at
five years OF age, at ten years of age, will be
1ndestructible and at forty or fifty or sixty or
seventy years Of age will give US a mighty
boost over some rough place in the path of
our pilgrimage.
Many years ago group of white children
were captured and carried off by the Indians
Years after, mother who had lost two chill
dren In that capture, went among the Indi-
ans, and there were many white children in
line but so long time had passed the moth
er could not tell which were hers until she
began to sing the old nursery song, and her
two children Immediately rushed up, shout
ing: Mamma - Mamma - Yes there is
an Immortality in q nursery song. Hear il,
all you mothers, an immortality of power to
rescue and save.
What an occasion that must have been in
Washington December II. 1850, when Jennie
Lind sang Home, Sweet Home, the author
of those words, John Howard Payne, seated
before her. She had rendered her other IA
vorite songs "Casta Diva" and her 'Flute
Song" with fine effect but when she struck
''Home, Sweet Home" John Howard Payne
rose under the power, and President Fillmore
and Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and the
whole audience rose with him. Anything
connected with home ransacds our entire
nature With a holy power. and son IS that
get Well started in the nursery or by the
family hearth roll on after the lips that SUNG
them are forever silent and the ears that first
them forever n
Be careful how you treat the birds. Re.
member they are Gods favOrites, and if YOU
offend them you offend Him. He is so fond Of
their voices that there are forests where for
hundred miles no human foot has ever trOd
and no human ear has ever listened.
Put off startling cOlors which brighten the
winged songsters into silence OF flight, and
put on your more sober attire and move
noiselessly into the woods farther and far
ther from the main road and have no CONVEX
sation, for many a concert in and out ofdoors
has been ruined by persistent takers, and
then sit down a messy bank
Where Where Wild stream with headlong shock
Comes brawkaS down bed Of rock.
And after perhaps half an hour of intense
solitude there will be tap of beak on
tree branch far up, sounding like the tap of a
musical baton, and then first there will be
solo, followed by duet or quartet, and after
ward by doxologies in all the tree tops and
amid all the branches, and If you have q
Bible along with you and you can without
rustlfGg the leaves, turn to the one hun
dred and forty-etghth Psalm of David and
read. 'Praise the Lord. beasts and all cattle.
creeping things and flying fowl ;" and then
turn over quietly to my text and read, "By
them shall the fowls of the heaven have
their habitation, which sing among the
branches - or If under the power of the bird
voices you are transported, as when Doctor
Morgan played SO powerfully on the organ at
st. Johns that Richard Cecil said he was in
suUn blessed bewilderment he could not find in
bis Bible the first chapter of Isaiah, though
he leafed the book over and over, and you
shall be so overcome with forest harmony
that you cannot find the Psalms of David,
never mind, for God will speak to you so
nightly it will make no difference whether
you hear His voice from the printed page or
the vibrating throat of one Of His plumed
creatures.
While this summer more than usual out Of
doors let us have what my text suggests, an
out of doors religion. What business had
David with all the advantages Of costly relig-
iOus service and smoking incense on the al
tar. to be listening to the chantresses among
the tree branches? All! he wanted to make
himself and all who should come after him
more alert and more worshipful amid the
sweet sounds and beautiful sights of
that needs to be rededicated. It is older than
st. Paul's or st. Peters or st. Marks or st.
Sophia's or ST. Isaac's. It is the cathedral of
nature. That is the church in which the ser
vices of the millennium will be held. The
buildings fashioned out of stone and brick
and mortar will not mold the people.
Again the mount of Olives will be the
pulpit. Again the Jordan will be the
-baptistry. Again the mountains will be
| -Is