Iuka reporter. (Iuka, Miss.) 1888-1894, 1893-07-06

Il
the SOFT voice from sweet lips, she as tired,
perhaps more tired than you, but she rocked.
and you slumbered. Oh, those family songs
Mothers, be careful what you sing your
cniidren to sleep with. Let 1t be nothing
frivolous or silly. Better have in it some
thing Of Christ and heaven. Better have in
ut something that will help that bov thirty
years from now to bear up under fhe
commandment of temptation. better have In
something that will help that daughter
tmrty years from now when upon her come
Ine cares OF motherhood and the agonies of
psleavemenr and the brutal treatment of one
| who swore before high heaven that he world
onerlsh and protect.
| These family songs are about all we keep
| Of the old homestead. The house where you
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 few years all
signs and momentoes OF the old homestead
VIII 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
indestructible 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
| We're captured and carried off by the Indians.
Years after, a mother who had lost two chill
dren in that capture, went among the Indi-
ans, and there were many white Schildren 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 p Yes, there is
| an immortality in nursery song. Hear it.
al 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
sss1ng, with me 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 ransacks our entire
| nature with holy power, and songs 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
heard them forever cease to hear.
| 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
tluu IO human ear mas ever OSt6nod.
Put off startling colors, which brighten the
winged songsters into silence or flight, and
| put on your more sober attire and move
noiselessly into the woods farther and far
Their from the main road and have no CONVEX
| satlon, Tor many concert in and out ofdoors
has been ruined by persistent takers, and
| then sit down messy bank
Where wild stream with hea long shock
Comes Drawing down bed OF rock.
| And after perhaps half an hour of intense
| solitude there will be a tap of a beak on a
tree branch far up, sounding like the tap of q
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
| rustling the leaves, turn to the one hun.
| dred and forty-eighth 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 habitGtion, which sing among the
branches orif 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
such blessed bewilderment he could not find in
his 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
the natural world. There is an old church
that needs to be rededicated. 1t is older than
st. PauiS or st. Peters or St. Marks or st,
Sophia's or st. Isaac's. 1t 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 hold the people
Again the mount Of Olives will be the
pulpit. Again the Jordan will be the
baptistry. Again the mount aims will be
the galleries Again the skies will be
the blue ceiling. Again the sunrise will
be the front door and the sunset the back
door Of that temple. Again the
clouds will DO the upholstery and the
trees will be the organ loft where
''the fowls of heaven have their hab-
ftation, which sing among the
branches" st. Francis dAssisi preached
sermon to birds and pronounced benedic-
tion upon them, but all birds preach to us,
and their benediction is almost supernal
In the time OF Edward Nv no one was
allowed to own a swan except he were
king son or had considerable estate Through
100 or 200 years of life that bird was said
never to utter anything like music until its
last moment came, and then lifting its
crested beauty it would pour forth q
song of almost matchless thrill re-
sounding through the groves. And
30, although the struggles Of life may be
too much for US and we may find it hard to
sing at all, when the last hour comes to you
and me, may there be a radiance from above
and glory settling round that shall enable
us to utter song on the wings of which we
shall monnt to where the music never ceases
and the raptures never die.
LORD Randolph Churchill, 1t Is announced,
has become a strict total abstainer
In Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms London, 9675
persons signed the pledge during the year