News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-01-12
AT THE TABERNACLE.
WISDOM MAY BE LEARNED FROM THE
FOWLS OF THE AIR.

morning continued the course of ser
mons begun a few Sabbaths ago. Hav-
ing preached about the Astronomy of
| the Bible; or, God Among the Stars, .
and the Chronology of the Bible; or,
God Among the Centuries" this morn
ing he discoursed on the ''Ornithology
of the Bible; or, God Among the Birds, y
The text was Matthew, vi, &c, "Behold
the fowls of the air!'
There is silence now in all our Janu-
airy forests, except as the winds whistle
| through the bare branches. Our north
ern woods are deserted concert halls.
| The organ lofts in the temple of nature
are hymnless. Trees which were full of
carol and chirp and chant are now wait
| ing for the coming back of rich plumes
and warbling voices, solos, duets, quar-
| tets, cantatas and TIE Deums. But the
Bible is full of birds at all seasons, and
prophets and patriarchs and apostles and
Christ himself employ them for moral
and religious purposes. My text is an
extract from the sermon ON the mount
and perhaps it was at moment when a
flock of birds flew past that Christ waved
his hand toward them and said, Behold
the fowls of the ARR And so in this
course of sermons on God everywhere /
preach to you this third sermon concern
ing the Ornithology of the Bible; OF, God
Among the Birds.
GODS MESSENGERS IN NATURE.
Most of the other sciences you may
study or not study as you please. Use
your own judgment, exercise your own
| taste. But about this science of orni-
thology we have no option. The divine
command is positive when it says in my
| text, Behold the fowls of the airr' That
is, study their habits. Examine their
colors. Notice their speed. See the hand
of God in their construction. 1t is easy
for me to obey the command of the text,
for was brought up among the race of
wings and from boyhood heard their
mathis at sunrise and their vespers at
| sunset.
Their nests have been to me fascina-
ton, and my satisfaction is that never
robbed one of them any more than !
would steal child from cradle, for a
bird is child of the sky, and it's nest is
the cradle. They are almost human, for
they have their loves and hates, affini-
ties and antipathies, understand joy and
grief, have conjugal and maternal in
stinct, wage wars and entertain jeal-
| ousies, have a language of their own and
Z powers of association. Thank God for
birds and skies full of them! 1t is use
less to expect to understand the Bible
unless we study natural history.
Five hundred and ninety-three times
does the Bible allude to the facts of nat
ural history, and do not wonder that it
makes so many illusions ornithological
The skies and the caverns of Palestine
are friendly to the winged creatures, and
so many fly and roost and nest and hatch
in that region that inspired writers do
not have far to go to get pathological
illustration of divine truth. There are
over forty species of birds recognized in
The Scriptures.
Oh, what a variety of wings in Pales-
tine! The dove, the robin, the eagle, the
4cormorant or pfunging bird, hurting it
self from sky to wave and with long
beak clutching its prey; the thrush,
which especially dislikes crowd; the
partridge; the hawk, bold and ruthless,
lowering head to windward while watch
ing for prey; the swan, at home among
the marshes and with feet so constructed
it can walk on the leaves of water plants;
the raven, the lapwing, malodorous and
in the Bible denounced as inedible,
though it has extraordinary headdress;
the stork; the ossifrage, that always
had a habit of dropping on stone the
| turtle it had lifted and so killing it
| for food, and on one occasion mistook
| the bald head of Eschylus, the Greek
poet, for white stone, and dropped a
turtle upon it, killing the famous Greek;
the cuckoo, with crested head and GRIM
son throat and wings snow tipped, but
too lazy to build its own nest, and so
having the habit of depositing its eggs
in nests belonging to other birds; the
bluejay, the grouse, the plover, the mag
pie, the kinghsher, the pelican, which is
the caricature of all the feathered crea-
ton; the owl, the goldfnch, the bittern,
the barrier, the bulbul, the osprey; the
vulture, that king of scavengers, with
neck covered with repulsive down instead
of attractive feathers; the quarrelsome
starting; the swallow, flying mile min
ute and sometimes ten hours in success
sion; the heron, the quail, the peacock, the
ostrich, the lark, the crow, the kite, the
bat, the blackbird and many others, with
all colors, all sounds, all styles of flight,
all habits, all architecture of nests, leav-
ing nothing wanting in suggestiveness.
They were at the creation placed all
, around on the rocks and in the trees and
on the ground to serenade Adams an
| rival. They took their places on Friday.
rs the first man was made on Saturday
Whatever else he had OF did not have,
he should have music. The first sound
that struck the human ear was a birds
voice.
TRUE SCIENCE IS RELIGIOUS.
Yea, Christian geology-for you know
there is Christian geology as well as
in infidel geology Christian geology
comes in and helps the Bible show what
we owe to the bird creation. Before the
human race came into this world the
world was occupied by reptiles and by
! all sorts of destructive monsters
lions of creatures, loathsome and hide
Gus. God sent huge birds to clear the
earth of these creatures before Adam and
Eve were created. The remains of these
birds have been found imbedded in the
! rocks. The skeleton of one eagle has
been found twenty feet in height and
fifty feet from tip of wing to tip of wing.
Many armies of beaks and claws were
necessary to clear the earth of creatures
that would have destroyed the human
race with one clip. I like to find this
harmony of revelation and science, and
| to have demonstrated that the God who
made the world made the Bible.
Moses, the greatest lawyer of all time
and great man for facts, had enough
sentiment and poetry and musical taste
| to welcome the illumined wings and the
voices divinely drilled into the first chap
ter of Genesis. How should Noah, the
old ship carpenter, 600 years of age, find
out when the world was fit again for
human residence after the universal
freshet? A bird will tell, and nothing
Else can. No man can come down from
the mountain to invite Noah and his
family out to terra frma, for the noun
tains were submerged. AS bird first
heralded the human race into the world.
now a bird will help the human race
back to the world that had shipped a sea
that whelmed everything.
Noah stands on Sunday morning at
the window of the ark, in his hand a
cooling dove, so gentle, so innocent, so
affectionate, and he said, ''Now, my lit
tie dove, fly away over these waters, ex-
| plore and come back and tell us whether
it is safe to land" After long flight it
returned hungry and weary and wet,
and by its looks and manners said to