The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-07-07

urea Inan yOus but she rocked anu you
slumbered
Oh, those family songs! The songs
that father sang, that mother sang,
that sisters and brothers sang. They
roll on us to-day with a "Reminiscences
that fills the throat, as well as the
heart, with emotion. In our house in my
childhood it was always religious song.
do not think that the old folks knew
anything but religious songs; at any
rate, / never heard them sing anything
else. 1t was: ''Jesus, Lover of Ny
Sou1,n or ''Rock of Ages" or ''There
is Fountain Filled with Rlood," on
'sMary to the Saviour's Tomb"
Mothers, be careful what you sing
your children to sleep with. Let it be
nothing frivolous or silly. Better have
in it something of Christ and Heaven.
Better have in it something that will
help that boy thirty years from now
to bear up under the bombardment Of
temptation. Better have in it some
thing that will help that daughter
thirty years from now when upon
her come the cares of mother
hood, and the agonies of bereave-
ment, and the brutal treatment OF
one who swore before high Heaven
that he would chelis h and protect. Do
not waste the best hour for making an
impression upon your little one, the
hour of dusk, the beach between the
day and the night. Sing not doleful
song, but suggestive song, a Chris
tian song, a song you will not be
ashamed to meet when it comes to you
in the eternal destiny of your son and
daughter. The oriole has loud song,
and the chewink a long song, and the
bluebird short song, but it is always
a family song, and let your cleaning
song, to your children, whether loud or
long or short, be a Christian song.
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 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 in
destructible, 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.
What an occasion that must have
been in Washington, December II, 1850,
when Jenny 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 ram
sacks our entire nature with a holy
power, and songs that get well started
in the nursery or by the family hearth
roll on after the lips that have sung
them are forever silent, and the ears
that first heard them forever cease to
hear.
1 preach this sermon just before
many of you will go out topass days or
weeks in the country. Be careful how
you treat the birds. Remember 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
ear has ever listened. Those intermin-
able forests are concert halls with only
one auditor-the Lord God Almighty.
He builded those auditoriums of leaves
and sky and supports all that
minstrelsy for Himself alone. Be
careful how you treat His fa-
vorite choir. In Deuteronomy,
he warns the people: eff birds nest
chance to be before thee in the way in
any tree or on the ground, whether
they be young ones or eggs, thou shalt
not take the dam with the young, that
it may be we'll with thee, and thou
mayest prolong thy days" So you see
your own longevity is related to your
treatment of birds. Then go forth and
attend the minstrelsy. Put off start
ling colors, which brighten the winged
songsters into silence or fight, and put
on your more sober attire, and move
noiselessly into the woods, further and
further into the main road, and have
no conversation, for many concert in
and out of doors has been ruined by
persistent takers, and then sit down
on messy bank.
Where a wild stream wi tn a headlong shock
Comes bawling down bed of rock.
And after perhaps half an hour of in-
tense solitude, there will be tap Of a
beak on a tree branch far up sounding
like the tap of musical baton, and
first there will be a musical solo, fol-
lowed by a duet or quartet, and after
ward by doxolog les in all the tree tops
and amid all the branches, and If you
have Bible along with you, and you
can, without rusthng the leaves, turn
to the one hundred 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 habitation, which sing
among the branches or, if under this
power of the bird voices, you are trans
ported, as when DIR. 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 can not 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