Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1893-07-07

These family songs are about all we keep
| of the old homestead. The house where you
were born will 60 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 iamily songs,
those that we heard at two years OF age, at
five wears of age, at ten years OF age, will be
Indestructible and at forty or hlty or sixty-er
seventy years OF age will give us mighty
boost over some rough place in the path OF
our pilgrimage.
MANY years ago a group Of white children
were captured and carried of by the Indians.
Years after mother who had lost two chill
dren in that capture, went among the Indi-
ans, and there we're many white children In
line. but SO long time had passed the moth
or could not tell which were hers until she
began to sing the old nursery song, and her
two children Immediately rushed up, shout
ing Mammal Mamma" Yes. there is
an immortality in a nursery song Hear it,,
all YOU mothers, an immortality OF power TO
rescue and save.
what an OCCASION Jildb lnuot udfO DCOu III
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
yorite songs: Costa 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 tho
whole audience rose with him: Anything
connected with home Iansacks our entire
nature with a holy power, and songs that
get we'll started In the nursery or ~ 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 a
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 or fight, and
put on your moro sober attire and move
noiselessly into the woods farther and far
Their from the main road and have no CONVEX
sation, for many a concert in and out ofdoor5
has been ruined by persistent takers, and
then sit down messy bank
Where a wild stream with headlong shock
Comes brawling down a bed Of rock
And after perhapsa half an hour OF intense
solitude there will be tap of O beak on
tree branch far up, sounding like the tap of
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
Bible along with you and you can without
rustling the leaves, turn to the one hun
dred and forty-ei ,hth 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 II 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 relig7
ious service and smoking incense on the a.
tar. to be listening to the chantresses among
the tree branches2 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 naturalworld. There is an old church
that needs to be rededicated. 1t is older than
St. Paul. 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
baptis,ry. Again the mountlins 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
clouds will be the upholstery and the
morning mist the incense. Again the
trees will be the organ loft where
'the fowls of heaven have their hab-
itation, which sing among the |
branches" st. Francis d'Assisi preached a
sermon to birds and pronounced benedic- |
ion upon them, but all birds preach to us,
and their benediction is almost supernal.
In the time of Edward " no one was |
allowed TO own swan except ne were |
Kings son or had considerable estate. Through
100 or 200 years Of life that bird was said !
never to utter anything like music until its
ast moment came, and then lifting its
rested beauty it would pour forth
iong of almost matchless thrill re-
sounding through the groves. And
o although the struggles of life may be
90 much for us and we may find it hard to
ing at all, when the last hour comes to you
md me. may there be a radiance from above
md glory settling round that shall enable
IS to utter song on the wings of which we
hall monnt to where the music never ceases
md the raptures never die.
"What is that motherT' 1.-THE swan, my love;
Ee is floating down from his native grove
No loved one, no nesting nigh
He is floating down by himself to die.
Death Gnrkens his and unplumes his wings,
Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings.
Live So my child that when death shall come,
Swanike and sweet il may watt thee home"