The Newtown bee., 1894-03-09
His beloved sleep" I'll tell you sweeter one this morning Where is God my Maker,

lliS pCiusIh 5aCEps II UelI you q sweeter one this morning: Where is God my Maker,
 have one brief thought more which it seems to me will fittingly crown and close what ] have already said this song in the night is a song which only the Christian can sing. Why were not the other prisoners singing and praying at that midnight hour in the Philippian jail? Why were they only intently s'listening'?' Did they ot know how 10 sing? Oh, yes; they knew how to sing. Over their wine cups, and at their feasts they had often made walls and rafters echo with their wild bursts of song, but it was no such song as that they heard from Paul and Silas; it was a low, coarse song whose grandest note was drunken howl. In the blackness of their prison cells and amid their dripping gloom they had no stimulus to song.
 Why is it that the Christian religion is the only religion that is filled with song 1? Other religions have their hymns, to be sure, but there is very little about them that entities them to the name of songs, no note of happiness or buoyant feeling or joy, vail, an anguishing cry, dirge from beginning to end of the strain. FIND ME REJOICING
 of any sort in the religions of the heath t1.,~, +I,o,, their hands and prostrate themselves low in the dust. What is there in the stone face of the idol to produce a song What in the mumbling of meaningless prayers, grown dull through wearisome repetition. What in their herding togeth- CT like beasts of the field, for no heather religion knows the true meaning of ''home"! What in the drudgery of an aimless life and in the dismal surround ings of a hopeless death? The Christian religion is the only religion which knows anything about the deep, soul-refreshing well of pure, uplifting song.
 | Of all the awful tragedies which have | filled the newspaper records of this cen tury, there is one, which for the horror of the scenes connected with it, stands al- most alone. Perhaps some of the older ones among you may recall it. refer to the fall of the Pemberton Mill, January | 10, 1860, when 750 souls were buried in the ruins. All hands were on duty when the fearful crash came. The sound was like the roll of an earthquake. No warn ing came, in an instant the fearful deed was accomplished. Where, the night be- fore, busy mill had winked with it's many eyes and hummed with it's iron lips at noon, cloud of dust, black, silent, horrible, puffed hundred feet into the air. The work ot rescue was proceeding we'll till some one uttered the appalling cry: "Fire. fire! God Almighty help them The ruins are on fire!" That was at nine o'clock. What there was to see from then till morning can never be for gotten. A net work, twenty feet high of rods, machinery, stairways, girders and beams, covered the victims.
 HERE WERE WRECKS
 of human beings wedged in. A face that you knew turned up to you from some pit which 24 hours of heaving could not open. A voice that you knew, crying after you, from God knows where! But above the crackle and roar of the hissing
 flames, woman's voice rang out like 8 bell: "We're going home to die no more. : A child's voice quavered in the chorus From sealed and unseen places white young lips swelled the glad refrain
 "We're going, going home." Voice af ter voice broke and hushed. Only one sang on like silver. It flung defiance down at death. It chimed into the luriG sky without tremor; for One stood be side her in the furnace, ''and His form was like unto the Son of God
 Oh my Christian friend, when weigh ed down by the pressing burdens of life sing; when cast into its furnace of af fiiction, sing; when almost buried with your helpless grief, let your pent-up feel ings find relief in glad and radiant song 1 You need not boise yourself on studied trills and semi-quavers. You do not have to De lIueiy dlAeu oi Foice to slug tills song. You may only hum the tune; you may not give forth single note; it may only be the exhilaration of glad feeling the quick beating of the heart. ''The tones will not be very well formed at the beginning. The lines of the hymn vii be punctuated with sobs. Strains will rise timidly, only to be submerged. Af ter little the weather will clear.
 CALM WILL SUCCEED TURBULENCE,
 and upward the pure notes of gratitude will ascend, while, overarching the trans ! figured soul, twill shine the bow of peace.'