The Newtown bee., 1894-03-30

catch the chatter of hidden brook leap l ng over it's pebbly bed; the Bible is a field which rings with the sharpening of 5he sickle or the merry song of the har- vesters returning from their toll.
 What makes the Bible so widely read a book? Is it only because it speaks of God and Christ and Heaven? Would such things SO wonderfully attract the and hold them spell-bOund with opened eyes and gaping mouths as they listen to it's stories at their mothers knee? Why is it that the richly illus trated books of Bible stories which we thumbed over and over in our childhood the hardest for us to part with, and, as we grow older, we only Jay them more away? Is it not because the Bible truths are presented to us in the most attractive form? Is it not because of the beauty and the garment which these truths have put on?
 NOT WITHOUT CLEAR GUIDANCE, l believe, on the part of the Holy Spirit were the writers led to clothe their thought in so beautiful dress.
 The Bible is a book of illustrations; it Illustrates the things it would make plain to us by the things of everyday life, the things we thoroughly understand: The morning dew that disappears with the sunlight; the cloud that drops it's rain on the thirsty land; the lilies of the field that excel Solomon in their splendor; the tiny sparrows sold for tride in the market; the razor cutting smooth and clean; the cedars of Lebanon, monarchs of the forest; and here in my text the palm tree.
 How apt is the illustration! How many striking resemblances in the life of tree and the life of man. How dear to many man has been some particular tree,-the grand old elm that shaded his dooryard-his grandfather planted it as a mere sapling when he was a boy; the weeping willow that hung so gracefully and, it seemed, so affectionately over the grave of his loved wife-many time had he poured out there his grief as if the tree were a friend and could hear the words he uttered; the tree to whose first great limb, 20 feet from the ground, the swing was hung on the school-house ground, where in boyhood he swung the little girl who not so many years after wards became his angel wife; the tree down yonder at the corner of the road, not far from the old grist mill, in whose bark with the new jackknife he cut the proud initials of his name and dreamed of the time when that
 NAME WOULD BE FAMOUS and be on everybody's lip. Just as to almost every human heart there is one place which in all this wide world is beyond all others most dear-and who- ever claims no such place is the subject of sincerest pity-so to every human heart somewhere there is tree, which, because of dear associations, is as a we'll tried friend. No wonder the fugitive poem that George P. Morris dashed off, hastily to express his feelings at seeing the tree under which, as baby boy he had played, threatened by the merciless axe, men have refused to let die:
 Woodman, spare that tree
 Touch not single bough!
 In youth 1t sheltered me,
 And I'll protect it now.
 Twas my torefather's hand
 That placed it near his cot;
 And, while Eve hand to save,
 Thy axe shall harm it not.
 Trees Like their leaves our thoughts are numberless, like their roots we are nourished by that we touch and the sur- roundings amid which we dwell, like their topmost branch we attain our high est development only as the summit of our ambitions points to Heaven, like the lying of the tree in the place where it falls death finds our characters fixed and like the life of the tree our whole life is a growth and like the tree we, too, fade and fall away and die.
 But what about the palm tree?
 ARE THERE SPECIAL LESSONS 
 that? 1.-The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.n What thoughts worthy our attention will that verse furnish us today? The palm tree is a native of tropical countries; we only see it here as grown in hot-houses or reared tenderly in our homes. In Palestine, though, it dotted the hillsides, it lined the road ways, it was conspicuous object every where in the landscape and it we'll served as an illustration to those in whose lands our Bible was written. It taught them and so it can teach us.
 First, the palm tree is singularly nota ble for it's usefulness. A very old Persian hymn tells of $50 different uses to which the palm tree can be applied. ssIts fruits, which we call dates, are much valued and are eaten both fresh and preserved. They are also pressed for syrup and wine. But 1t is not for the fruit alone that the palm is so valuable. From the boughs which are yearly topped of from the lower part of the stem, are made baskets, bird-cages, ropes and sacks;