Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1902-02-20

Dr. Ialmagc calls attention to causes OF
thanksgiving that are seldom recognized,
and shows how to cultivate cheerful
spirit; text, Psalms Xxxiii, ., "Sing unto
him with psaltcry and an instrument OF
ten strings"
A musician as well as poet and con-
queror and king was David, the author
of my text. He first composed the sacred
striking and plucking the strings with his
fingers and thumbs. The harp is the old
est of musical instruments. Jutal invent
ed it, and he was the seventh descendant
from Adam. Its music was suggested by
the twang of the bowstring. Homer re-
fers to the harp in the ''Iliad." 1t is the
most consecrated of all instruments. The
flute is more mellow, the buglc Aore mar
tial, the cornct more incisive, the trumpet
more resonant, the organ moro mighty, but
the harp has a Tenderness and sweetness
belonging to no other instrument that
know of. 1t enters into the richest SYM
bolism of the Holy Scriptures. The cap
upon the willows" In other ages it had
eight strings. David's harp had ten
strings, and when his great soul was afirc
with the theme his sympathetic voice, ac-
companied by exquisite vibration of the
chords, must have been overpowering.
With as many things to complain about
as any man ever had David wrote moro
He puts even the frosts and hailstorms
and tempests and creeping things and fly
ing fowl and the mountains and the hills
and day and night into a chorus. Absa
lom's plotting and Ahithopheps trcachery
and hosts OF antagonists and sleepless
nights and a running sore could not hush
his psalnody. Indeed, the more his trou-
bles the mightier his sacred poems. The
words praise" and "song" are so often
repeated in his psalms that one would
think the typesetter's case containing the
letters with which those words are spelled
would be exhausted.
In my text David calls upon the people
to praise the Lord with an instrument of
ten strings, like that which he was accus-
toned to finger The simple fact is that
the most of us, if we praise tle Lord at
all, play upon one string or two strings or
three strings when we ought to take harp
fully chorded and with glad fingers sweep
all the strings. Instead of being grateful
for here and there blessing we happen
to think of, we ought to rehcarse all our
blessings so far as we can recall them and
obey the injunction of my text to sing
unto Him with an instrument of ten
strings.
Fave you ever thanked God for delight
some food? What vast multitude5 are a.
hunge7ed from day to day or are obliged
to take food not toothsomc or pleasant to
the taste What millions are in struggle
for bread! A Confederate soldier went to
the front and his family were on the
verge of starvation, but they were kept up
by the faith of child of that household,
who, noticing that some supply was sure to
come, exclaimed, Mother, | think God
hears when we scrapc the bottom of the
barrel"
Have you appreciated the fact that on
most of your tables are luxuries that do
not come to all? Have you realized what
varieties of flavor often touch your tongue
and how the saccharin and the acid have
been afforded your palate? What fruits,
what nuts, what meats regale your appe-
crusts and rinds and peclings that fall
from your table.
For the fine havors and the luxurious
viands you have enjoyed for a lifetime per-
haps you have never expressed to God a
word ot thanksgiving. That is one o. the
ten 7trln,gs that you ought to have
thrummed in praise to Cod, but you have
never yet put it in vibration.
Have you thanked Cod for eyesight as
originally given to you or, after it was
dimmed by age, for the glass that brought
the page of the book within the compass
of the vision? Have you realized the pri-
vation those suffer to whom the day is as
black as the night and who never see the
face of father or mother or wife or child or
friend? Through what painful surgery
many have gone to get one glimpse of the
light, The eye so delicate and beautiful
and useful that one of them is invaluable!
And most of us have two of these Won
ders of divine mechanism. The man OF
millions of dollars who recently went blind
from atrophy CT optic nerve would have
been willing to give all his millions and be-
come day laborer if he could have kept
off the blindness that gradually crept over
his vision.
You may have noticed how Christ's SYM
pathies were stirred for the blind. Oph-
| thalmia has always been prevalent in Pal
cstine the custom of sleeping on the house
tops, exposed to the dew and the flying
dust OF the dry season, inviting TINS dread
full disorder. A large percentage of the in
habitants could not tell the difference be-
tween II O'Clock at noon and 10 O'Clock at
night. We are told of six of Christs mir
acles for the cure of these sightless ones,
but | suppose they were only specimens of
hundreds of restored visions.
What pitiful spectacle Saul Of Tarsus,
mighty man, three days led about in phys
cal as well as spiritual darkness, he who
afterward made Felix tremble by his elo-
-ucncc and awed the Athenian phiioso-
piers on Mars Hill and was the only cool
headed man in the Alexandria corn ship
that went to pieces on the rocks of Mile
tus, once The mighty prosecutor Of Saul,
three days not able to take a safe step
without guidance!
Have you ever given thanks for two
eyes-media between the soul inside and
the world outside, media that no one but
the infinite God could create? The eye,
the window of our immortal nature, the
gate through which all colors march. the
picture gallery of the soul! Without the
eye this world is a big dungeon. fear
that many of us have never given one
hearty expression of gratitude for treasure
OF sight, the loss of which is the greatest
disaster possible, unless it be the loss of
the mind Those wondrous seven muscles
that turn the eye up or down, to right or
lett or around. No one but God could
have created the rctina. If we have ever
appreciated what God did when He gave
us two eyes it was when we saw others
with oblitcrated vision.
Alas, that only through the privation OF
others we came to a realization of oar own
blessing! If you had harp in hand and
Ill L.. -, e LII