Connecticut western news., 1902-02-06
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course Dr. Talmage calls attention to causes of thanksgiving that are seldom recognized and shows how to cultivate a cheerful spirit; text, Psalms xxxiii, ?, Sing unto him with psaltery and an instrument of ten strngs."
 \ musician as we'll as poet and con- qucror and king was David. the author of my text. He first composed the sa- cred rhythm and then played it upon a harp. striking and plucking the strings with his fingers and thumbs. The harp is the oldest of musical instru- ments. Jubal invented 1t, and he was the seventh descendant from Adam. Its music was suggested by the twang of the bowstring. Homer refers to the harp in the 'Iliad." 1t is the most con- secrated of nll instruments. The flute is mere mellow, the bugle more mar tial the cornet more incisive, the trum- ret more resonant, the organ more mighty, but the harp has a tenderness and sweetness belonging to no other instrument that I know of. It enters into the richest symbolism of the Holy Scriptures. The captives in their sad ness "hung their harps upon the will lows" The raptures of heaven are represented under the figure of harp CTS harping on their harps." We learn from coins and medals that in the Mac caIean age the harp had only three strings. In other ages it had eight strings. David's harp had ten strings, Gnd when his great soul was afire with the theme his sympathetic voice, ac- companied by exquisite vibration of the chords. must have been overpower- Ing.
 With as many things to complain abort as any man ever had David wrote more anthems than any other man ever wrote. He puts even the frosts and hailstorms and tempests and creeping things and flying fowl and the mountains and the hills and day md night into a chorus. Absa- lom's plotting and Ahithophel's treach- cry and hosts of antagonists and sleep less nights and a running sore could nat hush his psalmody. Indeed, the more his troubles the mightier his sa- cred poems. The words praise" and ''song" are 90 often repeated in hls psalms that one would think the type Setter's case containing the letters with which those words are spelled would be exhausted.
 In my text David calls upon the peo- pie to praise the Lord with m instru- ment of ten strings, like that which he was accustomed to finger. The simple fact Is that the most of us, if we praise the Lord at all, play upon one string CT two strings or three strings when we ought to take harp fully chorded md with glad fingers sweep all the strings. Instead of being grateful for here and there blessing we happen to think of, we ought to rehearse all orr blessings so far as we can recall them and obey the injunction Of my text to sing unto him with an instru- ment of ten strings.
 Remember Daily Blessings.
 Lave you ever thanked God for de- hehtsome food? What vast multitudes are a-hungered from day to day or are obliged. to take food not tOothsome or pleasant to the taste! What mil lionn are in struggle for bread! A Con- federate soldier went to the front, and his family were on the verge of star vation. but they were kept up by the faith of a child of that household, who, noticing that some supply was sure to come, exclaimed, Mother, think God hears when we scrape the bottom of the barrel"
 Have you appreciated the fact that Dn most of your tables are luxuries that to 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 appetite, while many would be glad to get the crusts and rinds and peelings that fall from your table. For the fine favors and the lux urious viands you have enjoyed for . lifetime perhaps you have never ex- pressed to God word of thanksgiv- ing. That is one of the ten strings that you ought to have thrummed in praise to God. but you have never yet put 1t in vibration.
 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 privation those suffer to whom the day is as black as the night andswh0 never see the face of father or mother CT wife or child or friend? Through what painful surgery many have gone to get one glimpse of the light! The yes so delicate and beau tifHl and useful that one of them is invaluable! And most of us have two of these wonders of divine mechanism. The man of millions of dollars who re- gently went blind from atrophy of op- tic nerve would have been willing to give all his millions and become a day laborer If he could have kept o6 the blindness that gradually crept over his vision.
 You may have noticed how Christ's sympathies were stirred for the blind. Ophthalmia hns always been prevalent In Palestine, the custom of sleeping on the housetops, exposed to the dew and the flying dust of the dry season, invit- Ing this dreadful disorder. A large per rentage of the inhabitants could not tell the difference between 12 o'clock at noon and 12 o'clock at night. We Ire told of six of Christs miracles for the cure of these sightless ones, but l suppose they were only specimens of hundreds of restored visions What a pitiful spectacle Saul of Tarsus, the mighty man, three days led about in physical as well as spiritual darkness, Le who afterward made Felix tremble by his eloquence and awed the Atheni- an philosophers on Mars hill and was tine only cool headed man in the Alex nnGria cornship that went to pieces on the rocks of Miletus, once the mighty prosecutor of Saul, afterward the glori- ous evangelist Paul, for three days not able to take safe step without guid- ancei
 Two Strings of Gratitude.