The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-01-31
Language of Action.

Language of Action.
 What my friend said was true. l went to the concert that night and enjoyed 1t as much in what l saw as in what heard. The movements of that leaders hands and wrists, the gentle unduations of his baton, his face the bending of his shoulders. he nervous movement or his feet the quick lifting of both arms, told me whether the orchestra was softly signing a lullaby or whispering q love song or sounding forth battle call or playing a waltz or a wedding march or moaning a requiem or sounding forth the defiance the warning elements or singing the song of harvest home or making all the voices of the woods blend in one sweet chorus. In those swift sharp or slow movements of that impresario l could see the ever hanging spirit of that musical night.
 This orchestral leaders movements in- terpreted, in a musical sense, what every mans Language of action accomplishes in moral and spiritual way. A bad mans tongue may be palsied, but he can speak as do the deaf mutes in the sign language. All the evil spirits that are within him can find their outward ex- precision before an observant world in what he does as well as in what he says. His lifting arms speak. His nov ing head speaks. His snoring smile speaks His scornful eyebrows speak. l would supplement my text with the warn ing words which King Solomon wrote along the same line: Let thine eyes look right on and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be es- tablished. Turn not to the right nor to the left Remove thy foot from evil.
 A wicked mans evil actions are mani fested, in the first place, by the conspi- cious absence from all pure and noble as- sociates. He does not count among his daily companions the good the pure, the true He would never feel so proud Of his Christian friends as to order, by way of tribute to one of them, such an epitaph chiseled for his own tombstone as Lord Brooks had cut upon his-"Here lies Sir Philip Sdney's friend" He would not do as did Sir Thomas Abney, who was delighted to welcome to his home such guest as the gentle. consecrated, Chris tian brother, Issac Watts. That English nobleman asked the great hymnologist to visit him for week at his ancestral manor, and then on account of Isaac Watts Christian gentleness he persuaded him to prolong his visit for over quar- ter of acentury. But as birds of a feath CT flock together and buzzards nest with buzzards and doves with doves the wicked man eschews the company of the good He feels pust as uncomfortable as- sociating with the pure, he true, the noble. as the good man feels uncomfort- able when in the companionship of the bad The morning cloud is either gild- ed by the rising sun or backened by the scowl of the storm. A mans good or bad companionships interpret the character of the inner man in the golden letters of ;,, a 1qf
 A mans true life can nearly always he judged by his surroundings. If enter your home and find upon your par Tor table a well used Bible, if I see upon the walls pure and elevating pictures and especially in conspicious places such religious pictures as Raphaels "Sistlne Madonna" and Rubens' Descent from the Cross" and Murillo's Abraham and the Angels" or Correggio's "Penatent Magdalen;' if I see upon your library sheves among the well tumbled books such works as Thomas a Kempis' "Iml- tation' and Farrar's Life of Christ and the biographeries of Livingston and Brainerd and Gordon and a set of Par kers "Peoples Bibles" If I see your music rack filled with the masterpieces of the great religious compositions, such as Handel's Messiah and Wagner's s "Parsifal" and Flotow's Martha ard Mendelssohn's Elijah or Paul" If l see standing in the corners of the library the plaster casts of such pieces or scuip- ture as that of Michael Angelo's David or Moses" I am compelled to believe that some pure, noble spirit has been liv. ing in and dominating that home. So' by the Language of action when l find man longing to be in the house Of God on the Sabbath day, when see that man. week after week. sitting in conspicuous place at the midweek prayer meeting when I find him continually seeking tne great religious gatherings which every little while take place in large city: xrlar find him daily and weekly and