Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1915 — PRAISE GOD EVER [ARTICLE]

PRAISE GOD EVER

Songs of Gratitude Should Rise Spontaneously From the Lips of Ail Christians. The songs of the lips are few, but those of the heart are many. The soul has its music when the tongue is mute and the lips refuse to sing. The mind runs back to other days and we think of father and mother, gone to glory this many a year. We recall their goodness, how long-suffering they were of our delinquencies. There is a song in the soul at the sweetness of the memory. It was never set to music. The composer cannot find notes to express it; yet again and again, when the dear faces come back and we see the look of tender motherhood or of considerate fatherhood we are conscious of a melody which the world hears not, but which inarticulate Ups are singing. There rises before me an old rectangular church, and the church a little brick house where the session met, and around the fire in the grate sit the godly elders, venerable men. Before them a young man has come with fear and trembling to announce his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Savior. Memory’s song Is a tender one. Those faces rise before me, and the face of the pastor, reverent and thoughtful, with solemn questionings upon his Ups. But the old church is gone, and the little one-room structure by its side; and in their places there is nothing now but graves. The elders, too, are gone. Not one remains alive. The reverent pastor Ukewise is at rest from all his labors. And as the memory comes back to me, “the strings of an invisible harp are melodious. The hour shines like a star in the firmament of recollection. God’s Kindness Abides. We think of other times when the soul keeps up its songs of gratitude. Are there not in every life recurring memories of days when God was kind? There have been vales of tears we know, when it seemed as if the rain would never cease. But it did cease, and there was a sweeter breath upon the hills, and a livelier song in the boughs of the orchard tree, and God made us lift our eyes to the hills and with the Hebrew poet sing, “They loving kindness is better than life.” God does not forget, and for this the soul has its song. He knows the wanderings of wayward feet. The afflictions that beset us are not new to him. He “remembereth that we are dust,” and it awakens a song. The lips may be mute, but the heart is running the hidden octaves. “Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice." It is a good place to be —under those outspread pinions. There we can rest until the storm is past and the sky is emptied of Its rain. Oh, the songs that no ear hears but God’s! How much they mean to our pilgrimage. How they cheer us en route, how they gladden the road home. Blessed songs of the heart! sweet songs In the night! Praise God for melodies of the valley; for the star that shines where the cloud once rested; for the flower that blooms where the thorn once spilled its crimson.—The United Presbyterian.