Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1888 — CONCERNING SONGS. [ARTICLE]

CONCERNING SONGS.

Dr. Talmage Preacher Ot a Song Concerning Hy Beloved. Lore Song* When Earth Shall Pan* Away - Th* Cradle Hymn-A Chorun Which Awoke th* Shepherd* on the I'laiu* of Bethlehem. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “A Song Concerning My Beloved.’’ Text: Isaiah v., 1: “Now will I.sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved.” He said: The most fascinating theme for a heart properly atuned is the Savior. There is something in the morning light suggest Him, and something in the evening shadow to'speaK His praise. The flower bret thes Him,the star shint-e Him, the cascade proclaims Hi»,all the voice of nature chant Him Whatever is grand, bright and beautiful, if you only listen to it, will speak his praise. When I come in the summer time and pluck a flower I think of Him who is “the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley.” When I see in the fields a lamb, I sav, “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.” When, i.p very hot weather, I come under a projecting cliff, I say: “Rock of Ate*, Cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee I”

Over the old-fashioned pulpits there was a sounding boarc. The voice of the minister rose to the sounding board, and then was struck back again upon the ears of the people. And so the ten thousand voices of earth rising up find the heavens a sounding board which strikes back to the ear of all the nations the prifises of Christ. The heavens tell His glory and the earth shows hishandi work. The Bible thrills with one great story of redemption. Upon a blasted and faded paradise it poured the light of a glorious restoration. It looked upon Abraham from the ram caught in the thicket. It spoke in lhe bleating of the herds driven down to Jerusalem for sacrifice. It put infinite pathos into the speech of uncouth fishermen. It lifted Paul into the seventh heaven; and it broke upon the ear of St. John with the brazen trumpets and the doxology of the elders and the rushing wings of the seraphim. Instead of waiting until ou get sick and worn out before you speak the praise of Christ, while your heart is happiest, and your step is lightest, and your fortunes smile, and your pathway blossoms, and the overarching heavens drop upon you their benediction, speak the praises of Jesus. Taking the suggestion of the text, I Shall speak to you of Christ, our song. I remark, in the first place, that Christ ought to be jhe crad'e song. What our mothers sang to us when they put us to sleep is singing yet. We may have forgotten the words, but they went into the fiber of our soul, and will forever be a part of it. It is net so much what you formally teach your children as what you sing to them. A hymn has wings, and can fly every-whither. One hundred and fifty years after you are dead, and “Old Mortality” has worn out bis chisel in recutting your name on the tombstone, your great-grand-children willbe singing the song whicn this afternoon 'you sing to your little ones gather d about your There is a place in Switzerland where, if you distinctly utter your voice, there come back ten or, fifteen distinct echoes, and every Christian song sung by a mother in the ear of her child shall have ten thousand echoes coming back from all the gates of heaven. Oh, if mothers only knew the power of this sacred spell how much oftener the little ones would be gathered, and all our homes would chime with the songs of Jesus! We wantsome counteracting influence upon our children. The very moment your child steps into the street he steps into the path of temptation. There are foul-mouthed children who would like to betoil your little ones. It will not do to keen your boys and girls in the house and make them house plants; they must have fresh air and recreation. God save your children ftom the scathing, blasting, damning influence of the streets! I know of no counteracting influence but the power of Christian culture and example. Hold before your little ones the pure life of Jesus; let that name be the werd that shall exorcise evil from their hearts. Give to your instruction all the fascination of music, morning, noon and night; let; it, be Jejus. the cradle song. Tnis is important if your children grow up, but perhaps they may not. Their pathway may be short. Jesus may be wanting that child. Then there will be a soundless step in the dwelling, and the youthful pulse will begin to flutter, and little hands will he lifted for help You can not help. And a great agony will pinch at your heart, and the cradle will be c—aty, and the nursery will be empty, and the world will be empty, and your soul will be empty. No little feet standing on the stairs. No toys scattered on the carpet. No quick following from room to room. No strange and wonderful questions. No upturned face, with laughing blue eyes, comes for a kiss; butonly a grave, and a wreath of white blossoms on lhe top of it; and bitter desolation, and a sighing at nightfall, with no one to put to bed, and a a wet pillow and a grave and a wreath of wnite blossoms on the topof it. The heavenly Shepherd will take that lamb safely anyhow, whether you have been faithful or unfaithful; but would it not have been pleasanter if you could have heard from those lips praises of Christ? I never read anything more beautiful than this about a child’s departure. The account said: “She folded her hands, kissed her mother goodby, sang her hymn, turned: her face to the wall, said her little prayer, and then died.” Oh, if I could gather up in one paragraph the last words of the little ones who have gone out from all these Christian circles,and I could picture the calm looks and the folded hands and sweet departure, methinks it would be grand and beautiful as one of heaven’s great doxologiee! I next speak of Christ as the old man’s song. Quick music loses its eharm for the aged ear. The school girl asks for a schottisehe or a g’ee, hut her grandmother asks for “Balerma”or the Poituguess Hymn. 11 Fifty years of trouble have timed the spirit, and the keys of -the~“ music board -must have- a silent tread. Though the voice may be tremulous, so that grandfather will not trust it in church, still he has the Psalm book open before him, and he slugs with his soul. He hums his grandchild asleep

with the same tune he sang forty years ago in the old country meeting-house. Some day the choir sings a tune so old that the young people do not know it; but it starts the tears down the cheek of the seed man, for it reminds him pfthe revival scene in which he participated, and of the radiant faces that long since went to dust,and of the gray-haired minister leaning oyer the pulpit and sounding the good tidings of great, joy. J was one Thankegitfing day in my pulpit in Syracuse, New York, and Rsv. Daniel Waldo, at ninety-eight years of age. stood beside me. The choir sang a tune. I said: “I am sorry they sang that new tune; nobody seems to know it.” “Bless yb”, my son,” said the old man, “1 heard that sevent years ago!" There was asong to day that touched the life of the aged with holy fire and kindled a glory on their vision 1 bat our younger eye sight can not see. It was the song of salvation—Jesus, who fed them all their live along; Jesus, who wiped away their tears, Jeans, who stood by them when all else failed, Jesus, in whose name their marriage was conse •rated,and whose resurrection has poured, light upon the graves of their departed. Blessed the Bible in which spectacled old »gs reads the promise, “I will never leave you, never torsake you!” Blessed the staff on which the worn-out pilgrim trotters on toward the welcome of his Redeemer! Blessed the hymn book in which the faltering tongue and failing eyes find Jesus, the old man’s song. i speak to you again of Jesus as the night song. Job speaks of him who giveth songs in the night. John Welch, and.the old Scotch minister,used to puta there, plaid across his bed on cold nights, some one asked him why he put that He said: “Oh, sometimes in the night I want to sing the praise of Jesus and to get down and pray; then I just take that plaid and wrap it around me to keep myself from the cold.” Songs in the night! Night of trouble has come down upon many of you; commercial losses put out one star, slanderous abuse put out another star, domestic bereavement has put out a thousand lights,and gloom has been added to gloom, and chill to clill and string to string, and one midnight has seemed to borrow the fold from another mid night to wrap itself in more unbearable darkness; but Christ has spoken peace to your heart and you can sing: “Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly. Songs in the night! Songs in the night! For the sick, who have no one to turn tbe hot pillow, no one to put the taper on the stand, no one to put ice on the temple, or pour out the soothing anodyne, or utter one cheerful word—yet songs in the night! For the ‘ poor, who freeze in the winter’s cold, ajid swelter in the summer’s heat, and munch the hard urusts that bleed the sore gums, and shiver under blankets that cannot any longer be patched, and tremble because rent-day is come and they may be sent out on the sidewalk, and looking into the starved face of the child and seeing famine there and death there, coming home from the bakery, and Baying in the presence of the little famished ones. “Oh, my God, flour has gone up!” Yet songs in the night!; For the widow who goes to get the back pay of her husband, slain by the "sharpshooters,” and knows it is the last help she will have, moving out of a comfortable home in desolation, death turning back from the exhausting cough, and the pa’e cheek, and the lustertess—eye, and refusing all relief. Yet songs in the night! Sings in the night! For the soldier in the field hospital, no surgeon to bind up the gun-el ot fracture, no water for the hot lips, no kind hand to brush away the flies from the fresh wound, ho one to take the loving farewell, the groaning of others poured into his own groan, the blasphemy of others plowing up his own spirit, the condensed bitterness of dying away from heme among strangers. Yet songs in the night! Songs in the night! “Ab!” said one dying soldier, “Tell my mother thaflast night there was not one cloud between my soul and Jesus.” Songs in the night! Songs in the nighl! The Sabbath day has come. From the altars of ten thousand churches has smoked up the savor of sacrifice. Ministers of the Gospel are now preaching in plain English, in broad Scotch, in flowing Italian, in harsh Choctaw. God’s people have assembled in Hindoo Temple and Moravian church, and

Quaker meeting house, and sailors’ betijfel. and King’s chapel and hightowered cathedral. They Bang, and the song floated off’ amid the spice groves, or struck the icebergs, or floated off into the Western pines, or was drowned in the clamor of the great cities. Lumbermen sang it, and factory girls, and the childrenin the Sabbathclass, and the trained choirs in great assemblages-. Trappers, with the same voice with which they shouted yesterday in the staghunt, and mariners, with throats tliatonly a few days ago sounded in the hoarse blast of the sea hurricane, they eang it. One theme for the sermons. One burden for the.Bocg. Jesus for theinvccition. Jesus for the Scripture lesson. Jesus for the baptismal font. Jesus for the sacramental cup. Jesus for the benediction. But the day will go by. It will roll away on swift wheels of light and love. Again the churches will be lighted. Tides of people again setting down the streets. Whole families coming up the church aisle. We must have one more Sermon, two prayers, three songs one benediction. What shall we preach to-night? What shall we read? What shall it be, children? Aged men and women, what shall it be? Young men and maidens, what shall it be? If you dared to break the silence of this auditory there would come up thousands of quick and jubilant voices, crying out 1 “Let it be Jesus! Jesus!”

We sing His birth—the bam that sheltered Him, the mother that nursed Him, the cattle that fed beside him, the angels that woke up the shepherds, shaking light overthe ipidnight hills. We sing His ministry—the tears He wiped away from tbeeyes of the orphans; the lame men that forgot their crutches; the damsel who from the bier bounded out into the sunlight, her Kicks shaking do wn over the flushed cheek; the hungry thousand who broke the bread as it blossomed into larger loves—that miracle by which a boy with five loaves and two fishes became, the sutler for. a whole army. We sing His sorrows—his stonebrui’sed feet, His aching heart, His mountain loneliness, His desert hunger, His Storm-pelted body, the eternity of juigniah that shot through His lent moments and the immeaaureable ocean of torment that heaved up against His I cross in one foaming wrathful, onmrpo- | tent surge, the eun dashed out, and the dead, shroud-wrapped, breaking open

their sepulchers, rind rushing out to tee what was the matter. We sing His reeurreetjon—the guard that could not keep Him; the sorrow of His desciples; the clouds piling up on either side in pillard splendors as He went through, treading the pathless air, higher and higher, until he came to the foot of the throne, and all heaven kept jubilee at the return of the conqueror. I say once more, Christ is -the everlasting song. The very beet singers sometimes get tired; the strongest shroats sometimes get weary, and many who sang very sweetly do not sing now; but I hope by the grace of God we will, after a while, go up and sing the praises of Christ where we will never be weary. You know there are some songs that are especial!v appropriate to the home circle. They stir thesoul, they start the tears, thev turn the heart in on itself and keep Bounding after the tune lies stopped like some cathedral bell, which, long after the tap of the brazen tongue has ceased, keeps throbbing on tt e air. Well, it will be a home song in htaven, all the sweeter because those who sang with us in the domestic circle on earth shall join that great harmony. Qn earth we sang harvest songs as the wheat came into the barn, ana the barracks were rilled. You know there is np time on a larm as when they get tnOrops in; and so in heaven, it will be harvest songs on the part of those who on earth sowed in tears and reaped in joy. Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates, and let the sheaves come in! Angels shout all through the heavens, ana multitudes come down the hills crying. “Harvest home! harvest harvest home!”

Ay, it will be the children’s song You know very well that the vast majority of bur race die in infancy, and it is es timated that 18,000,000,000 of the little ones are standing before God. When they shall rise up about the throne to sing the millions and the millions of the little ones—ah! that will be music for yon! These played in the streets of Babylon and Thebes; these plucked lilies from the foot of Olivet while Christ was preaching about them; these waded in Siloam; these were victims of Herod’s mass ere; these were thrown to crocodiles or into the fire; these came up from Christian homes, and these were foundlings on the city commonschildren everywhere in all that land; children in the towers, children on the seas of glass, children on the battle ments. Ah. if you do not like children do not go there. They.are in vast majority, and wnat a song when they lift it around about the throne!

The Christian singers and composers of all ages will be there to join in that song. Thomas Hastings will he there, Lowell Masonwill be there. Bradbury will be there. Beethoven and Mozart will be there. They who sounded the cymbals and the trumpets in theancient temples will be there. The forty thoueana harpers that stood at the dedication will be there. The two hundred singers that assisted on that hay will be there. Patriarchs who lived amid threshing-floors, shepherds who watched amid Chaldean hills, prophets who walked, - with long beards ana coarse apparel, pronouncing woe against ancient abominations, will meet the more recent martyrs who went up with leaping cohorts of fire; and pome will speak of the Jesus of whom they prophesied, and others of the Jesu3 for whom they died. Oh, what a songl It came to John upon Patmos; it came to Calvin in the prison; it droppedtoJohn Knox In the fire, arid sometimes that song has come to your ear, perhaps, for I really do think it sometimes breaks over the battlements of heaven. I wonder will you sing that song? Will I sing it? Not unless our sins are pardoned, and we learn now to sing the praise of Christ, will we ever sing it there.