Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1893 — MINISTRY OF NATURE. [ARTICLE]

MINISTRY OF NATURE.

How the Songs of Birds Show Forth the Family Life. Their Song* Are Systematic and Taught by the Creator—Dr. Talmago's Sermon. Rev. Dr. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject, “The Song of Birds.” Text: Psalms civ, 12—“ By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation, which sing abong the branches.” He said: There is an important and Improving subject to which most people have given no thought and concernins' which this is the first public discussion—namely, “The Song of Birds.” If all that has been written concerning music by human voice or about music sounded on instrument by finger or breath were put together, volume by the side of volume, i t would All a hundred alcoves of the national libraries, but about the songs of birds there is,as much silence as though a thousand years ago the last lark had with his wing swept the door latch of heaven, and as though never a whippoorwill had sung its lullaby to a slumbering forest at nightfall. We give a passing smile to the call of the bobolink or the chirp of a canary, but about the origin, about the fiber, about the meaning, about the mirth, about the pathos, about the inspiration, about vhe religion in the song of birds, the most of us are either ignorant or indifferent. A caveat I this mornng file in the high court of heaven against that almost universal irreligion. First —I remark that which will surprise many, that the song of birds is a regulated and systematic songj capable of being written out in note and in staff and in bar and clef as much as anything that Wagner or Schumann or Handel ever put on paper. As we pass the grove where the flocks are holding matin >r vesper service we are apt to think that the sounds are extemporized, the rising or falling tone is a mere accilent, it is flung up and down by hap-' hazard, the bird did not know what it was doing, it did not care whether it was a long meter psalm or a madrigal. What a mistake. The musi:ian never put on the music rack before him Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” or “Concerto” in G or •ipohr’s B flat symphony with more definite idea as to what he was doing than every bird that can sing at all confines himself to accurate and predetermined rendering. The oratorios, the chants, the carols, the overtures, the interludes, the ballads, the canticles that this morning were heard or will this evening be heard in the forest have rolled down through the ages without a variation. Even the chipmunk’s spdg was ordained clear ack in the eternities. At the gates of paradise it sang in sounds like the syllables “Kuk!” “Kuk!” “Kuk!” The thrush of the creation uttered sounds like the word “Teacher!” “Teacher!” “Teacher!” In the summer of the year 1 the yeliowhammer trilled that which sounded like the word “If!” “If!” “If!” as in this summer it trills “If!” “If!” “If!” The Maryland yeilowthroat inherits and beqneaths the tune sounding like the words “Pity me, pity me, pity me!" The white sparrow’s “Tseep, tseep,” woke our great--grandfathers as it will awaken our great-grandchildren. The “Tee-ka-tee-ka-tee-ka” of the birds in the first century was the same as the “Tee-ka-tee-ka-tee-ka” of the nineteenth century.

The goldfinch has for 6,000 years been singing “De-ree dee-ee-ree.” But thes6 sounds, which we put in harsh words, they put in cadences, rhythmic, soulful and enrapturing. "Now, if there is this order and systematization and rhythm all through God’s creation, does it not mply that we should have the same characteristics in the music we make or try to make? Is it not a wickedness that so many parents give no opportunity for the culture of their children in the art of sweet sound? If God stoops to educate every'bluebird, oriole and grosbeak in song, how can parents be so indifferent about the musical development of the immortals in their household? While God will accept our attempt to sing, though it be only a hum or a drone, it we pan do no better, what a shame tnat in this last decade of the nineteenth century, when so many orchestral batons are waving and so many skilled men and women are waiting to offer instruction,there are so many people who cannot sing with any confidence in the house of God, because they have had no culture in this sacred art, or while they are able to sing-a fantasia at a piano amid the fluttering fans of social admirers nevertheless feel utterly helpless when in church the surges of an “Ariel” or an “Antioch” roll over them. The old fashioned country singing school, now much derided and caricatured- and indeed sometimes it was {Averted from the real design jnto the culture of the soft emotions rather than the voice—nevertheless did admirable work, and in our churches we need singing schools to prepare, our Sabbath audiences for prompt and spontaneous and multipoteut psalmody. This, world needs to be stormed with ’hallelujahs. We want, a hemisphere campaign of h osannahs. From hearing a blind beggar sing Martin Luther went home at forty years of age to write his first hymn. In the autumn I hope to have a congregational singing school here during the week, which shall prepare the people for th* songs of the holy Sabbath. If the church of -Gochun?-

versal is going to take the world for righteousness, there must be added a hundredfold of mote harmony as well as a hundredfold of more volume to sacred music. _____ Further, I notice m the song of birds that it is a divinely taught song. The rarest prima donna of all the earth could not teach the robin, ing over the roof of a temple a-quake with harmonies would not catch up one melody. From the time that the first bird’s throat, was fashioned on the banks of the Gihon and Hiddekel until to-day on the Hudson or Rhine, the winged creature has: Earned nothing from the human race in the way of carol or anthem. The feathered Songsters learned all their music direct from God. He gave them the art in a nest of straw or moss or sticks and taught them how to lift that song into the higher heavens and sprinkle the earth with its dulcet enchantments. God fashioned. God tuned, God launched, God lifted music! And there is a kind of music that the Lord only can impart to you, nay hearer. There have been depraved, reprobate and blasphemous souls which could sing till great auditoriums were in raptures. There have been soloists and bassos and baritones and sopranos whose brilliancy in doncert halls has not been more famous than their debaucheries. But there is a kind of song which, like the song of birds, is divinely fashioned. Songs of pardbn. Songs of divine comfort. Songs of worship.— “Songs in the night” like those which David and Job mentioned. Songs full of faith and tenderness and prayer like those which the Christian mother sings over the sick cradle. Songs of a broken heftrt being healed. Songs of the dying flashed upon by opening portals of amethyst. Further, I remark in regard to the song of birds that it is trustful * and without any fear of what may yet come. Will you tell me bow it is possible for that wren, that sparrow, that chickadee, to sing so sweetly when they may any time be pounced on by a hawk and torn wing from wing? There are cruel beaks in thicket and in sky ready to slay the song birds. Herods on the wing. Modocs of the sky. Assassins armed with iron claw. Murderers of song floating up and dftwn the heavens. How can the bir<re sing amid such perils? Beside that, how is a bird sure to get its food? Millions of birds have been starved. Yet It sings in the dawn without any certainty of breakfast or dinner or supper. Would it not be better to gather its food for the day before vocalizing? Besides that, the hunters are abroad. Bang! goes a gun in one direction. Bang! goes a gun in another direction. The song will attract the shot and add to the peril. Besides that, yonder is a thundercloud, and there may be hurricane and hail to be let loose, and what then will become of you," the poor warbler? Besides that, winter will come, and it may be smitten down before it gets to the tropics. Have you never seen the snow strewn with the birds belated in their migration? For every bird a thousand perils and disasters hovering and sweeping round and round. Yet there it sings, and it is a trustful song. The bird that has it the hardest sings the sweetest. The lark from the shape of her claws may not perch on a tree. In the grass her nest is exposed to every hoof that passes. One of the poorest shelters of all the earth is the lark’s nest. If she sings at all, you will expect her to render the saddest of threnodies. No, no —she sings exultingly an hour without a pause and mounting 3,000 feet without losing a note. Would God we all might learn the lesson. Whatever perils, whatever perils, whatever bereavements, whatever trials are yet to come, sing—sing with all your heart and sing with all your lungs. If you wait until all the hawks of trouble have folded their wings and all the hunters of hate have unloaded their guns and all the hurricanes of disaster have spent their fury, you will never sing at all. Further, in the sky galleries there are songs adapted to ail moods. The meadow lark is mournful, and the goldfinch joyous, and the grosbeak prolonged of note. .But the lioretto of nature is voluminous. Are you, sad, you. can hear from the bowers the echo of your grief. Are you glad, you can hear an 1 echo .of your happiness. Are you thoughtful, you can hear that which will plunge you into deeper profound. Are you weary, you may catch a restful air. So the songs of birds are administrative in all circumstances. And we would do well to have a bymnology for all changes of condition. You may sing your woes into peace and rouse your joys into greater altitudes. Upon every condition of body and soul let us try the power of song. The multitudinous utterances of grove and orchard and garden and forest suggest most delightful possibilities. Further, I notice that the song of birds is a family song. Even those of the feathered throng which have no song at all make what utterances they do in sounds of their own family of birds. The hoot of the owl, the clatter of the- magpie, the crow of the chanticleer,..the drumming of the grouse, the laugh of the loon in the Adirondacics, the cackle of the hen, thtr scream of the eagle, the croak of the raven, are sounds belonging to each particular family, but when you come to those which have real songs, how suggestive that it is always a family song. All the skylarks, all •the nightingales, all the cuckoos, prefer the song of their own family and never sing'anything else.

So the most deeply impressive songs we ever sing are fapiiy songs. They have come down from generation to generation. You were sung to sleep in your infancy and child hood by songs that will sing to your soul forever. Where was it, my brother or sister, that you heard the family song—on the banks of the Ohio, or the Alabama, or the Androscoggin, or the Connecticut, or the Tweed, or the Thames, or the Raritan? That song at eventide, when you were tired out —indeed too tired to sleep, and you cried with leg ache, and yeu were rocked and sung to sleep—you hear it now, the soft voice from sweet lips, she as tired, perhaps more tired than you, but she rocked and you slumbered. Oh, those family songs! While this summer more than usual out of doors let us have what my text suggests —an out of doors religion. What business had David, with all the advantages of a costly religious service and smoking incense on the altar, to be listening to the chantresses among the tree branches? Ah, he wanted to make himself and all those who should come after him more alert and more worshipful amid the sweet sounds and beautiful sights of the natural world. There is an old church .that needs to be rededicatod. It is older than St. Paul’s or St. Peter’s or St. Mark’s or St. Sophia’s or St. Isaac’s. It is the cathedral of nature. That is the church in which the services of the millenium will be held. The buildings fashioned out of stone and brick and mortar will not hold the people. Again, the Mount of Olives will be the pulpit. Again the Jordan will be the baptistry. Again the mountains will be the galleries. Again the skies will be the blue ceiling. Again the sunrise will be the front door and the sunset the pack door of that temple. Again the clouds will be the upholstery and the morning mist the incense. Again the trees will be the organ loft where “the fowls of heaven have their habitation which sing among the branches. Saint Francis d’Assisi preached a sermon to birds and pronounced a benediction upon them, but all the birds preach to us, and their benediction is almost supernal. In the time of Edward IV no one was allowed to own a swan except he were a king’s son or had considerable estate. Through one or two hundred years of life that bird was said, never to utter anything like music until its last moments came, and then lifting its crested beauty it would pour forth a song of almost matchless thrill resounding through the groves. And so, although the struggles of life may be too much for us, and we may find it hard to sing at all when the , last hour "comes to you and me, may'there be a radiance from above and a glory settling round that shall enable us to utter a song on the wings of which we shall mount to where the music never ceases and the raptures newer die.