Article August 1, 1914 Issue

"Songs in the night"

MARGARET WICKLIFFE

While enjoying a sojourn in a beautiful and picturesque spot situated in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, some sweet lessons came to the writer, filling her heart with gratitude to our Father-Mother God, whose tender love and protecting care is ever with us. Here the great Southern pines, reaching toward the sky, lift their majestic heads, and the beautiful magnolia blossoms fill the air with sweetness. This is the native home of the Southern mocking-bird, the sweetest of all the song-birds, because of those plaintive notes which he sends forth in the night, when all is still, and the quiet moon is shedding that soft, mellow light which makes all nature look so lovely. Thought quickly turned to a little experience of the past, and as it was pondered, the lesson came so sweetly to my consciousness,—how much greater is divine Love than even the highest human sense can express.

At one time I came into possession of a young mocking-bird, a little nestling, quite unable to obtain its own food and entirely dependent upon the mother bird. It was tenderly cared for, fed daily until it could eat the food prepared for it. A large cage was provided and hung outside my window, and for two years the bird was a perfect delight, giving forth the notes of all other birds, even imitating the whistle of the schoolboys. He evidently did not feel any sense of limitation, because he had always lived in the cage. He sang as sweetly as other birds that had always known freedom. Often in the midnight hours I would listen for those sweet notes which seemed to be meant for me alone, and my heart would be filled with thankfulness to God, "who giveth songs in the night." The psalmist gives expression to this thought when he says, "The Lord will command his loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me." Then there came a day when the bird escaped through a broken wire in the cage. The open door of the cage and the food did not tempt him to return. The earth, the sky, and the trees were his own,—and who could grudge him the larger, God-bestowed freedom !

Our Father-Mother God provides for all His creatures, and they need no lesser love to provide their daily food. In Science and Health (p. 511) Mrs. Eddy tells us, "The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love." These little song-birds may often remind us of the Love that makes both night and day beautiful, and bids us let our thought go forth to swell the divine harmony of earth and heaven.

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