Editor's Table [pp. 75-80]

THE LADIES' REPOSITORY.
books is evident at a glance. One little volume
before us has thirty pieces chorused after this fash ion, and, in another, fifty tunes out of a hundred and
twenty are peppered with this puerile musical con ceit. Bradbury, and several other writers of popular
melodies, have written airs that are singable; though,
like the words set to these melodies, the best of them
savor of a sweetness that is at once luscious and
ephemeral. Listening to them over and over is like
suckinig a stick of candy-a process of which even
the candy-loving child soon tires. Satiety is soonest
found in sweets, and satiety is next-door neighbor
to disgust. Some of these popular songs do a sort
of service for the child-minid of the Church; but
their excessive and indiscriminate use can not but be
hurtful. Their use should certainly be limited to
the earliest period of childhood-to the period when
Mother Goose's tales are taken for veritable history,
and should be entirely supplanted and replaced by
real music by the time that the child begins to question
the truthfulness of the "Arabian Nights" and "RobisonII Crusoe." The Church is no l)lace for musical
display-it is no place for musical puerilities. Right
here is one 9f the points at which the Churclh and
the modern Sunday-school diverge. Thlere is a style
of music that is instinctively felt to be fit for the
worship) of God in the sanctuary. Most of the Sunday-schlool music is not of this character. Children
trained to love the flash music of the Stunday-schlool
room find the solemn songs of the sanctuary insufferal)ly dull. The musical gap is wide between the
Su(nday-school and the sanctuary, and there is nothing to bridge it. Thousands of youtls brought up
on Sunday-school songs pause onl the hither side,
and find the songs of the saloons and minstrelshows more nearly akin to their taste and education than the songs of Christian worship. In this
day there is no excuse for treating Sunday-scholars
to musical slops and draff. Music is rapidly becoming a branch of common-school, high-school,
and collegiate education. Every house has its piano
or melodeon, every church its organ, every village
its musical association and military band. The
books furnished for the use of common and high
schools are in striking contrast with those furnished
to the same scholars in their Sunday training. The
poetry and musical airs adopted by the schools are
selected from the best masters of the twin lyres;
the sentiment is healthful, the musical notation
classic. There is no use in grading downwardleaving the master originators for third-rate and
fifthl-rate imitators. Set a high standard, and educate
youth up to it. The weird slave-music of the South
was useftil in its day-the only thing possible for
those who made it, and found comfort for their tribulation in its grotesque strains; but it is passing
away. Those who made and used it have heard
somethiing better, and are already ashamed of it;
and it is passing into oblivion. The strains that dlelighted our youth, except as memories, delight no
more-the tras',y Is transient, the solid endures.
The object of all education, of highest Christian
culture, is to lead the soul in qtuest of that which is
highest, purest, best. The world's greatest poets
have been Christian poets; the world's greatest
musicians have reveled in Christian strains. The
highest harmonies of earth are but a faint reflection
of those of heaven.
"OUR BABY."-" This is our baby," said Will R.
as he presented his first-born, a bouncing boy, sport ing a brace of pink cheeks, an alabaster forehead, soft
blue eyes, dimpled hands, chubby feet, and fo)ur
months' acquaintance with fussy nurses, four months'
fight with morning ablutions, and four months' im prisonmelit in swathings that fetter the free play of
the limbs, and fit to smother an Egyptian mummy!
All babies are dressed in this absurd way, and \Vill's
baby was no exception to the general style. "Our
baby!" "Whose baby?"
"Father's pride and mothler's joy,
Yours alone this darling boy?"
"No, indeed! lie is our baby." A wide partnership claims ownership in this little bundle of cambric
and flannel, smiles and tears! No single member of
the firm pretends to say, "This is may baby! " Papa
does not say it; mamma can not say it. When they
look at it with their souls gushing out of their eyes,
and baptizing the little new-found treasure all over
with streams of parental love, their lips quiver with
the phrase, "Our baby!" Grandpa and grandma
feel their right of ownershlip and call the little laughing
pet, "Our baby." Great-grandma goes a gossi)ing
among the neighbors about "Our baby." Uncle Fred
treats his bachelor friends to stories about the wonderful feats and cunning ways of" our baby." Uncles
and aunts on the mother's side call this little rosebud,
opening in their family midst, "Our baby." We also,
in virtue of a dozen years' intimacy with the l)arents,
feel it to be our right to call this little wonder, "Our
baby." And who does not claim the same right?
The Spartans held that children were not the property of their parents alone; they were the property
of the State. They are, indeed, the property of the
State, and the property of the Church as well. In
eachl new-born child the State sees a new citizen, the
Church a new member, promoter, and defender.
Fond parents say, "Our baby;" society says, "Our
baby;" God and heaven and angels say, "Our bably;"
the whole universe claims proprietorship in "our
baby." Even death has a lien on "our baby," and
earth, from which these mortal beauties were borrowed, may assert her maternal rights to pillow "our
baby's" head on her soft lap, or to lay its fluttering
pulses to rest in her still, calm bosom! In the agony
of bereavement the young mother bends over the
waxen form of her first-born, laid away by the deathangel to sleep its everlasting sleep, shrieking, "My
baby! my baby!" The echo comes softly back fr'om
all the sweet sympathizing voices of God's wide universe, "My baby! my baby!" Earth echoes, "My
baby!" Heaven echoes, "My baby!" and the many
"my's" make up the single "our." Not yours, O
sorrowing father; not yours, O shrieking mother!
but "ours." "Ours," say all the forces of nature,
all the denizens of heaven. Lent to earth for a
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