10 WHAT THE BIRDS TEACH. 



grace of form and motion, and surpassing beauty of plumage : 

 they pour into our delighted ears songs of sweetest melody, 

 and are the most obvious, as they are among the most 

 welcome, of God's precious gifts to man. 



And what a lesson of entire dependence upon a super- 

 intending Providence do the Birds teach us ! What assur- 

 ances of fatherly care and protection to every downcast and 

 desponding soul is there in the words of the Divine Teacher 

 4 Behold the fowls of the air, they sow not, neither do 

 they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father 

 feedeth them : are ye not much better than they ? ' 



All men of true piety have loved the Birds, and looked 

 upon them as manifestations of the wisdom and goodness 

 and fatherly care of the Almighty Creator : thus we read of 

 the great German reformer, Luther, that * with the birds of 

 his native country he had established a strict intimacy, 

 watching, smiling, and thus moralising over their habits : 

 " That little fellow," he said of a bird going to roost, " has 

 chosen his shelter, and is quietly rocking himself to sleep, 

 without a care for to-morrow's lodging, calmly holding by 

 his little twig, and leaving God to think for him." ' And 

 the good English bishop, Jeremy Taylor, when he saw the 

 Skylark soaring heavenward, said that ' it did rise and sing 

 as if it had learned music and motion from an angel ; ' while 

 quaint old Izaak Walton, when he listened to the song of 

 the Nightingale, exclaimed, 'Lord, what music hast thou 

 provided for the saints in heaven, when thou givest bad 

 men such music on earth ! ' 



Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean, 

 Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace, 

 "With wings that seem as they 'd a soul within them, 

 They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment. 



Thus it is that James Montgomery describes the feathered 

 creatures, with whose exquisite beauty of form and free airi- 

 ness of motion our readers cannot fail to have been struck; but 

 few perhaps have considered what it is which enables them 

 to float so buoyantly upon the air to skim the surface 

 of the water to soar aloft until they become almost in- 

 visible, and sink again to earth, with so little apparent 



