NURSERY RHYME SERMONS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7917, 11 August 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

NURSERY RHYME SERMONS.

“HICKORY, DICKORY, DOCK!” My text, brethren, according to my wont, is again taken from that volume of Hidden Meanings and Veiled Mysteries the history and origin of which goes back into the mists of antiquity, tne Book of Nursery Rhymes. I choose today for our edification the passage commencing with the mystical and musical worefe, “Hickory, Dickory, Dock.” This rhyme, brethren, is exclusively concerned with a quadruped and a chronometer. It relates, in succinct Saxon, what a mouse did to a clock, tfie clock’s response, and the mouse’s disappearance, and, in so doing, begins and ends this sole episode with the pendulous swing, the rhythmic regularity, the sleepy solemnity, the portentious periodicity of “ Hickory, Dickory, Dock!” THE OLD, OLD CLOCK. Scent is said to be the most reminiscent of the senses, brethren. Hearing surely comes a good second. Listen! The old wag-at-the-wall clock, with its works and wheels and chains ana weights all open to your childish inspection, is ticking out the seconds on grannie’s kitchen wall, and saying still to you, though you are fifty instead A five, “Hickory, Dickory, Dock!” with the persistent patience of time itself! Yes, the weights keep slipping a cog, dropping ever lower and lower, till the gra'ndame of fourscore finds the key and winds them up again that the “Hickory, Dickory, Dock!” of the pendulum of the past and present may not cease. What a slow-coach that old clock was, brethren! What .a long way off it made to-morrow with its bun-fight, its beanfeast, or its Christmas stocking. Would to-day never end? Hurry up, wag-at-the-wall! Bring to-mor-row ! To-morrow is always better than to-day. Hang the present! Let’s live in tho future, brethren; breathe the fine -air of anticipation, and enjoy the oxygen of high hopes. Pooh! What are niinutes on a dial ? Th'at “Hickory, Dickonv, Dock!” gets on ooie’s nerves. It remindis one unpleasantly of the Pas&ing of Time. Would that it were to-morrow that we might “chase the glowing hours with flying feet,” forgot the Call of Duty and Discipline in the Cabaret of Folly or tho Casino of Chance, kid ourselves tljit the electrolier is the sun in Ins strength, the stage scene of painted canvas and painted cheeks a true pictuer of Life andi the jape of a Jackjumper better than all the &hws of the wage® —“The Mouse ran u<p the Clock.” WHAT THE MOUSE DID. It was >a silly thing for the Mouse to do, brethren. Wits he thinking of putting a spoke in old Time’s wheel r Or, haply, he thought to a-ccelefa'te ’t. He himself was so frisky, and lively, and smart; the clock, so sflow iso jogtrot, so deliberate, so systematic, so regular. If ho could but insert a ipam, or even a whisker, into Time’s clockworks what might not happen! The Mouse seems to have .mistaken the Time-piece for old Time himstelf, the old bqy whose ticker i* the suu, whose dial is the firniatoient, whose fingers are the wheeling stars. The Mouse knew'.not that his hour was approaching. He could read neither tlio signs of the times nor the face of the dial. He knew not that every revolution of the wheel he thought he was 1 controlling brought nearer the stroke of Doom. “The Clock struck One!” A GREAT MYSTERY. s That “wee sma’ oor,” brethren, is' either the hour of brightest sunshine or of densest darkness, the zenith of opportunity or the nadir of failure. For the Mouse it meant disaster. He was meddling with affairs alien to his gifts. He was trespassing into unknown territory with Heed less ness for a guide and Conceit for a compass, and—“ The Clock struck One!” What became of the Mouse? Our text is reticent. Whether lie wa* frightened out of 'his wits) a‘nd shut up in a Refuge for Rodents; whether he was caught betwixt the devil and tlie deep &en, ’twixt hammer and anvil, whether he fell from the rigging to the kitchen “deck in his panic-haste to swarm down the mast-head of pleasure; whether, fearing this awful Time Marchine, with its thunderous clangour, he rushed to his “own place” there to mind his own business, none can ever know. Suffice it, brethren “The Mouse was Gone!”