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THE PLEIADES AND OBION.
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REV. T. DeWITT TALMAGE, D. D.
r Text: “Seek him that maketh tho reven
stars and Orion.”—Arms v., 8.
A country farmer wrote this text, Amos
of Te! oa. He plowed the earth and
threshed the grain by a new threshing ma¬
chine just invented, as formerly the cattle
trod out the grain. He gathered the fruit of
the sy ram ore tree and scarified it with an
iron comb just before it was getting ripe, as
it was necessary and customary in that way
to take from it the bitterness. He was the
son of a poor shepherd and stuttered, but be¬
fore this stammering rustic the Philistines
and and Ammonites Syrians, and and Phoenicians, Edomites and and Moabites, Israelites
trembled. Moses was a law-giver, Daniel
was a prince, Isaiah a courtier and David a
king, but Amos, the author of my text, was
a peasant, and, as might be supposed, nearly
all full his parallelisms odor of are pastoral, his prophecy the
of the new-mown hay, and
rattle of locusts and the rumble of carts
with sheaves, and the roar of wild beasts
devouring in their the defence. flock, while He watched the shepperd herds came
out the
by day and of hy bushes night, inhabited through a booth these
made out so that
branches he could see the stars all night long
arid was more familiar with them than we
who have tight the roofs to our houses and
hardly ever see stars except among the
tall brick chimneys of the great town.
But at seasons of the year when
the herd3 were in espocial danger
he would stay out iu ths open field
all through the darkness, his only shelter the
curtain of the night heavens, tassels with its stellar lunar
embroideries and silvered of
light. What a life of solitude all alone with
his herds! Poor Amos! And at twelve
o’clock at night hark to the wolves bark aud
the lions roar and the bears growl aud the
owls te-whit-te-whoo and the serpents hiss, as
he unwittingly steps too near while moving
through the thickets. So Amos, like other
herdsmen, got the habit of studying the map
of the heavens because it was so much of the
time spread out before him. He noticed
some stars advancing and others receding.
He associated their dawn and setting with
certain seasons of the year. He had a poetic
nature, and he read night by night and
month by month and year by year the poem
of the constellations, divinely rhythmic. attracted But
two rosettes of stars especially his
attention while seated on the ground or lying
on his back under the open scroll of the mid¬
night heavens—the Pleiades or Seven Stars
and Orion. The former group this rustic
prophet associated with the spring as it rises
about the first of May. The latter h9 asso¬ the
ciated with the winter as it comes to
meridian in January. The Pleiades or Seven
Stars connected with all sweetness and joy,
Orion the herald of the tempest. The an¬
cients were the more apt to study the physi¬
ognomy and juxtaposition of the heavenly
bodies because they thought they had a spec¬
ial influence upon the earth, and perhaps
they were right. If the moon every few hours
lifts and lets down the tides of the Atlantic
ocean and the electric storms of last year in
the sim by all scientific admission affected the
earth, why not the stars have proportionate which
effect? And there are some things
make me think that it may not have been all
superstition which connected the movements
and __ J appearance of tho heavenly hrva^niv hndiYs bodies with with
feor p-rcit moral events on earth Did not a me
run oa evangelistic errand on the first
Christmas night and designate the rough
cradle of our Lord? Did not the stars in their
courses fight against Siserar Was it merely of
coincidental that before the destruction
new "S5
SS c. - nnu SrS and then d sam pare 1 inst wS before
K IX o( ,'nt who maCsc™ re
-, B signiiieanee neirt t~hi
|i7th. w tbo u ro?
«“" S Jus^n war aud
av»raavenomore
cIOua L~ S^ l »,m,'.thin' mi?llhan a bri :
the text, having heard these two anthems of
Mie stars, put down the stout, rough staff of
the herdsman and took into his brown band
and cut and knotted fingers the pen of a
prophet and advised the recreant people of
nis time to return to God, saving: “Seek hiiu
that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion.”
This, command which Amos gave 785 B. C.
is just as appropriate for us 1885 A. D.
In the first place, Amos saw, as we must
see, that the God who made the Pleiades and
Orion must be the God of order. It was not
so much a star here and a star there that im¬
pressed the inspired herdsmen, but seven in
.ne group and four in the other group. Ho
«w that night decade after night, and season after had
season, and after decade, they
kept step of light, each one in its own place,
a sisterhood never clashing and never con¬
testing precedence. From the time Hesiod
called the Pleiades tho “seven daughters of
Atlas,” and Virgil wrote in his -Eaeid of
“Stormy Orion" until now. they have ob¬
served the order established for their coming
aud going; order written not in manuscript
that may be pigeon-holed, but with the hand
of the Almighty ou the dome of the sky so
that all nations may read it. Order. Per¬
sistent order! Sublime order. Omnipotent
order. What a sedative to you and me to
whom communities and nations sometimes
seem going pell-mell and the world ruled by
some demon of hap-liazai*d, and in all direc¬
tions mal-administration! The God who
keeps seven worlds in right circuit for 6,000
years can certainly keep all the affairs of in¬
dividuals an l na 1 ions and continents in ad¬
justment. Wo had not better fret much,
for the peasant’s implied argument of the
text was right. If God can take care of the
seven worlds of the Pleiades, and tho four
chief worlds of Orion, he can probably take
care of the one world we inhabit. So I feel
very much as my father felt one day when
W8 were going to tho country mill to get a
grist ground, and I, a boy of of seven years,
sat in tho back part the wagon,
and our yoke of oxen ran away with us and
along a labvrinthine road through the woods,
so that I thought every moment we would be
dashed to pieces, and I made a terriblo out¬
cry of fright and my father turned to me,
with a face perfectly calm, and said, “DeWitt,
wliat are you crying about? I guess we can
ride as fast as the oxen can run.” And, my
hearers, why should we be affrighted and lose
our equilibrium in the swift movement of
worldly events, e -pecially when we are as¬
sured that it is not a yoke of unbroken steers
that is drawing us on, but that order and
wise government are in the yoke? In your
occupation, your mission, your spliero.do if the
best you can and then trust God,and things
are all mixed and disquieting and your brain
is hot and your heart sick get some one
to go out with you into the starlight and
point out to you the Pleiades, or, better than
that, get into some observatory and through
the telescope see further than Amos with the
naked eye could, namely, 200 stars in the
Pleiades,and that in what is called the Sword
of Orion there is a nebula computed to be two
trillion, two hundred thousand billions of
times larger than the sun. Oh, be at peace
with the God who made all that and controls
all that, the wheel of tho constellations turn¬
ing in the wheel of galaxies for thousands of
years without the breaking of a cog or the
slipping of a band or the snap of an axle.
For your placidity and comfort through the
Lord Jesus Christ I charge you, “Soek him
that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion.”
Again Amos saw as we must see that the
God who made these two groups of the text
was the Gcd of light. Amos saw that God
was not satisfied with making one star or two
or three stars, but ho makes seven, and hav
ished that group of worlds makes another
group—group after group. To the Pleiades
he adds Orion. It seems that God likes light
so well that he keeps making it. Only ono
being in the universe knows the statistics of
solar, lunar, stellar, meteoric creations, and
that is the Creator himself. And they have
all been lovingly christened, each one a name
as distinct as the nanus of your children.
“He telleth the number of the stars, he
calleth them all by their names.” The saren
Pleiades had names given to them, and they
are Alcyone, Morope. Celeenoe, Electra, Ste-.
rope, Taygate and Maia. But think of the
billions and trillions of daughters of starry
light that God calls by name as they sweep
by him with beaming brow and lustrous robe.
So fond is God of light, natural light, moral
light, spiritual light. Again and again is
light harnessed for symbolization—Christ,
the bright and morning star; evangelization,
the daybreak; the redemption of nations, sun his
of righteousness rising with healing in
wings. Oh, men and women, with so many
sorrows and comfort, sins and light perplexities, of pardon, if hght you
want light of in through Christ
of goodness, earnest prayer
seek him that maketh the Seven Star3 and
Orion.
Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the
God who made these unchanging two archipelagos God. There of
stars must be an
in this herdsman s lifetime, an l his rather, a
shepherd, reporte i to him that there had been
no change in his lifetime. And these two
clusters hang the celestial . ... arb „ . ji
over
.ins- as they were the first night .a when >
shone snone on on Rdemc Memo bowers, oower> j the us™ same as
the Egyptians built the pyramids, the from
j the top of which to watch them, same as
when the Chaldeans calculated the -clips ,
the same as when Eiihu, according to
the Book of Job, went out te study the au
rora borealis, the same under Ptoimai sys
go™ to Herschel.
must have fashioned the Pleiades and Orion.
Ob. what an anodyne amid the ups and
downs of life and the flux and reflax ot the
tides of prosperity to k-w that we have a
i the steersman ot his boat in themorrJng and
SlaLnHf the Mtional capital shouting
ural, and in four months so great were the
antipathies that a ruffian’s pistol in a Wash¬
ington depot expressed the sentiment of its a
great multitude. The world sits in
chariot and drives tandem and the horse
ahead is huzza and the horse behind is an¬
athema. Ix>rd Cobhain, in King James’s
time, was applauded and had $35,000 a year,
but was afterward execrated and lived on
scraps stolen from the royal kitchen. Alex¬
ander the Great after death remained un¬
buried for thirty days because no one would
do him the honor of shoveling him under.
The Duke of Wellington refused to have his
iron fence mended because it had been
broken by an infuriated populace in some
hour of political excitment and he left it in
ruins that men might learn what a fickle
thing is human favor But “the mercy of
the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to
them that fear him and his righteousness
uuto the children’s children of such as keep
his covenant and to those who remember his
commandments to do them.’' This moment
“seek him that makotli the Seven Stars and :
Orion.’’
Again Amos saw as we must see that the
God who made these two brackets of the ori
ental night sky must be a God of love and
kindly warning. The Pleiades rising in May ;
said to all the herdsmen and shepherds mild and i
husbandmen: “Come out and enjoy the
weather and cultivate your gardens aud i
fields.” Orion coming in winter warned them j j
to prepare for tempest. All navigation was
regulated by these two constellations. The
one said to shipmaster and crew: “Hoist sail j
for the sea and gather merchandise from i
other lands.” But Orion was the storm sig
nal and said: “Beef sail, make hurricanes things snug or
put into harbor, for the are get- 1
ting their wings out.” As lha Pleiades were
tho sweet evangels of the spring, Orion was
the warning prophet of the winter; oh, now
I get. the best view of God I ever had. There
preach—the are two kinds of that sermons presents I never God want kind, to j
one so so ;
indulgent, so lenient, si imbecile that men
may do what they will agaiust him and frac
ture His every law and put the pry of their
impertinence and rebellion under his throne,
and while they are spitting in his face and
stabbing at hi 3 heart he takes them up in his
arms and kisses their infuriated brow and
cheek, saying, “Of such is the kingdom I of
heaven.” Tho other kind of sermon never
want to preach is the one that represents God
as all fire and torture aud thuuder-cloud and
with red-hot pitchfork tossing the human
race into paroxysm of infinite agony. The
sermon that I want to preach and the sermon
I am now preaching believes in a God of love
and kindlv warning, the God of spring
and winter^ the God of the Pleiades and Ori
on. You must remember that the winter is
just as important as the spring. Let one winter
pass without frost to kill vegetation, and
ice to bind the rivers, and snow to enrich our
fields, and then you will have to enlarge your
hospitals and cemeteries. “A greon Christ
mas makes a fat graveyard” was the Ther- old
proverb. Storms to purify tho air.
mometer at ten degrees above zero to tone up
the system. December and January just as
important as May and June. I tell you we
need the storms of life rs much as wo do the
sunshine. There are more men ruined by
prosperity than by adversity. If we had had
our own way in life, before this we would
have been impersonations dispu ting of sin, selfishness, and puffed and
worldliness, and
up until we would have been like Julius
Caesar, who was made by sycophants to be
lieve that he was divine, and tho freckles on
his face were as the stars of the firmament,
One of the swiftest transatlantic voyages
made last summer by the Etruria was be
cause she had a stormy wind abaft, chasing
her from New York to Liverpool. But to
those going iu opposite directions the storm
was a buffeting and a hindrance. It is a bad
thing to havo a storm ahead pushing
U 3 back, but if we are God’s children and
aiming toward heaven the storms of life will
only chase us the sooner into the harbor. Oh,
I ain so glad to believe that the monsxms
and typhoons and mistrals and siroccos of
land and sea are not unchained maniacs lot
loose upon tho earth, but under divine super¬
vision. I am so glad that tho God of the
Seven Stars is also the God of Orion, It was
out of Dante’s suffering came tho sublime
Divina Comoedia. an l out of John Milton’s
blindness came Paradise Lost, and out of a
miserable infidel attack came the Bridge
water Treatise in favor of Christianity, and
out of David’s exile came the songs of conso¬
lation, and out of the sufferings of redemp¬ Christ
came tho possibility of tho world’s
tion, and out of your bereavements, your per¬
secutions, your "poverties, eternal heaven. your misfortunes
may yet conWan
Oil’ what a mercy tile it is that in the text and
ail up and down Bible God induces us to
look out toward other worlds. Bible astron¬
omy in Genesis, in Joshua, in Job, in the
Psalms, in tho prophets, major and minor, in
St. John’s apocalypse Worlds! practically Get ready saying: for
“Worlds! Worlds!
them.” We have a nice little world here that
we stick to as though losing that we !o e all.
We are afraid of failing off this little raft of
a world. We are afraid that some meteoric
iconoclast will some night smash it and we
want everything to revolve around it and are
disappointed wh m we find that it revolves
around the sim instead of the sun revolving
around it. Oh, what a fuss we make about
this little bit of a world, its existence only a
short time between two spasms, the paroxysm
by which it was hurled from chaos into order
and the paroxysm of its demolition. And f am
glad that so many texts call ns to look off to
other worlds, many of them larger and cost¬
lier an l more resplendent. “Look there!”
says Job, “at Mazsroth and Arcturus and his
sons!” “Look there!” -ays St. John, “at the
miyn under Christ’s feet!” “Look there!” says
Joshua, “at the sun standing still above
Gibeon!” “Look there!’ says Moses, “at the
sparkling firmament!” “Look there!” says
Amos, the herdsman, “at the Seven Stars and
Orion!” Don’t let us be so sad about those
who shove off from this world under Christly
pilotage. Don’t let us be so agitated
about our own going off this little
barge or sloop or cana!-boat of a world to
get ou some Great Eastern of the heavens.
Don’t let us persist in wantiug to stay in
this barn, this shed, this out-house or
a world when all the King’s palacas,already swing¬ oc¬
cupied by many of our best friends, are
ing wide open their gates to let us in. When
I read ‘'In my Father’s house are many man¬
sions,” I do not know but that each world is
a room and as many rooms as there aw
worlds, stellar stairs, stellar galleries, Stella -
hallways, stellar windows, stellar domes
How our departed friends must pity us fchi
up in these cramped apartments, tired if w
walk fifteen miles, when they some nioraii
by one stroke of wing can make circuit of t
whole solar system, and bo back in time fv
matins. Perhai>s yonder twinkling con9te
lation is the residence of the martyrs. Pei
bans that group of flcTc:: h tn
celestial homo of the eleven apostles, dwelling-place e'er
haps that stoep of light is the
of angels cherubic, seraphic, archaugelia A
mansion with as many rooms as worlds, and
all their windows illuminated for festivity.
Oh, how this widens and lifts and stimulate!
our expectation. How little it makes th«
present, and how stupendous it makes the fu •
fure. How it consoles us about our piouo
dead, that instead of being boxed up ant
«nder the ground, they have the range of ay
many rooms as there are worlds, and wel
come everywhere, for it is the fathers house
in which there aro many mansions, Oh,
Lord God of the Seven Stars and Orion, how
can J endure tho transport, the ecstasy of suck)
a vision. I must obey my text and seek him.
I will seek him. I seek him now, tor I call
miml that it is not the material universe that
is most valuable, but the spiritual, and that
each of us has a soul worth more than all the
worlds which the inspired hills herdsmen of Tekoa. saw 1 away had
from his booth on the
studied it before, but the cathedral at Cologne, this
Germany, dever impressed me as it did
summer. It is admittedly the grandest
Gothic structure in the world, its foundation
laid in 1218, only two or three years ago com
Dieted. More than 600 years in building. All
Europo taxed for its construction. enough Its chapel
of tho magi with precious stone* to
purchase a kingdom. Its chapel of St. Its Agnes spire
with masterpieces of painting.
springing 511 feet into the heavens. Its
stained glass the chorus of all rich colors,
Statues encircling the pillars and encircling
all- Statues above statues, until sculpture
can do no more, but faints and falls back
against carved stalls and down on pavements
over which the kings and quoeus of the earth
have walked to confessional; nave and aisles
and splendors transept of centuries; and portals interlaced, combining interfoli- the
ated, inter-columned double grandeur. As I stood
outside buttresses looking at the range of higher flying
and the forost of pinnacles,
ami higher until I almost reeled from dizzi
ness, I exclaimed: “Great doxology in stone!
Frozen prayer of many nations!” But while
standing their I saw a poor man enter and
put down his pack and kneel beside his
burden on the hard floor of that cathedral,
And tears of d ep emotion came into my
eyes as I said to myself: * There is a soul worth
more than all the material surroundings,
That man will live after the last pinnacle has
fallen and not one stone of all that oathe
draiod glory shall remain uncrumbled. He
* s now a Lazarus in rags and poverty and
Lord weariness, but immortal, and a son of the
God Almighty, and the prayer he now
offers, though amid many superstitions, I be¬
bevo God will hear, and among the Apostles
whose sculptured forms stand in the surround
the big niches, he will at last bo lifted and into
presence of that Christ whoso sufferings
arR represented by the crucifix before which
h ? bows, and be raised in due time out of all
his poverties into tho glorious home built for
him and built for us by “Him who maketh
the Seven Stars and Orion."
The Licorice Plant.
The state department lias just pub¬
lishment reports from a number of
United States consuls on the cultivation
aud manufacture of licorice, from which
it appears that the plant can be grown
iu California, Texas and most of the
Southern States. The warmer parts of
Europe and Asia Minor now supply us
almost entirely with licorice. Frost, it
seems,docs not seriously harm the plant,
which is said to be very hardy, but a
long, cold or drv winter is too much for
its endurance, and the root will not
grow on hills where the snow lulls.
The fact that the import into til’s
country of the root alone in 1884
amounted to nearly forty million
pounds, valued at eight hundred thous¬
and dollars, should stimulate planters in
the Southern States to experiment upon
its cultivation. It can be planted in
marshy grounds, on the banks of rivers
and other places not suitable for grain
crops. While the limits within which
the plant would thrive in the United
States are large, it is not not likely that
the beat licorice could and be be produced,
except near the Gulf South Atlantic
coasts, California and the the far South¬
west .—New York Herald.
According to recent statistics, it is as¬
certained that in New York, ninety
three per cent, of the inmates of the
Rouse of Industry were sent there for liq¬
uor crimes, while of the 8,000 liqticr
sellera of the metropolis, 6,438 have bttm.
confined in jail or in prison.