The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-12-10

sat In the back part of the wagon, and our
yoke of oxen ran away with us, and along
a labyrinthine road through the woods, SO
that l thought every moment we would be
dashed to pieces, and I made terrible
cutlery of fright, and my father turned to
me with face perfectly calm and said:
"De Witt, what are you crying about? l
guess we can ride as fast as the oxen can
rum" And my hearers, why should we be
affrighted and lose our equilibrium In the
swift movement of the worldly events, es-
pecially when we are assured that it is not
yoke of unbroken steers that are drawing
us on, but that order and wise government
are in the yoke? In your occupation, your
mission, your sphere, do the best you can
and then trust God, and if 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 cut 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 q
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 the consultations turning In
the wheel of gelaxies for thousands, of
years without the breaking of a cog or the
slipping of a band or the swapping Of an
axle. For your placidity and comfort
through the Lord Jesus Christ I charge
l. !,
and Orion"
Again Amos saw, as we must see, that
the God who made these tive groups of the
text was the God of light. Amos saw that
God was not satisfied with making one
star or two or three stars, but he makes
seven, and having finished that group of
worlds makes another group, group after
group. To the Pleiades he adds Orion. 1t
seems that God likes light so well that he
keeps making it. Only one being in the
universe knows the statistics of solar, 1u-
mar, stellar, 1neteorie creations, and that
is the Creator himself. And they have all
been lovingly christened, each one name
as distinct as the names Of your children.
HE telleth the number of the stars; he
calleth them all by their Names" The
seven Pleads had names given to them,
and they are Aleyone; Merope, Celeno,
Electra, Sterope, Taygete and Maia.
But of the billions and trillions of daugh-
tiers of starry light that God calls by
name as they sweep by him with BEAM
ing brow and lustrous and robe. So fond
is God of light, natural light, moral light,
spiritual light. Again and again is light
harnessed for symbolizatioh-Chr the
bright and morning star; evangelization,
the daybreak; the redemption of nations,
sun of righteousness rising with healing
in his wings. Oh, men and women, with so
many sorrows and sins and perplexities
if you want light of comfort, light of par
don, light of goodness, in earnest prayer
through Christ, "Seek him that maketh the
seven stars and 0rion.''
Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that
the God who made these two archipela-
goes of stars must be On unchanging God.
There had been no change in the stellar
appearance in this herdman's lifetime,
and his father, shepherd, reported to
him that there had been no change in his
lifetime. And these two clusters hang over
the celestial drb0r now just as they were
the first night that they shone on Edenic
bowers, the same as when the Egyptians
built the pyramids from the top of which
to watch them, the same as when the Chal-
deans calculated the eclipses, the same as
when Elihu, according to the Book
OF Job, went out to study the aurora
borealis, the same under Ptolemaic sys-
TEN and Copernican system, the same from
CalliSthenes to Pythagoras, and from
Pythagoras to Herschel. Surely a change
less God must have fashioned the Pleiades
and Orion. Oh! what an anodyne amid the
ups and downs of life, and the fiux and re-
fiux of the tides of prosperity, to know
that we have changeless God, the same
yesterday, to-day and forever. Xerxes
garlanded and knighted the steersman of
his boat in the morning, and hanged him
the evening of the same day. Fifty thou
sand people stood around the columns of
the National Capitol shouting themselves
hoarse at the Presidential inaugural, and
in four months SO great were the antipa-
thles, that ruffian's pistol in Washington
depot expressed the sentiment of a great
multitude. The world sits in it's chariot
and drives tandem, and the horse ahead is
Huzza and the horse behind is Anathema.
Lord Gotham, in King James time, was
applauded and had $4,000 a year, but was
afterward execrated and lived on scraps
stolen from the royal kitchen. Alexander
the Great after death remained unbmied
for thirty days, because no one would do
the honor of shoveling him under The
Duke of Wellington refused to have his
iron fence mended because it had been
broken by an Infatuated populace in
some hour of political excitement
and he left 1t in ruins, that
men might learn what a tickle
thing is human favor. "But the mercy of
the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
to them that fear him, and his righteous
ness unto the children's children of such as
keep his covenant and to those who remem-
Der his commandments to do them.o This
moment "Seek him that maketh the seven
stars and Orion.n
There are two kinds, sermons never
want to preach-the one that presents God
SO KIND, SO indulgent, so lenient, so imbe-
clle, that men may do what they will
against him, and fracture his eyery law
and put the cry of their impertinence and
rebellion under his throne, and, while thew