The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1891-01-07

OF course entirely independent or IN
Word of God, gives as matter of his
tory that about the year l there was
strange and unaccountable appearance
in the heavens.
But it may have been meteor such
as you and have seen flash to th'
horizon. ] saw few years ago in tn
northern sky star shoot and fall will
such brllliancy and precision that if
had been on a hin as high as that O
Bethlehem, on which the shepherd.
stood, | could have marked within ;
short distance the place of the alight
ing. The University Of Iowa and th'
British museum have specimens O
meteoric stones picked up in the fields
fragments 1lung off from other worlds
leaving fiery trail on the sky. s.
that it is not to me at all improbable
the stellar or the meteoric appearance
on that night Of which We speak.
only care to know that it was bright
that it was silvery, that it flashed an(
swayed and swung and halted witt
JOY celestial, as though Christ IN haste
to save our world had rushed dowI
without his coronet, and the angels o1
God had hurled it after him.
CHRISTIANITY 4 STAR OF HOPE.
Not black cloud of threat, but
cleaning star of hope. is our glorious
Christianity. One glimpse of that
steller appearance klndled up the sou
of the sick and dying college student
until the words flashed from his pale
fingers and the star seemed to pour its
light from his white lips as kirke
White wrote these immortal words:
When marshaled on the nightly plain
The ghttering hosts bestud the Sky,
One star alone of all the train
Can fix the sinners wandering eye.
Hark. hark to God. the chorus breaks
From every host, from every gem;
But one alone, the Saviour, speaks
1t is the Star of Bethlehem.
Once on the raging seas l rode.
The storm was loud, the night was dark
And rudely blow the wind that tossed my
laundering bark.
Deep horror then my YitalS froze.
Death struck, ceased the tide to STEM
When suddenly star arose
1t was the Star of Bethlehem.
Notice also in this scene that other
worlds seemed to honor our Lord and
master. Bright star of the night
wheel on in thine orbit. NO." said the
star, Il must come nearer, and l must
bend and l must watch and see what
you do with ny Jesus" Another
world that night joined our world IN
worship. That star made a bow OF
obeisance. l sometimes hear people
talk Of ChriSt'S dominion as though 1t
were to be merely the few thousand
miles of the worlds circumference; but
l believe the millions and the bill
lions and the quadrillions osworlds are
all inhabited-if not by such creatures
as we are, still such creatures as God
designed to make, and that all these
worlds are part Of Christ's dominion
Isaac Newton and kepler and Herschel
only went on Columbus voyage to find
these continents Of our kings domain
THEY WERE WISE MEN OF THE EAST.
But this scene also lmpresSeS me with
the fact that the wise men of the east
came to Christ. They were not fools,
they were not imbeciles. The record
distinctly says that the wise men came
to Christ. We say they were the magl,
or they were the alchemiStS, or they
were the astrologiSts, and we say 1t
with depreciatiDg accentuatlon. Why,
they were the most splendid and mag
niicent men of the century. They
were the naturalists and the scientists.
They knew all that was known. You
must remember that astrology was the
mother of astronomy, and that alchemy
was the mother of chemistry, and be-
cause children are brighter than the
'mosher-yea do not despise the mother.
1t was lifelong business of these as
troiogers to study the stars. Twenty
two hundred and fifty years before
Christ was born the wise men knew
the procession of the eQuinoxeS, and
they had calculated the orbit and the
return Of the comets. Professor Smith
declares that he thinks they under
stood the distance Of the sun from the
earth. We find in the book of Job
that the men of olden time did not sup
pose the world was flat, as some have
said, but that he knew, and the men OF
his time knew, the world was globular.
The pyramids were built for astrolog-
ical and astronomical study. Then,
the alchemists spent their lives IN the
study of metals and gases and liquids
and solids. and in filing the worlds
library with their wonderful discover
les. They were vastly wise men who
came from the east, and tradition says
the three wisest came-Caspar, a young
man; Balthazar, a man in mld-llfe, and
Melchior, an octogenarian. The three
Wisest men of all the century. They
came to the mange".
CHRIST WILL HELP IN STORMY TIs1ES.
It was closing December that he was
born to show that this is a Christ of
people in sharp blast, for people under
clouded sky, for people with frosted
hopes, for people with thermometer be-
low zero. That is the reason he is so
often found among the destitute. You
can find him on any night coming OF
the moors. You can see him any night
coming through the dark lanes OF the
CITY. You can see him putting his
hand under the fainting head in the
pauper's cabin. He remembers now
the wind whistled around the caravan
sarv in Bethlehem that December night,
and ne is in sympathy with all those
W Ito LII tuSil pONSiIy iSoA SAAS o1utISAs
clatter on cold night.
was this December Christ that
Washington and his army worshiped
at Valley Forge, when without blank
cts they lay down in the December
snow. It was this Christ that the Pill
g--im Fathers appealed to when the
Mayfower wharfed at Plymouth Rock,
and in the years that went by the
graves digged were more in number
than the houses built, Oh, | tell you
we want a December Christ, not a
Christ for fair weather, but Christ for
dark days clouded with sickness, and
chilling with disappointment and suf-
locating with bereavement, and terrific
with wide open graves. Not spring.
time Christ, not a summer Christ. not
an autumnal Christ, but a winter
Christ. Oh, this suffering and struggling
world needs to be hushed and socthed
and rocked and lullabied in the arms OF
sympathetic Omnipotence. No moth