Connecticut western news., 1892-03-24


 have observed the order established for their coming and going; order written not in manuscript that may be pigeonholed, but with the. hand Almighty on the dome of the sky, so that all nations may read it. Order. Persistent order. Sublime order. Omnipotent order.
 What a sedative to you and me, to whom communities and nations some times seem going pellmell, and world ruled by some fiend at haphazard, and in all directions maladminstra- tioni The God who keeps seven worlds in right circuit for six thou sand years can certainly keep all the affairs of individuals and nations and continents in adjustment. We had not better fret much, for the peasants argument of the text was right If God can take care of the seven worlds of the Pleiades and the four chief worlds of Orion, he can probably take care of the one world we inhabit.
 So feel very much as my father felt one day when we were going to the country mill to get the grist ground, and l, a boy of seven years, sat in the back part of the wagon, and our yoke of oxen ran away with us and along labyrinthine road through the woods, so that thought every moment we would be dashed to pieces. and made terrible out. cry of fright, and my father turned to me with face perfectly calm and said: De Witt, what are you crying about3 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, espe- cially when we are assured that it is not a yoke of unbroken steers that are drawing us on, but that order and wise government are in the yoket
 GODS INFINITE ORDER.
 In your occupation, your mission, your sphere, do the best you can and then trust to 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 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, two hundred 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 times larger than the sun. Oh, be at peace with God who made all that and controls all that-the wheel of the cancellations turning in the wheel of galaxies for thou sands of years without the breaking of cog or the slipping of band or the snap of an axle. For your pla. .cidity and comfort through the Lord Jesus Christ I charge you, Seek 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 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. It seems that God likes light so well that he keeps makingit. Only one being in the universe knows the statistics of solar, lunar, stellar, me teoric creations, and that is the Crea- tor himself. And they have nll been lovingly christened, each one a name as distinct as the names of your chi. dren. He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names" The seven Pleiades had names given to them, and they are Alcyone, Merope, Celano, Electra, Sterope. Taygete and Maia.
 But think of the billions and trl. lions 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 hght-natu. ral 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 na- tions, Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings. o men and women, with so many sorrows and sins and perplexities, if you want light of comfort, light of pardon, light of goodness, in earnest prayer through Christ, Seek him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion"
 WITHOUT vARIABLENEss.
 Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these two archipelagoes of stars must be an un- changing God. There had been no change in the stellar appearance in this herdman's lifetime, and his fa- ther, a shepherd, reported to him that there had been no change in his lifetime. And these two clusters hang over the celestial arbor now just as they were tho first night that they shone on the Edenic bowers; l; the same as when the Egyptians built tho Pyramids, from the top of which to watch them; the same as when the Chaldeans 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 system and Copernican system; the same from Calisthenes to Pythagoras, and from Pythagoras to Herschel. Surely a changeless God must have fashioned the Pleiades and Orion! Oh, what an anodyne amid the ups and downs of life and the Aux and reflux of the tides of prosperity to know that we have a changeless God, the same yes tarfiay tndny and foreYerI"