News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-03-24
News and Citizen.
MOPRTSVILLE and HYDE PARK,
Thursday. March "a. 1892.
GOD OF THE STARS.
DR.. TALMAGE FINDS A LESSON IN
ORION AND THE PLElADES.


Amos, the Eerdsman and Prophet-There
Was Some Moral Lesson Even in As
trology-The Great Cathedral of Co
Iogne and the Humble worshiper.
BROOKLYN, March 20.-In this r
mon DIR. Talmage %traverses wide
realms of thought to teach useful
everyday lessons, based on the text,
Amos v, S, Seek him that maketh
the Seven Stars and Orion"
A country farmer wrote this text
Amos of Tekoa. He plowed the
earth and thrashed the grain by a
new thrashing machine just invent
ed, as formerly the cattle trod out
the grain. He gathered the fruit of
the sycamore 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 suffered; but
before the stammering rustic the
Philistines and Syrians and Phoni-
clans and Moabites and Ammonites
and Edomites and Israelites trem-
bled.
Moses was a lawgiver, 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 his parallelisms
are pastoral, his prophecy full of the
odor of new mown hay, and the rat
tie of ~locusts, and the rumble of carts
with sheaves, and the roar of wild
beasts devouring the flock while the
shepherd came out in their defense.
He watched the herds by day, and by
night inhabited a booth made out
of bushes, so that through these
branches he could see the stars all
night long, and was more familiar
with them than we who have tight
roofs to our houses and hardly ever
see the stars except among the tall
brick chimneys of the great towns.
But at seasons of the year when the
herds were in special danger he
would stay out in the open field all
through the darkness, his only shell
ter the curtain of the night heaven,
with the stellar embroideries and
silvered tassels of lunar light.
THE SOLITUDE OF AMOS.
What a life of solitude, all alone
with his herdsl Poor Amos! And
at twelve o'clock at night, bark to
the VOLTS bark, and the lions roar,
and the bears growl, and the owls
te-whit-te-who, and the serpent's hiss
as he unwittingly steps too near
while moving through the thicketsl
So Amos, like other herdsmen, got
the habit of studying the map of the
heavens, because it vas 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 sea
sons 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 consultations,
divinely rhythmic.
But two rosettes of stars especially
attracted his attention while seated
on the ground or lying on his back
under the open scroll of the midnight
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 he associated
with the winter, as it comes to
the meridian in January. The Plei-
AIDES, or Seven Stars, connected with
all sweetness and joy; Orion, the
herald of the tempest. The ancients
were the more apt to study the
physiognomy and juxtaposition of
the heavenly bodies, because they
thought they had a special 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 6
storms of the sun, by all scientific {
admission, affect the earth, why not S
the stars have proportionate effect2 !
> And there are some things which !
make me think that it may not have
been all superstition which connected c
the movements and appearance of I
the heavenly bodies with greatmoral 6
events on earth. Did not a meteor {
run on eVangelistic errand on the {
first Christmas night and designate |
the rough cradle of our Lord? Did I
not the stars in their courses fight
against Sisera? Was it merely coin $
cidental that before the destruction l
of Jerusalem the moon was eclipsed {
for twelve consecutive nights2 Did l
it merely happen so that a new star I
appeared in constellation Cassiopeia, |
and then disappeared just before !
King Charles TX of France, who was
responsible for the st. Bartholomew
massacre, died2 asitwithoutsignifi-
canoe that in the days of the Roman :
emperor Justinian war and famine I
preceded by the dimness of the
sun, which for nearly a year gave no {
more light than the moon, although
there were no clouds to obscure it2
THE ANTHEM Of THE STARS. i
Astrology, after all, may have been !
something more than q brilliant ]
heathenism. No wonder that Amos (
Of the text, having heard these two I
anthems of the stars, put down the
stout rough staff of the herdsman (
and took into his brown hand and t
cut and knotted fingers the pen of a !
prophet and advised the r~ecreant /
people of his time to return to God (
Seer Him that maketh the t
Seven Stars and Orion" This com {
mand, which Amos gave 785 years
.. c., is. just as appropriate for us, I
1892 A. d.
In the first place Amos saw, as we
must see, that the God who made
1he Pleiades and Orion must be the {
God of order. 1t was not so much a s
star here and a star there that i'm {
pressed the inspired herdsman, but {
seven in group and seven in the {
other group. He saw that night af- [
ter night and season after season
and decade after decade they had
kept step of light, each one in its S
own place, q sisterhood never clash
ing and never cOntesting precedence. c
From the time Hesiod called the s
Pleiades the ''seven daughters of At L
and Virgil wrote in his Aneid
Of Stormy Orion until now, they t
have observed the order established '
for their coming and going; order S
written not in manuscript that may I
be pigeonholed, but with the hand
Almighty on the dome of the sky, so
all nations NAV road If Or6nr T