The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-03-25
GOD OF THE STARS.
N. TALMA6E FINDS A LESSON IN
ORION AND THE PLElADES.

Amos, the Herdsman and Prophet-There
Was Some Moral Lesson Even in As
troiogy-The Great Cathedral of CO.
iogne and the Humble worshiper.
BROOKLYN, March 2O,-In this SER
mon DR., 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
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
u poor shepherd and suffered; but
before the stammering rustic the
Philistines and Syrians and Pheni-
clans and Moabites and Ammonites
and Edomites and Israelites trem-
bled.
Moses was lawgiver, Daniel was
a prince, Isaiah courtier and David
a king; but Amos, the author of my
text, was 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 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 ohimneys 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 life of solitude, all alone
with his herds 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-tew ho, and the serpent's 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 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
storms of the sun, by all scientific
admission, affect the earth, why not
the stars have prop0rtionate effect?
And there are some things which
make me think that it may not have
been all superstition which connected
the movements and appearance of
the heavenly bodies with great moral
events on earth Did not a meteor
run on evangelistic elrand on the
first Christmas night and designate
the rough cradle of our Lord? Did
not the stars in their courses fight
against Sisera2 Was it merely coin
cidental that before the destruction
of Jerusalem the moon was eclipsed
for twelve consecutive nights Did
it merely happen so that new star
appeared in constellation Cassiopeia,
and then disappeared just before
King Charles TX of France, who was
responsible for the st. Bartholomew
massacre, died? Was it without signifi-
canoe that in the days Of the Roman
emperor Justinian war and famine
were preceded by the dimness of the
sun, which for nearly a year gave no
more hight than the moon, although
there were no clouds to obscure it2
THE ANTHEM OF THE STARS.
Astrology, after all, may have been
something more than a brilliant
heathenism. No wonder that Amos
of the text, having heard these two
anthems of the stars, put down the
stout rough staff of the herdsman
and took into his brown hand and
cut and knotted fingers the pen of
prophet and advised the recreant
people of his time to return to God
saying, Seek Him that maketh the
Seven Stars and Orion" This COM
mand, which Amos gave 765 years
B. c., is just as appropriate for us,
1892 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. 1t was not so much