Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1892-03-24
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
THE SEVEN STARS OF ORION
AND THEIR GOD.
DIR. Talmage Traduccs the Heavenly
Realms for Truths Told by the Stars
Amos of Tekoa and His Interest I'm
the Heavenly Bodies.

BRooKLYN, N. Y, March 90 1892. In thi.
sermon DR.. Talmage traverscs wide realms o
thought to teach useful everyday lessons baseC
on the text, Amos 5: 8: 'Seek him that malSetl
the seven stars and Orion"
A country farmer wrote this text
Amos of Teloa. He ploughed the earth
and threshed the grain by a new
thrcshing machine just invented, as
formerly the cattle trod out the grain.
He gathered the fruit of the sycamore
tree, and scarified it with an iron comb
jnst before it was getting ripe, as ii
was necessary and customary in that
way 10 take from it the bitterness. He
was the son of poor shepherd and
suffered; but before the stammering
rustic the Philistines, and Syrians, and
| Phnnicians, and Moabit and Am
monites, and Edomites, and Israelites
| trembled.
What a life of solitude, all alone
with his herds! Poor Amos! And at
| IL 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 serpents hiss, as he unwit-
tingly steps too near while moving
+ through the thickets! So Amos, like
other herdsmen, got the habit of study
ing the map of the heavens, because it
fore him. He noticed some stars adj
vancing and others receding. He as
ISOLATED their dawn and setting with
certain seasons 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.
And there are some things which
makes 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 errand on the first
Christmas night, and designate the
rough cradle of our Lord? Did not the
stars in their course fight against
Sisera? Was it merely coincidental
that before the destruction of Jerusalem
the moon was eclipsed for twelve con-
secutive nights? Did it merely happen
SO that new star appeared in constel-
lation Cassiopeia, and then disappeared
just before King Charles TX. of France,
who was responsible for st. Bartholo-
NEW massacre, died? Was it without
significance that in the days of the
Roman Emperor Justinian war and
famine were preached by the dimness
of the sun, which for nearly year
gave no more light than the moon,
although there were no clouds to
obscure it?
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 star here
and star there that impressed the in
spircd herdsman, but seven in one
group, and seven in the other group.
lie saw that night after night and sea-
son after season and decade after dec
AIDE, they had kept step of light, each
one in its own place, n sisterhood never
clashing and never contesting prece-
dencc. From the time IIesiod called
the Pleiades the "seven daughters of
Atlas" and Virgil wrote in his Eniad
of stormy Orion" until now, they
have observed the order estab-
ishcd for their coming and going;
order written not in manuscript that
may be pigeon-holed, but with the hand
of the Almighty on the dome of the
sky, 50 that all nations may read it.
Order. Persistent order. Sublime or
der. Omnipotent order.
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 Plciades 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, lamar, stellar, meteoric 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
Pleiades had names given to them, and
they are Alcyone, Merope, Celano,
Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia.
But think of the billions and trillions
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 light-natural light.
Again and again is light harnessed
for symbolization-Chri the bright
and morning star; evangeliZation, the
daybreak; the redemption of nations,
Sun of Righteousness rising with heal
ing in his wings. Oh, men and women,
with 50 many sorrows and sins and
pcrplexities. if you want light of com
fort, light of pardon, light of goodness,
in earnest prayer through Christ, Seek
him that maketh the Seven Stars and
Orion"
again, Amos saw, as we must see,
that the God who made these two archi-
pelagJes Of stars must be an unchang-
ing God. There had been no change in
the stellar appearance in this herds
mans lifetime, and his father, a shep-
herd, reported to him that there had
been no change in his lifetime. And
these two clusters hang over the celes-
tial arbor now just as they were the
first night that they shone on the
Eienic bowers, the same as when the
Egyptians built the 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, changeless God must have
fashioned the Pleiades and Orion! Oh,
what an anodyne amid the ups and
downs of life, and the fux and reflux
of the tides of prosperity, to know that
we have a changeless God, the same
yesterday, to-day, andcforever.