Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1894-01-22
"Sad sight, sad sight!'' Not so thought

nlpuIated. That is the alIuS1On OF the
psaImist to the woven hangings of tap
estry as they were known long before
David's time. Far back in the ages
what enchantment of thread and color.
the Florentine velvets of silk and gold
and Persian carpets woven of goats
hair! If you have been in the Gobeiin
mandatory of tapestry in Paris-alas,
now no mOre!-yOu witnessed wondrous
| things as you saw the wooden needle or
breach going back and forth and i'll
and out; you were transfxed with adj
miratlOn at the patterns wrought. No
wonder that Louis XIV bought it, and
! it became the possession of the throne,
and for long while none but thrones
and palaces might have any of its work
What triumphs of loom! What victory
of skilled fingers! So David says Of the
heavens that Gods fingers wove into
them the light; that Gods fingers tap
! estried them with stars; that God S fin
gers embroidered them with worlds.
How much of the immensely Of the
heavens David understood I know not
Astronomy was born in China 1880
years before Christ was born. During
the reign of Hoang-Ti astronomers were
put to death if they made wrong calcu
lations about the heavens. Job uE ler-
stood the refractiOn of the sun s lays
and said they were turned as the clay
to the seal. - The pyramids were as
Economical Cbservatories, and they were
SO long ago built that Isaiah refers to
one of them in his nineteenth chapter
and calls it the ''pillar at the border"
The first Of all the sciences born was
astronomy. Whether from knowledge
already abroad or from direct inspira-
ton, it seems to me David had wide
knowledge of the heavens. Whether he
understood the full force of what he
wrote, [ know not, but the God who
inspired him knew, and he would not
let David write anything but truth, and
therefore all the worlds that the te1e-
scope ever reached or Copernicus or
Galilei or Kepler or Newton or La
place or Herschel or our own Mitchell
ever saw were SO easily made that they
were made with the fingers. AS easily
as with your fingers you mold the wax,
or the clay, or the dough to particular
shapes, so he decided the shape of
our world, and that it should weigh
six sextillion tons and appointed for
all worlds their orbits and decided their
color-the white to Sirius, the rudy
to Aldebaran, the yellow to Pollux,
the blue to Affair, marrying some of
the stars, as the 2,4OO double stars that
Herschel observed, administering to the
whims of the variable stars as their
glance becomes brighter or dim, pre-
pairing what astronomers called, 1.-THE
girdle OF Andromeda'' and the nebula
in the sword handle of Orion. Worlds
Oh worlds! Worlds under worlds!
Worlds above worlds! Worlds beyond
worlds! SO many that arithmetics are
Of no use in the calculation But he
counted them as he made them, and he
made them with his fngers Reserva-
tion Of power! Suppression Of omnipo-
tence! Resources as yet untouched!
Almightiness yet undemODstrated! Now
I ask, for the benefit Of all disheartened
Christian workers, If God accomplished
SO much with his fingers, what can he
do when he puts cut all his strength
and when he unIim bers all the batteries
Of his omnipotence? The Bible speaks
again and again OF Gods outstretched
arm, blt only once, and that in the text
Of the bare arm Of God.
A GREAT UNDERTAKING.
My text makes it plain that the rec
LITIGATION OF this world is q stupendous
undertaking. 1t takes more power to
make this world over again than it took
TO make it at first. A word was only
a3cassary for the first creation, but for
tie new creation the unsleeved and IN
llindered fore arm of the Almighty! The
reason Of that I can understand. In the
shipyards Of Liverpool or Glasgow or
New York great vessel is construct
ed. The architect draws out the plan,
the length OF the beam. the capacity of
tonnage, the rotation of wheel OF screw,
the cabin, the masts and all the APP
pointments of this great palace of the
deep. The architect finishes his work
without any perplexity, and the car
penters and the artisans toll on the craft
SO many hours day, each one doing his
part, until with flags flying, and thou
sands of people huzzaing on the docks,
the vessel is launched. But out on the
sea that steamer breaks her shaft and
is limping slowly along toward harbor,
when Caribbean whirlWinds, those
mighty hunters of the deep, looking out
for prey Of ships, surround that wound
ed vessel and pitch it on a rocky coast,
and she lifts and falls in the breakers
until every joint is loose, and every
spar is down, and every wave sweeps
over the hurricane deck as she parts
midships.
Would it not require more skill and
power to get that splinterel vessel off
the rocks and reconstruct it than it re-
quired originally to build herr Aye!
Our world that God built so beautiful,
and which started out with all the flags
of Edenic foliage and with the chant of
paradisaical bowers, has been 60 ceD
turtles pounding in the skerries Of sin