The herald-advance. (Milbank, S.D.) 1890-1922, 1894-02-02

| y
in the Gobelin manufactory Of tapestry
in Paris-alas! now no more-you wit
messed wondrous things, as you saw the
| wooden needle or brach, going back and
| forth and in and out; you were trans
fixed with admiration at the patterns
| wrought. No wonder that Louis XIV.
| bought it and it became the possession
OF the throne; ana for a long while
| none but thrones and palaces might
have any of It's work, What triumphs
of loom!7 What victory of skilled fin
| gers! So David says of the heavens,
| that Gods fingers Wove into them the
| light; that Gods fingers tapestried them
with stars; that Gods fingers embroid-
cred them with worlds. How much of
the mmensity of the heavens David
| understood l know not Astronomy
was born in China $500 years before
| Christ was born During the reign of
! Ioang-T astronomers were put to
death if they made wrong calculations
about the heavens. Job understood the
rcfraction Of the suns rays, and said
! they were turned as the clay TO the
seal" The pyramids were astronom-
| cal obscrvatories, 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 inspiration, it
seems to me David had wide knowledge
| of the heavens. Whether he under
stood the full force Of what he wrote,
| know not; bui the God who inspired
him knew. and he would not let David
write anything but truth; and therefore
all the worlds that the telescope ever
reached, or Copernicus, or Galileo, or
! Kcpler, or Newton, or Laplace, or Her
! Schel, or our own Mitchell ever saw
We're 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
1 scNtilion tons, and appointed for all
worlds their orbits and decided their
color-the white to Sirius. the ruddy to
Aldebaran, the yellow to PolluX, the
blue to Affair. marrying some OF the
stars, as the 24OO 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 The
girdlc of Andromeda." and the nebula
in the sword handle Of Orion. Worlds
on 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 rs he made them, and
he made them with his fingers. Re~er-
vation Of power! Suppression Of Om-
Impotence, Resources as vet untouched!
| Almightiness yet undemonstrated!
/ Now | ask. for the benefit Of all
| dSheartcned Christian workers, II God
| accomplished SO much with his fingers,
what can he do when he puts out all
his strength? and when he unlimhers
all the batteries OF his omnipotence?
The Bible speaks again and again of
Gods outstretched arm. but only once,
and that in the text, Of the bare arm
Of God.
My text makes it plain that the rec
tification Of this world is a stupendons
/ undertaking. 1t takes more power to
make this world over again than It
took to make it at first. A word was
only necessary for the first creation,
but for the new creation the nnsleeyed
and unhindered forearm Of the Aimlgh-
ty. The reason Of that | can under
stand In the ship yards of Liverpool,
OF Glasgow, or New York, a great YES
sci IS constructed The architect draws
out the plan. the length of the beam,
the capacity of tonnage, the rotation or
wheel or screw. the cabins, the masts
and all the appointments Of this great
palace of the deep. The architect fin
ishes his work without any perpleXity,
and the carpenters aud the artisans
toll on the craft SO many hours a day.
each one doing his part, until with flags
flying, and thousands Of people hnz-
zaing on the docks, the vessel is launch
ed 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 wounded vessel and pitch
4 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 splintered vessel off the rocks and
reconstruct it than it required originally
to build her? Aye! Our world that
God built so beautiful, and which
started out with all the flags of Edenic
foliage and with the chant Of para
dsaical bowers. has been six centuries
pounding in the skerries of sin and sor-
row, and to get her out, and to get her
off, and to get her on the right way
again will require more Of omnipotence
than 1t required to build her and launch
her So am not surprised that, though
in the dry dock of one word our world
was made, it will take the unsleeved
arm Of God to lift her FROM the rocks
and put her Oh the right course again.
1t is evident from my text, and its COM
parison with other texts, that 1t would
not be SO great an undertaking to make
a whole constellation of worlds, and Il