Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-02-01

and he Left it in ruins that men might
learn what tickle thing is human ia
vor. But the mercy of the Lord is
from everlasting to everlasting to them
that fear him, and his righteousness
unto the children's children of such as
keep his covenant and to those who re-
member his commandments to do them.
This moment 'seek him that maketh
the seven stars and Orion
A God of Love.
Again, Amos saw, as we must see,
that the God v no made. these two bea-
cons of the oriental night sky must be
q God of love and kindly warning. The
Pleiades, rising in midsky, said to all the
herdsmen and shepherds and husband
men, Come out and enjoy the mild
weather and cultivate your gardens and
fields Orion, coming in winter, warn
ed them to prepare for tempest. All
navigation was regulated by these two
consultations. The one said to shipmas-
ter and crew, "Hoist sail for the sea
and gather merchandise from other
lands. - But Orion was the storm sig
nal and said 'sReef sail; make things
snug or put into harbor, for the hurri
canes are getting their wings out. . As
the Pleiades were the sweet evangels OF
the spring, Orion was the warning
prophet Of the winter.
Oh, now I get the best view of God
ever hadl There are two sermons new
er want to preach-the one that presents
God so kind, SO indulgent, so lenient, so
imbecile that men may do what they
will against him and fracture his every
law and put the pry of their imperti
hence and rebellion under his throne
and while they are splitting in his face
and stabbing at his heart he takes them
up in his arms and kisses their infuriat-
ed brow and cheek, saying, "Of such is
the kingdom of heaven" The other
kind of sermon never want to preach
is the one that represents God as all fire
and torture and thundercloud and with
redhot pitchfork tossing the human
race into paroxysms of infinite agony
The sermon that am now preaching be-
1ieves in God of loving, kindly warn
ing, the God of spring and winter, the
God of the Pleiades and Orion.
You must remember that the winter is
just as important as the spring. Let one
winter pass without frost to kill vegeta-
ton and ice to bind the rivers and snowto
enrich our fields, and then you will have
to enlarge your hospitals and your GEM
eteries. "A green Christmas makes
fat graveyard was the old proverb.
Storms to purify the air. Thermometer
at degrees below zero to tone up the
system. December and January just as
important as May and June. I tell you,
we need the storms Of life as much as
we do the sunshine. There are more men
ruined by prosperity than by adversely.
IF we had our own way in life, before
this we would have been representations
of selfishness and worldliness and dis.
gushing sin and pulled up until we
would have been like Julius Caesar, who
was made by sycophants to believe that
he was divine, and the freckles on his
face were said to be as the stars of the
armament.
The God of Orion.
One of the swiftest transatlantic vOy-
ages made one summer by the Etruria
was because she had stormy wind
abaft chasing her from New York to
Liverpool But to those going in the op-
posite direction the storm was a buffet
ing and hindrance 1t is bad thing
to have storm ahead, pushing us back,
but if we be Gods children and aiming
toward heaven the storms Of life will
only chase us the sooner into the har-
Dor. I am SO glad to believe that the
monsoons, typhoons and mistrals and
siroccos of the land and sea are not I'M
chained maniacs let loose upon the
earth, but are under divine supervision.
r Ill a. 20
stars is also the God of Orion. 1t was
out of Dante's suffering came the sub
lime ''Divina Commedia, and out of
John Millions blindness came para
disc Lost and out of miserable infidel
attack came the sBridgewater Treatise
in favor of Christianity, and out of
David IS exile came the songs of conso-
1ation, and out of the sufferings of Christ
came the possibility of the worlds re-
demption, and out of your bereavement,
your persecution, your poverties, your
misfortunes, may yet come an eternal
heaven.
Oh, what a mercy it is that in the
text and all up and down the Bible God
induces us to look out toward other
worldsl Bible astronomy in Genesis, in
Joshua, in Job, in the Psalms, in the
prophets, major and minor, i'll ST.
Johns Apocalypse, practically saying:
Worlds, worlds, worlds! Get ready
for them" We have nice little world
here that we stick to, as though losing
that we lose all. We are afraid of falling
off this little raft of world. We are
afraid that some meteoric iconoclast
will some night smash it, and we want
everything to revolve around it and are
disappointed when we find that it re-
wolves around the sun instead of the sun
revolving around it. What a fuss we
make about this little bit of a world, its
ayistenca only a short time between, two