The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-02-12
GODS LOVE OF ORDER.
Rev. DIR. TalmaRe Looks Through
the Eyes of Amos.
A survey of the Midnight Heavens-The
Mind that Conceived the PIeIades
and Orion Must be the
God OF Order.

based on the text;
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and
OriOn-Amos v, e
A country farmer wrote this text
Amos of Tekoa- He plowed the earth
and threshed the grain by a new
threshing machine just invented, as
| formerly the cattle trod out the grain.
He gathered the fruit of the syca-
more 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 its bitterness.
He was the son of poor shepherd,
and suffered; but before the stam-
mering rustic the Philistines, aud
Svrians, and Phoenicians, and Moab
ties, and Ammonites, and Edomites,
and Israelites trembled.
| Moses was law-giver, Daniel was a
prince, Isaiah a courtier, and David a
4 king; but Amos, the author of my tex
was peasant, and, as might be sup
| posed, nearly all his parallelisms are
pastoral, his prophecy full of the odor
of new-mown hay, and the rattle of
locusts, and the rumble of carts with
| sheeves and the roar of wild beasts de-
vouring the flock while the shepherd
came out in their defense. He watched
the herds by day, and by night in
habited a 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 chimneys of the
great towns. But at seasons of the
1 IL. s,1
danger, he would stay out in the open
field all through the darkness, his only
shelter the curtain of the night-heaven,
with the stellar embroideries and sill
vered tassels of lunar light.
| What a life of solitude, all alone
! with his herds! Poor Amos! And at
10 o'clock at night, bark to the VOLTS
bark, and the lions roar, and the bears
| Rrowl, and the owls te-whit-te-who,
and the serpent's hiss, as he unwit-
| tingly steps too near while moving
through the thicketsl So Amos, like
other herdsmen, got the ha bit of study
ing the map of the heavens, because
it was SO much of the time spread out
before him. He noticed some stars ad-
vancing and others receding. He as
sociated 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 cOnstella-
| lions, divinely rhythmic, BuG two
rossettes of stars especially at
tracted his attention while seated
On the ground, or lying on
his back under the open scroll of the
midnight heaven-the Pleiades, or
Seven Stars, and Orion. The former
group this rustic prophet associated
with the spring, as 1t rises about the
6rst of May. The latter he associated
with the winter, as 1t comes to the
meridian in January. The Pleiades,
or Seven Stars, connected with all
sweetness and joy; Orion, the herald
of the tempest. The ancients were
the more apt to study the physiog-
uomy and juxtaposltion of the heav-
emily bodies, because they thought
they had a special influence upon the
earth; and perhaps they were right.
If the moon, every few hour, lifts and
let's down the tides of the Allan tic
ocean, and the electric storms in the
sun, by all scientific admission, affect
ed the earth, why not the stars have
pTOpOT liOudlc eAGCLE
And there are some things which
make me think that it may not have
been all superstition which con-
nected the movements and appearance
of the heavenly bodies with great
moral events on earth. Did not a
meteor run on evanP elistic errand on
the first Christmas night, and desig-
nate the rough cradle of our Lord2
Did not the stars in their courses fight
against Sisera? Was it merely coinci-
dental that before the destruction of
Jerusalem the moon was hidden for
twelve consecutive nights? Did it
merely happen so that a new star APP
peared in constellation Cassiopeia, and
then disappeared just before Charles
IL. of France, who was responsible for
St. Bartholomew massacre, died? Was
it without significance 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 light than the
moon, although there were no clouds
to obscure it?
Astrology, after all, may have been
something more than a brilliant heath
enism. No wond er that Amos of the
text, having heard these two anthems
of the stars, but down the stout,
rough staff of the herdsman, and took
into his brown hand and cut and knot
ted fingers the pen of a prophet, and
advised the recreant people of his time
to return to God, saying: Seek Him
that maketh the Seven Stars and
Orio." This command, which Amos
gave 7s5 years, B. c., is just as appro-
pirate for us 1897 A. ID.
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 a star here
and a star there that impressed the in
spired herdsman, but seven m one
group, and seven in the other group.
He saw that night after night, and
season after season, and decade after
decade, they had kept step of light,
each one in its own place, a sisterhood
never clashing and never contesting
precedence. From the time Hesiod
called the Pleiades the seven daugh-
tiers of Atlas" and Virgil wrote in his
Aeneid of STORMY Orion" until now,
they have observed the order estab-
lished for their coming and going; or
der written not in manuscript that
may be pigeon-holed, but with the
hand of the Almighty on the dome of
the sky, so that all nations may read
it. Order. Persistent order. Sublime
order. omnipotent order.
What a sedative 60 you and me, to
whom communities and nations some
times seem going pell-mell, and the
world ruled by some fend at haphaz-
ard. and in all directions maladminis- |