The Monitor-register., 1897-02-05

Rev. DIR. Talmage at His Best In a Ser
mon Declaring the Goodness and Power
and watchfulness of God-LoolSing al
the Midnight Heavens.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31.-This sermon
of Dr. Talmage, looking at the midnight
heavens through the eyes of one of the
ancients, is unique for practicality and
must set all to useful thinking His text
is Amos V, s, ''Seek him that maketl
the seven stars and Orion"
A country farmer wrote this text,
Amos of Tekoa. He plowed the earth
and thrashed the grain by a new
thrashing machine just invented, as
formerly the cattle trod out the grain.
He gathered the fruit of the syca-
more tree and scarified it with al
iron comb just before it was getting
ripe, as it was necessary and customary
in that way to take from it the bitter
ness. He was the son of poor shepherd
and suffered, but before the stammer-
ing rustic the Philistines and Syrians
and Ph9nicians and Moabites and Am
monites and Edomites and Israelites
trembled.
Moses was law giver, Daniel was a
prince, Isaiah a courtier and David a
king, but Amos, the author of my text,
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 To-
Gusts, and the rumble of carts with
sheaves, 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 inhabited
booth made out of bushes, so that
through these branches he, could see the
stars all night long, and was more ia
miliar 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 year when the herds
were in special 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 en-
broideries and silvered tassels of lunar
light.
0hoho " ieAh AiS
What life of solitude, all alone with
his herds! Poor Amosl And at 10
O'Clock at night bark to the VOLTS bark,
and the lions roar, and the bear
growl, and the owls te-whit te-who,
and the serpent's hiss as he unwittingly
steps too near while moving through the
thickets. So Amos, like other herdsmen,
got the habit Of studying the map of the
heavens because it was so much of the
time spread out before him. He noticed
some stars advancing and others reced-
ing. He associated their dawn and set
ting with certain seasons of the year.
He had poetic nature, and he read
night by night and month by month
and year by year the poem of the con-
stellations, divinely rhy thmic But two
rosettes of stars especially attracted his
attention while seated on the ground or
lying on his back under the open scroll
of the midnight heavens-the Pleiades,
or seven stars, and Orion. The former
group this rustic prophet associated with
the spring, as it rises about the first Of
May. The latter he associated with the
winter, as it 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
physiognomy and juxtaposition of the
heavenly bodies because they thought
they had special influence upon the
earth-and perhaps they were right. If
the moon every few hours lifts and lets
down the tides of the Atlantic ocean
and the electric storms in the sun, by
all scientific admission, affect the earth,
why not the stars have proportionate
effect?
And there are some things which
make 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 meteor run on evan.
gellstlc errand on the first Christmas
night and designate the rough cradle OF
our Lord? Did not the stars in thei1
courses fight against Sisera? Was il
merely coincidental that before the de.
struction of jerusalem the moon was
hidden for 10 consecutive nights? Did
1t merely happen SO that new star ap-
peared in constellation Cassiopeia and
then disappeared just before Charles X
of France, who was responsible for the
st. Bartholomew massacre, died? Was il
without significance that, in the days Of
the Roman empire Justinian, war and
famine were preceded by the dimness OF
the sun, which for nearly a year gave
No 1irrh+ lo
there were no clouds to obscure it?
Astrology, after all, may have been
something more than brilliant hea-
thenism. No wonder that Amos of the
text, having heard these two anthems
of the stars, put down the stout, rough
staff of the herdsman and took into his
brown hand and cut and knotted fingers
the pen of a prophet and advised the
xecreant people of his time to return to
God, saying, "Seek him that maketh
the seven stars and Orion This COM
mand, which Amos gave 785 years B.
O., is just as appropriate for US 1897
A. D.
A God of Order.
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
spired herdsman, but seven in 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 daughters of Atlas and Virgil
wrote in his Eneid of "stormy Orion
until now they have observed the order
established for their coming and going
order written not in the manuscript that
may be pigeonholed, 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 omnipo-
tent order.
What sedative to you and me, to
whom communities and nations some
times seem going pellmeu and the
world ruled by some fiend at haphazard,
and in all directions maladministration
The God who keeps seven worlds in
right circuit for 5000 years can certainly
keep all the affairs of individuals and
nations and continents in adjustment.
We had not better fret much, for the
PEASANTS argument of the text was
right. If God can take care of the seven
worlds of the Pleiades and the four chief
worlds of Orion, he can probably take
care of the one world we inhabit.
So feel very much as my father felt
one day when we were going to the
country mill to get grist ground, and
], boy Of years, sat in the back part