Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1897-02-09
observed the order established for their

coming and going; order written not
in manuscript that may be pigeon
holed, but with the hand of the AL
mighty on the dome of the sky, SO that
all nations may read it. Order. Per-
sistent order. Sublime order. Omnip-
otent order.
What sedative to you and to me,
to whom communities and nations
sometimes seem going pellmell, and
the world ruled by some fiend at hap
hazard, and in all directions malad-
ministration! The God who keeps
seven worlds in right circuit for six
thousand 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. II
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 seven years, sat in the
back part of the wagon, and our yoke
of oxen ran away with us and along
labyrinthine road through the woods,
so that / thought every moment we
would be dashed to pieces, and | made
a terrible cutlery of fright, and my faith
er turned to me with a face perfectly
calm, and said: DE Witt, what are you
crying about? | guess, we can ride as
fast as the oxen can run" And, my
hearers, why should we be affrighted
and lose our equilibrium in the swift
movements of worldly events, especial
ly when We are assured that it is not a
yoke of unbroken steers that are dra1-
ing us on, but that order and wise gov
eminent are in the yoke?
Again, Amos saw, as we must see,
that the God who made these two
archipelagoes Of stars must be an I'M
changing God. There had been no
change in the stellar appearance in
this herdsman's lifetime, and his faith
er, a shepherd, reported to him that
| there had been no change in his life
| time. And these two clusters hang
over the celestial arbor now just as
they were the first night that they
shone on the Edenic bowers, the same
,, as when the Egyptians built the Pyra-
mids from the top Of which to watch
them, the same as when the Chaldeans
calculated the eclipses, the same as
whpn Elihn apnp1ino m tho Rnnk nf
Job, went out to study the aurora
borealis. the same under Ptolemaic
system and Copernican system, the
same from Calisthenes to Pythagoras
and from Pythagoras to Herschel. Sure
ly, a changeless God must have fash
Toned the Pleiades and Orion! Oh, what
an anodyne amid the ups and downs
of life, and the flux and reflux of the
tides of prosperity, to know that We
have changeless God, ''the same yes
terday, to-day and forever"
Xerxes garlanded and knighted the
steersman of his boat in the morning
and hanged him in the evening of the
same day. Fifty thoussad people
stood around the columns of the ma
tional capital, shouting themselves
hoarse at the presidential inaugural,
and in four months so great were the
antipathies that rufiian's pistol in
Washington depot expressed the senti-
ment Of many a disappointed office
seeker. The world sits in it's chariot
and drives tandem, and the horse
ahead is Huzza, and the horse
behind is Anathema. Lord Cob
ham, in King James time was
applauded, and had thirty-fve thou
| sand dollars a year, but was
afterward execrated, and lived on
scraps stolen from the royal kitchen
Alexander the Great after death re-
| manned unburied for thirty days be-
cause no one would do the honor of
shoveling him under. The Duke of
| fence mended because it had been
! broken by an Infatuated populace in
| some hour of political excitement, and
| he left 1t in ruins that men might learn
| what tickle thing is human favor.
| 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"
And l am glad that so many texts
call us to look off to other worlds,
| many Of them larger and grander and
| more resplendent. Look there" says
| Job, lat Nazareth and Arcturus and
mis- sons!' Look there" says St. John,
lat the moon under Christ's feetw
Look there says Joshua, Eat the sun
standing still above Gibeon" Look
there" says Moses, lat the parking
| armament" Look there" says Amos,
the herdsman, lat the Seven Stars and
| Orion" Do not let us be so sad about
those who shove off from this world
under Christly pilotage. Do not let us
be so agitated about our own going
off this little barge or sloop or canal
boat of world to get on some Great
Eastern" of the heavens. Do not let
us persist in wanting to stay In this
barn. this shed, this clubhouse OF a