Connecticut western news., 1897-02-04
ADVICE OF A FARMER
BEFORE THE STAMMsRiNG RUSTIC
 MIGHTY HOSTS TREMBLsD.

Rev. Dr. TalmAge at His Best In . Ser mon Declaring the Goodness and Power and watchfulness of God-Lookinx at 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 Is Amos V, 8, "Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion. y
 A country farmer wrote this text, Amos of Tekoa- He plowed the earth and thrashed the grain by 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 an 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 stuttered, but before the stammer- ing rustic the Philistines and Syrians and Ph9nicians and Moabites and Ann 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 a peasant, and, as might be sup posed, nearly all his parallelislns arc pastoral, his prophecy full of the odor of new mown hay, and the rattle of lo- custs, 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 sec the stars all night long, and was more fa- 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 em- broideries and silvered tassels of lunar light.
 Alone With His Herds.
 What life of solitude, all alone with his herdsl Poor Amosl And at 12 o'clock at night hark to the wolf's bark, and the lions roar, and the bears growl, and the owls te-whit te-who, and the serpent's hiss as he unwittingly steps too near while moving through the thiokets 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 rhythmic. 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. Tho anoionts 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- gelistic errand on the first Christmas night and designate the rough cradle of our Lord? Did not the stars in their courses fight against Sisera? Was it merely coincidental that before the de struction of Jerusalem the moon was hidden for 12 consecutive nights? Did it merely happen so that new star ap- peared in constellation Cassiopeia and then disappeared just before Charles TX of France, who was responsible for the St Bartholomew massacre, died? Was it 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 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 brilliant hea- thenism. No wonder that Amos of the text, having heard these two anthems of the stars, put down the stout, rough stan of the herdsman and took into his brown hand and cut and knotted 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 Orion" This con- mand, which Amos gave 7s5 years B. O., is just as appropriate for us 1897 A.. D.
 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. It was not so much a 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 it's 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 band of the Almighty on the dome of the sky @ that all nations may read it-order persistent order, sublime order, omnipo tent order.
 What a sedative to you and me, tc whom communities and nations some times seem going pellmell and tho xvOrld n, lod bv oor,,a fond af bapha zar1