The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-11-03

| Wa9ntnktOu, | pr. Talmage demonstrates that we are | affected by forces that we seldom re- ccgnize and enlarges upon human ac- countability; the text is Job xxxviii, Sl, l .Canst thou bind the sweet influences | of PleiadesT'
 What is the meaning of that question that God put to Job! Have we all our | lives been reading IL and are most of us | ignorant of its beauty and power and practical suggestiveness: A meaningless passage of Scripture many thought 1t to be. But the telescopes were busy age after age and astronomical observations kept on questioning the skies untli the meaning of my text comes out lustrousiy. The Pleiades is constellation or seven stars appearing to the naked eye, put scientific instruments reveal more than 4O0 properly belonging to the group. Alcyone is the name or the 6rigtest star of that group called the Pieiades. Russian astronomer observed that All cyone is the center of gravitation Of bur solar system. Hugh Macmillan says that that center at the rate of 422ooo miles a day in an orbit which it will take ls.- 900 900 years to complete. The Plefadcs appear in the springtime and are assor ciated with flowers and genial warmth and good weather. The navigation of the Mediterranean was from May to Novem- ber-the rising and the setting Of the ileiades. The priests of Belus noticed II rising and setting 1000 years before ,rist.
 Jw, the glorious meaning of my text plain as well as radiant To give Joe ..., beautiful grace of humility Goo 1 isked him, "Canst thou bind the sweet | influences of the Pleiades?' Have you any power over the laws of gravitation! 1 Can you modify or change an influence wielded by a star more than 400, GOO miles away? Can you control the winds of the | springtime? Can you call out the How, with omniscience. How little you can | do compared with omnlpotence!
 The probability is that Job had been tempted to arrogance by his vast attain
 ments. He was metaYurgist sooio- | gist, a poet, and shows by his writings he had knowledge of hunting of music: of husbandry, of medicine, of mining oI ahead of the scholars and scientists of his time that he may have been some
 hat puffed up; hence this interrogauon
 my text And there is nothing that
 soon takes down human pride as an
 .terrogaticn n point rightly thrust Christ
 cd 1t nightly. Paul mounted the par
 net of his great arguments wits suoh
 l battery. Men of the world understand ii. Demosthenes began his speech on the crown and Cicero hls oration against
 Catiline and Lord Chatham his most most famous oratiohs with question. The empire of ignorance is so much vaster than the empire of knowledge that af- ter the most learned and elaborate dls- Suistion nr"n ths any ansst uo1ecn man m mav ask a question that will make the wisest speechless. After the p.ofoundest as-
 sault upon Christianity the humblest dis silence xrmed eai'vSiti With 1nterrogations
 Called upon. as we all are at times. to defend our holy religion, instead of ar gument let us try the p power of interro, .1,th Q, least half a dozen questions and always ready, and when Christianity is assailed and we are told there Is nothing Tn IL, and there is no God, and there never was a miracle. and that the Scriptures are unreasonable and cruel, and that there never will be judgment day. take out something like this: What makes the condition of women in Christian lands better than in heather lands! Do you think it would be kind in God to turn the human race into world without any written revelation to explain ana encourage and elevate and save? And II revelation was made which do you
 or. the Confucian writings of the Chi
 nese or the Koran of Mohammed or
 our Bible? If Christ Is not divine Before Abram was I am?" If the Bible Is a bad book. where are the evil re- suits of reading 1t? Did you see any he- grading influence of the book In your your
 to read 1t? Do you not think that a Judgment day is necessary in order to explain and fix up things that were
 never explained or fixed up? If our re- ligion is illogical and an imposition upon human credulity, why were Herschel and
 Washington and Gladstone and William happen that our religion furnished the theme for the greatest poem ever writ ten, Paradise Lost" and to the paint oa ,heF af Rs Mas in ias
 tion," ''The Last Supper" "The Cruel iixion." "The Entombment." '"rhe Last Judgment" and that all the schools Of IRa'prtns In presentinF Rns !%r6e .SThe MadonnaT %
 Why was 1t that William Shakespeare, after amazing the world as he will amaze Se MseSan Tn the n and and
 iolaEus,, and Richard the Third" and King Lear." and ''othello.', and Mae beth" aud Hamlet" wrote S tawttn,.ht with his beginning it with the words, Tn the name of God, amen, I, William Shake speare of Stratford-on-Avon, in the county of Warwick, in perfect health and memory. Gcd be praised, do make and ordain this my last will and testament through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partakSer tS od ntS ne
 whereof 1t is made?' Had Shakespeare
 lost his reason when he wrote his faith
 in Christ and the great atonement? that, and you will find him excusng himself for an engagement he must meet { immediately. or he will start on retreat ! like that which our Northern troops battle or Manassas. discourse OH Gods omnipotence and mans limitations would not have had such an effect upon [ Job as the Interrogation of the text "Canst thou bind the sweet influence oi
 Sweet Influences from Afar.
 These words also recognize farreachine
 influences. Job probably had no ade-
 quate idea of the distance of the worlds
 mentioned from our world, but he knew
 them to be far off, and we, who have
 the advantage of modern sidereal inves-
 tigation ought to be still more impressed
 text as 1t puts before us the fact that
 worlds hundreds of thousands of miles
 distant have grip on our world. There
 are sweet influences which hold us from
 afar. There may have been in our ances-
 tral line perhaps POO years ago some con
 secrated man or woman who has held
 over all the generations since an int1u- r ence for good which we have no power i to realize, and we in turn. by our virtue : or vice, may influence those who shall l | live 200 years from now. Moral gravita- 1 ton is as powerful material gravita- e ton, and if, as my text teaches and sci e ence confirms the Pleiades, which are r millions of miles from our earth, influ- Q | encc the earth we ought to be impressed
 with how we may be influenced by oth-
 CTS far away back and how we may influence others far down the future
 That Till away up among the AIlegha
 nles, so thin you think it will hardly
 find it's way down the rocks, becomes
 the mighty Ohio rolling into the Mis-
 sssippi and rolling into the sea. Tha
 word you utter. that deed you do. ma! II augment itself as the years go by unti
 rlN CTS cease to roll 5nd the ocean itsel