The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1901-10-31
THE SWEET INFLUENCES.
DR.. TaImage Says We Are Affected for
Good or Evil By Forces That We
Seldom Recognize.


tCopyright. ieoi.l
WASHINGTON, ID. Gin this discourse
DR.. Talmage demonstrates that we are
affected by forces tina. we seldom recog-
nize and enlarges upon human aecounta-
bility. The text is Job xxxvii, 81,
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences Of
Pleiades~
What is the meaning of that question
which God put to job? Have we all our
lives been reading it, and are most of us
ignorant of its beauty and power and
practical suggestiveness? A meaningless
passage of Scripture many thought il to
be, but the telescopes were busy age after
age, and astronomical observations kept
on questioning the skies until the mean
ing Of my text comes out lustrously. The
Pleiades is a constellation of seven stars
appearing to the naked eye, but seien-
tifc instruments reveal more than 400
properly belonging to the group. Alcyone
is the name OF the brightest star of that
group called the Pleiades. A Russian as
tronomer observed that Alcyone is the
centre of gravitation Of our solar system.
Hugh Macmillan says that the sun and its
planets wheel around that centre ct the
rate of 1920 miles day in an orbit
which it will take $4,000, 900 years to com.
plete. The Pleiades appear in the spring
time and are associated with flowers and
genial warmth and good weather. The
navigation OF the Mediterranean was
the setting OF the Pleiades. The priests
of Belus noticed that rising and setting
1000 years before Christ.
Now, the glorious meaning Of my text
is plain as well as radiant. To give job
the beautiful grace Of humility God asked
ences of the Pleiades" Have you any
power over the laws of gravitations Can
| you modify or change an influence welded
by a star more than 900 miles away?
Can you control the winds Of the spring
time? Can you call out the flowers How
little you know compared with omnis.
cience? How little you can do compared
with omnipotence
The probability is that Job had been
tempted to arrogance by his vast attain
ments. He was a metallurgst, a zoolog-
ist, poet, and shows by his writings he
had knowledge of hunting, of music, of
husbandry, of medicine, Of mining, of
astronomy and perhaps was so far ahead
of the scholars and scientists of his time
that he may have been somewhat puffed
up; hence this interrogation of my text.
| And there is nothing that so soon takes
down human pride as an interrogation
! point rightly thrust. Christ used it
nightly. Paul mounted the parapet of
his great arguments with such a battery.
| Men of the world understand it. Demos
themes began his speech to the crown and
| Cicero his Grafton against Catiline and
Lord Chatham his most famous orations
with a question. The empire of ignor-
ance is so much vaster than the empire
of knowledge that after the most learned
and elaborate disquisition upon any sub
! ject of sociology or theology the plainest
man may ask a question that will make
| the wisest speechless. After the pro-
foun,dest assault upon Christianity the
humblest disciple may make an inquiry
that would silence Voltaire.
Called upon. as we all are at times, to
defend our holy religion, instead of argu-
ment that can always he answered by
argument let us try the power of interro-
cation. We ought to be loaded with at
least half a dozen questions and always
ready, and when Christianity is assailed,
and we are told there is nothing in it and
there is no God and there never was a
miracle and that the Scriptures are un-
reasonable and cruel and that there new.
er will be q judgment day, take out of
something like this: What. makes the
condition of woman in Christian lands
better than in heathen lands? Do you
think it would be kind in God to turn
the human race into world without any
written revelation to explain and en-
revelation was made, which do you pre-
fer-the Zenda-Vesta of the Persian or
the Confucian writings of the Chinese
or the Koran of Mohammed or our Bible!
If Christ is not a divine being, what
did He mean when He said, Before
bad book, what are the evil results of
reading it! Did you see any degrading
influence of the book in your father or
mother or sister who used to read it!
Do you not think that judgment. day
| is necessary in order to explain and fix
up things that were never explained or
| fixed up? II our religion is illogical and
an imposition upon human credulitv, why
were Herschel and Washington and Glad
stone and William Mckinley its advo-
Gates?
How did it happen that our religion
furnished the theme for e.; the g greatest :, test
to the painters their greatest themes in
the Alteration of the Magi," "The
TRANSPORTATION" "The Last Supper"
'The Crucifixion," 'The Entombment,"
'The Last Judgment" and that all the
schools of painting put forth their s utmost S,s
Why was it that William Shakespeare
after amazing the world as he will amaze
the centuries with the splendor and pow
er of "The Merchant of Venice and
"Coriolanus," and Orchard. III" and
King Lear and %,othellO," ,ss and l., Mac, Mac.
hand his last will and testament, begin
ming it with the words: in the name
OF God, amen! I, William Shakespeare,
of Stratford- on Avon, in the County OF
Warwick, in perfect health and memory
| (God be praised) do make and .ordain
this my last will and testament, through
the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saw
iour, to be made partaker of life. ever.
lasting and my body to the earth whereof
it is made?" Had Shakespeare lost his
reason when he wrote his faith in Christ
and the great atonement? Put your an.
tagonist few questions like that, and
you will find him excusing himself for an
engagement he must meet Immediately.
These words also recognize far-reachlng
influences Job probably had no adequate
idea of the distance of the worlds men
toned from our world, but he knew them
to be far off, and we, who have had
the advantage of modern sidereal inves--
tigation, ought to be still more impressed
than was job with the question of the
text, as it 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 an
cestral line perhaps 200 years ago some
consecrated man or woman who has held
over all the generations since an influ-
ence for good which we have no power to