The Penn's Grove record., 1901-11-01
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject; Tho Sweet InGuenoes-w We Are
Affected For Good or Evil by Forces
That We seldom Ree0snize-InpOrt-
auce of Good hctfons.

$4,000 @HfN - @HN-FA wv
ME and enlarges upon human accounta-
bihty. The text is job xxxviii, 81,
"Canat thoa bind the sweet influences OF
Pleiades?"
What is the meaning of that question
which God pat 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 it 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
Plelades is a constellation of seven stars
appearing to the naked eye, but scien-
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 Aleyone is the
centre of gravitation Of our solar system.
Hugh Macmillan says that the sun and its
planets wheel around that centre at the
rate of 4Z2, 900 miles a day in an orbit
which it will take 100000 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
from May to November, the rising and
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 9;f humility God asked
him, "Ganst thou bind the sweet inllu-
ences Of the Pleiades?" Have you any
power over the laws of gravitation? Can
you modify or change an influence welded
by q star more than 100, 900 miles away?
Can you control the winds Of the spring
timer Can you call out the flowers? How
little you know compared with omnis-
pianaa9 Hour Httl0 TrNs, an1 do RNunAprgd
with ~omnipotence!
The probability is that Job had been
tempted to arrogance by his vast attain
ments. He was a netallurgist, q zoolog-
list, a 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 pulled
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 Catiine and
Lord Chatham his most famous o~rations
with a question. The empire of ignor-
hnce is so much vaster than the empire
" Nv W 1CAL-t LAnk hIbNI Abt lto AStsA =
and elaborate disquisition upon any sub
ject of sociology or theology the plainest
man may ask u question that will make
the wisest speeches.. After the pro-
foundest assault upon Christianity the
humblest disciple may mako an inquiry
that would silence q Voltaire.
Called upon. as we all are at times, to
defend our holy religion, instead of argu-
ment that can always be 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 AMI
there is no God and there never was a
miracle and that the Scriptures arc IN
reasonable and cruel and that there new
er will be a judgment day, take out Of
your portable armory of Interrogation
something like this: What makes the
condition of woman in Christian lands
better than in heather lands? Do you
think it would be kind in God to turn
the human race into a world without any
written revelation to explain and en-
courage and elevate and save? And if q
revelation was made, which do you pre-
fertile Zenda-Vesta of the Persian or
the Confueian 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
kAbrsrf was, l amp II the Bible is n
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 a judgment day
is necessary il order to explain and fix
up things that were never explained or
fixed up? If our religion is illogical and
an imposition upon human credulity, 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 the greatest
poem ever written, Paradise Lost" and
to the painters their greatest themes in
the Alteration Of the -Magi." THE
TRANSFORMATION" ''Pha Last Supper"
"The Last Judgment" and that all the
genius in presenting The Madonna|
Why was Is that William Shakespeare
after amazing the world as he viii amaze
the centuries with the splendor and pow,
or of 'The Merchant Of Venice and
@Gq%riolquus," and "Rjch9rd, M" and
beth" and Hamlet wrote with his own
hand his last will and testament, begin
ming it with the words: TN the name
of God, amenl ], William Shakespeare,
of Standardization, in the County OF
Warwick, in perfect. health and memory
kGOl ut DIdAstu4J 10 Ilbht anu uIdNll
this my last will and testament, through
the only merits Of Jesus Christ, my Saw
Jour, to be made partaker of life ever.
lasting and my body to the earth whereof
it is nader Had Shakespeare lost his
reason when he wrote his faith in Christ
and the great atonement? Put your II
tagonist a few questions like that, and
you will find him e~xcusing himself for an
engagement he must meet Immediately.
These words also recognize farreaching
influences. Job probably had no adequate
idea Of the distance of the worlds mem
toned from orr world, but be knew them
to be far of, and we, who have had
t~igation, ought to be still more impressed
taan was Job with the question Of the
text, as it puts before US the fact that
worlds hundreds of thousands of miles
distant have a grin on or word. There
are sweet influences which hold us from
afar. There may have been in our an.
cestral line perhaps 200 years ago some
consecrated nan or woman who has held
over all the generations since an infiu-
ence for good which we have no mower to
realize, and we in turn by our virtue or
vice nay influence those who shall live
200 years from now, Mo"al gravitation
is as powerful as material eravitation, and
if, as my text teaches and science con-
firms, the Ploiades, which are ~rlillions
of miles from our earth, influence the
earth we ought to be impressed with
how we may be influenced by others far
away back and how We may influence
others far down the future. That ril
away up among the Alleghanies, SO thu
You think it viii hardly find its way down
the rocks, becomes The mighty Ohio, roll
ing into the Mississippi and rolling into
the sea, That word You utter, that deed
you do, may augment it-e.f as the years
go by until rivers cease to roll ard the
ocean itself shall be dried up in the bum
ing of the world. Paul. who was all the
time saying in 9~ortaut things, said moth
inc more startlins.y suggestive than when
he declared, =" ono of Us liveth or dieth
to hipe IL Norts. thoughts, actions,
have an eternity &C fight
As Job could not bind the sweet in
h!enees Of the Sewn Stars, as they were
called, SO we cannot arrest or turn aside
the good projected long aga. Those in
Grances were started centuries before our
Grade was rocked and viii reign cen
turtles after our graves arc dug, d, it is
a tremendous thing to live! God h2lp us
to live Alright.
- u Nj