Newport weekly independent., 1901-11-01
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themes in the Elaboration of the Magi," 'The Transfguration," "The Last Supper" "The Crucifxion, "The Entombment," /" ''The Last Judgment" and that all the schools of painting put forth their utmost genius in pre- senting "The Madonna?"
 These words also recognize far req ching influences. Job probably had no adequate idea of the distance of the worlds mentioned from our world, but he kne-r- them to be far off, and we, who have the advantage of modern sidereal investigation, 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 a grip on our world. There are sweet influences which hold us from afar. There may | have been in our ancestral line per- haps 200 years ago some consecrated man or woman who has held over all the generations since an influence for good which we have no power to realize, and we in turn, by our virtue or vice, may influence those who shall live 200 years from now. Moral 9ravitation is as powerful as material gravitation, and if, as my text teaches and science confirms, the Pleiades, which are millions 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 in fuence others far down the future. That Till away up among the Ale ghanies, so thin you think it will hardly find it's way down the rocks, r becomes the mighty Ohio rolling into the Mississippi and rolling into the sea. That word you utter, that deed you do, may augment itself as the years go by until rivers cease to roll and the ocean itself shall be dried up in the burning of the world. Paul, who was all the time saying important things, said nothing more startlingly suggestive than when he declared: "None of us liveth or dieth to himself" Words, thoughts, actions, have an eternity of flight. As Job could not bind the sweet in fuences of the Seven Stars, as they were called, so we cannot arrest or turn aside the good projected long ago. Those influences were started centuries before our cradle was rocked and will reign centuries after our graves are dug. Oh, it is tre mendous thing to live! God help us to live alright.
 Astronomers can easily locate the Pleiades. They will take you into their observatories on a clear night and aim their revealing instrument toward the part in the heavens where those seven stars have their habi- tude, and they will point to the con- stellation Taurus, and you can see for yourself. But it is impossible to point to influences far back that have affected our character and will affect our destiny. We know the in- fuences near by-paternal, maternal, con jugal-but by the time we have gone back two generations or at most three our investigations falter and fail. Through the modern in teresting habit of searching back to find the ancestral tree we may find long list of names, but they are only names. The consecration or abandonment of some one 200 years ago was not recorded. It would not be so important if you and I by our good or bad behavior blessed or blasted only those immediately around us, but our goodness or our badness will reach as far as the strongest rays of Alcyone yea, across the eternities. Under this consideration what do you think of those who give themselves up to frivolity or idleness and throw away 50 years of their existence as though they were shells or pebbles or pods instead of embryo eternities?
 Notice also in my text the influ- ence of other worlds upon this world. i We all regard the effect which our continent has upon other continents or one hemisphere upon the other hemisphere. Great harvest or drought affects the other side of our world. A panic in Wall street, New York, has it's echo in Lombard street and the bourse. The nations of the earth cablegrammed together all feel the same thrill of delight or shock of woe. But we do not appreciate the infiu- ence of other worlds upon our world. The author of my text rouses us to the consideration. It takes all the worlds of known and unknown as- tronomy to keep our world in it's or bit, every world dependent on other worlds. The stellar existence is felt l oil ha