Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-10-28

| |. William Shakespeare, of Stratford-
On Avon, in the county of Warwick, in
| perfect health and memory God be
! priIiscLD do make and Ordain this my
| last Will and testament through the
only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saw
| Jour- to he made partaker of life ever
lasting and my body to the earth
| whereof it is made?' Had Shake
| speare lost his reason when he wrote
| his faith in Christ and the great atone
ment? Put your antagonist a few
| questions like that, and you will find
him excusing himself for an engage
ment he must meet Immediately.
These words also recognize farreach-
ing influences. Job probably had no
adequate idea Of the distance Of the
worlds mentioned from our world, but
he knew them to be far off, and we,
who have had the advantage of mod
ern sidereal investigation, ought to be
still more impressed than was Job with
the question of the text, as it puts be-
fore us the fact that worlds hundreds Of
thousands of miles distant have q grip
on our world. There are sweet infiu-
ences which hold us from afar. There
may have been in our ancestral line
perhaps 200 years ago some cOnse-
Grated man or woman who has held
over all the generations since an infu-
ence 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 gray
itatiOn is as powerful as material gray
itatiOn. and if, as my text teaches and
science confirms, the Pleiades, which
are millions of miles from our earth, in
fiuence the earth we ought to be i'm
pressed with how we may be infu-
enced by others far away back and
how we may influence others far down
the future. That rill away up among
the Alleghanies, so thin you think it
will 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 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 i'm
portant things, said nothing more star
tlingly suggestive than when he de-
clared, None Of US liveth or dieth to
HIMSELF Words, thoughts, actions,
have an eternity of fight. AS Job
could not bind the sweet influences of
the Seven Stars. as they were called,
so we cannot arrest or turn aside the
good projected long ago. Those infiu-
ences were started centuries before
cur cradle was rocked and will reign
centuries after our graves are dug.
Oh, it is a tremendous thinS to live!
God help us to live Alright.
Importance of Good Actions.
Astronomers can easily locate the !
Pleiades. They will take you into their
observatOries on q clear night and aim |
their revealing instrument toward the |
part in the heavens where those seven |
stars have their habitude, and they |
will point to the constellation 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 influences near by-paternal, ma
ternal, conjugal-but by the time we
have gone back two generations, or, at
most three, our Investigations falter
and fail. Through the modern inter-
esting habit of searching back to find
the ancestral tree we may find a long
list of names, but they are only names.
The conservation or abandonment of
some one 200 years ago was not record
ed. It would not be SO important if
you and l, by our good or bad behavior,
blessed or blasted only those immedi-
ately around US, but our goodness or
our badness will reach as far as the
strongest ray Of Alcyone-yea, across
the eternities. Under this considera-
ton, what do you think Of those who
give themselves up to frivolity or idle
ness and throw away fifty years of
their existence as though they were
shells or pebbles or pods instead of en-
bryo eternities?
| suppose one of the greatest sur
prises Of the next world will be to see
what wide, farreaching influence for
good or evil we have all eXerted. l am
speaking Of ourselves, who are only
ordinary people. But who can fully
appreciate the farreaching good done
by men of wealth in Great Britain for
the working classes = Mr.. Lister Of
Bradford, Edward Akroyd Of Halifax,
Skies of Huddersfield, Joseph
Wentworth and Josiah Mason and Sir
Titus Salt? This last great SOUL with
his vast wealth, provided 756 houses
at cheap rent for 5000 working people
and chapel and cricket ground and GRO
quet lawn and concert hall and saw
ings bank, where they might deposit
some of their earnings, and life insur-
ance for those who looked further
ahead and lighthouses and parks and
and lecture halls with philO-
apparatus, the generous ex-
ample of those men of previous gen.
cd in nj in,