The Iola register., 1901-11-01

and Orchard Ill.," and liking Lear"
and "Othello," and Macbeth" and
Hamlet" wrote with his own hand
his last will and testament, beginning
| IL with the words: sin the name of
God, amen. !, William Shakespeare. of
| Stratford- on-Avon, in the county of
Warwick. in perfect health and mem
ory, God be praised, do make and or
dain this my last will and testament
through the only merits of Jesus
Christ, my Saviour, to be made par
taker of life everlasting 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 antag-
onst a few questions like that, and
you will find him eXcusing himself for
an engagement he must meet imme-
diately or he will start on retreat
like that which our northern troops
made for yonder Long bridge after
the battle of Manassas. A discourse
on Gods omnipotence and mans linn
itations would not have had such an
effect upon Job MS the Interrogation
of the text: "Canst thou bind the
sweet influence of the Pleiades?"
These words also recognize far
reaching influences. Job probably
had no adequate idea of the distance
of the worlds mentioned from our
world, but he lne'' 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 gravitation 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 he impressed with
how we may be influenced by others
far away back and how we may in
fuence others far down the future.
That rill away up among the Alle-
ghanies, so thin you think II will
hardly find its way down the rocks,
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
huences 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 a 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 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-
stellntion 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
huences near by-paternal, maternal.
conjugal-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
n long list of names, but they are
only names. The conservation or
abandonment of some one 200 years
ago was not recorded. Ii would not
be so important if you and 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
so 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
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
its 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 influ-