Newport weekly independent., 1901-11-01

onstrates that we are affected by forces that we seldom recognize and enlarges upon human accountability; the text is Job 38:31: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Plei- ades?"
 What is the meaning of that ques- tion that God put to Job? Have we all our lives been reading it and are most of us ignorant of it's beauty and power and practical suggestive ness? A meaningless passage ot Scripture many thought it to be. But the telescopes were busy age after age and astronomical observations kept on questioning the skies until the meaning of my text comes out lustrously. The Pleiades is con- stellation of seven stars appearing to the naked eye, but scientific instru- ments 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 astronomer observed that Alcyone is the center of gravitation of our solar system. Hugh Macmillan says that the sun and it's planets wheel around that center at the rate of 422, 1000 miles a day in an orbit which it will take 19,000,000 years to complete. The Plel- ades appear in the springtime and are associated with flowers and genial warmth and good weather. The navi- May to November-the rising and the setting of the Pleiades. The priests of Belus noticed that rising and set ting 2,000 years before Christ.
 Now, the glorious meaning of my text is plain as well as radiant. To give Job the beautiful grace of hu- mility God asked him: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?" Have you any power over the laws of gravitation? Can you modify or change an influence wield ed by a star more than 100000 miles away? Can you control the winds of the ingtime? Can you call out the flowers? How little you know com pared with omniscience! How little you can do compared with Omnipo- tence!
 The proba blity is that Job had been tempted to arrogance by his vast attainments. He was a metallurgist, a zoologist, a poet, and shows by his writings he had knowledge of hunt ing, of music, of husbandry, of medi- cine, 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 Christ used it nightly. Paul mounted the parapet of his great arguments with such a battery. Men of the world understand it. Demosthenes began his speech on the crown and Cicero his oration against Catiline and Lord Chatham his most famous orations with a ques ton. The empire oi ignorance is so much vaster than the empire of knowledge that after the most learned and ella borate dis quisition upon any subject of sociol- ogy or theology the plainest man may ask a question that will make the wisest speeches.. After the pro- foundest 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 argument that can always be an- swered by argument let us try the power of interrogation. 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 unreasonable and cruel, and that there never will be a judgment day, take out of your portable armory of Interrogation something like this: What makes the condition of women 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 writ ten revelation to explain and encour- age and elevate and save? And if a revelation was made, which do you prefer, the Zenda-Vesta of the Per- sian or the Confucian writings of the Chinese or the Koran of Mohammed or our Bible? If Christ is not a Di- vine being, what did He mean when He said: Before Abram was I am 2 If the Bible is a bad book, where 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 in order to explain and