us, 1885 A.D.

In the first place, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made
the Pleiades and Orion must be the God of order. It was not so much a
star here and a star there that impressed the inspired herdsman, but
seven in one group, and seven in the other group. He saw that night
after night and season after season and decade after decade they had
kept step of light, each one in its own place, a sisterhood never
clashing and never contesting precedence. From the time Hesiod called
the Pleiades the "seven daughters of Atlas" and Virgil wrote in his
Æneid of "Stormy Orion" until now, they have observed the order
established for their coming and going; order written not in
manuscript that may be pigeon-holed, but with the hand of the Almighty
on the dome of the sky, so that all nations may read it. Order.
Persistent order. Sublime order. Omnipotent order.

What a sedative to you and me, to whom communities and nations
sometimes seem going pell-mell, and world ruled by some fiend at
hap-hazard, and in all directions maladministration! The God who keeps
seven worlds in right circuit for six thousand years can certainly
keep all the affairs of individuals and nations and continents in
adjustment. We had not better fret much, for the peasant's argument of
the text was right. If God can take care of the seven worlds of the
Pleiades and the four chief worlds of Orion, He can probably take care
of the one world we inhabit.

So I feel very much as my father felt one day when we were going to
the country mill to get a grist ground, and I, a boy of seven years,
sat in the back part of the wagon, and our yoke of oxen ran away with
us and along a labyrinthine road through the woods, so that I thought