the Pleiades and Orion! Oh, what an anodyne amid the ups and downs of
life, and the flux and reflux of the tides of prosperity, to know that
we have a changeless God, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

Xerxes garlanded and knighted the steersman of his boat in the
morning, and hanged him in the evening of the same day. Fifty thousand
people stood around the columns of the national capitol, shouting
themselves hoarse at the presidential inaugural, and in four months so
great were the antipathies that a ruffian's pistol in Washington depot
expressed the sentiment of a great multitude. The world sits in its
chariot and drives tandem, and the horse ahead is Huzza, and the horse
behind is Anathema. Lord Cobham, in King James' time, was applauded,
and had thirty-five thousand dollars a year, but was afterward
execrated, and lived on scraps stolen from the royal kitchen.
Alexander the Great after death remained unburied for thirty days,
because no one would do the honor of shoveling him under. The Duke of
Wellington refused to have his iron fence mended, because it had been
broken by an infuriated populace in some hour of political
excitement, and he left it in ruins that men might learn what a fickle
thing is human favor. "But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting
to everlasting to them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto the
children's children of such as keep His covenant, and to those who
remember His commandments to do them." This moment "seek Him that
maketh the Seven Stars and Orion."

Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these two
beacons of the Oriental night sky must be a God of love and kindly
warning. The Pleiades rising in mid-sky said to all the herdsmen and
shepherds and husbandmen: "Come out and enjoy the mild weather, and
cultivate your gardens and fields." Orion, coming in winter, warned