"We for whose sake all Nature stands,
And stars their courses move."
Do the stars, that are so far away and seem so small, send us any help?
Assuredly. Nothing exists for itself. All is for man.
Magnetism tells the sailor which way he is going. Stars not only do
this, when visible, but they also tell just where on the round globe he
is. A glance into their bright eyes, from a rolling deck, by an
uneducated sailor, aided by the tables of accomplished scholars, tells
him exactly where he is--in mid Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, or
Antarctic Ocean, or at the mouth of the harbor he has sought for
months. We lift up our eyes higher than the hills. Help comes from
the skies.
This help was started long since, with providential foresight and care.
Is he steering by the North Star? A ray of guidance was sent from that
lighthouse in the sky half a century before his need, that it might
arrive just at the critical time. It has been ever since on its way.
The stars give us, on land and sea, all our reliable standards of time.
There is no other source. They are reliable to the hundredth part of a
second.
The Italian physicians, in their ignorance of the origin of a disease,
named it the influenza, because they imagined that it came from the
influence of the stars. No! There is nothing malign in the sweet
influences of the Pleiades.
The stars are of special use as a mental gymnasium. On their lofty
bars and trapezes the mind can swing itself higher and farther than on
any other material thing. Infinity and omnipotence are factors in
their problems. They also fill the soul of the rapt beholder with
adoring wonder. They are the greatest symbols of the unweariableness
of the power and of the minuteness of the knowledge of God. He calleth
all their millions by name, and for the greatness of his power not one
faileth to come.
Number the stars of a clear Eastern sky, if you are able. So
multitudinous and enduring shall the influence of one good man be.