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 them to prepare for tempest.  All navigation was regulated by these two constellations.  The one said to shipmaster and crew:  “Hoist sail for the sea, and gather merchandise from other lands.”  But Orion was the storm-signal, and said:  “Reef sail, make things snug, or put into harbor, for the hurricanes are getting their wings out.”  As the Pleiades were the sweet evangels of the spring, Orion was the warning prophet of the winter.

Oh, now I get the best view of God I ever had!  There are two kinds of sermons I never want to preach—­the one that presents God so kind, so indulgent, so lenient, so imbecile that men may do what they will against Him, and fracture His every law, and put the cry of their impertinence and rebellion under His throne, and while they are spitting in His face and stabbing at His heart, He takes them up in His arms and kisses their infuriated brow and cheek, saying, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”  The other kind of sermon I never want to preach is the one that represents God as all fire and torture and thundercloud, and with red-hot pitch-fork tossing the human race into paroxysms of infinite agony.  The sermon that I am now preaching believes in a God of loving, kindly warning, the God of spring and winter, the God of the Pleiades and Orion.

You must remember that the winter is just as important as the spring.  Let one winter pass without frost to kill vegetation and ice to bind the rivers and snow to enrich our fields, and then you will have to enlarge your hospitals and your cemeteries.  “A green Christmas makes a fat grave-yard,” was the old proverb.  Storms to purify the air.  Thermometer at ten degrees above zero to tone up the system.  December and January just as important as May and June.  I tell you we need the storms of life as much as we do the sunshine.  There are more men ruined by prosperity than by adversity.  If we had our own way in life, before this we would have been impersonations of selfishness and worldliness and disgusting sin, and puffed up until we would have been like Julius Caesar, who was made by sycophants to believe that he was divine, and the freckles on his face were as the stars of the firmament.