Job 38:31

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?

Light unrestrainable

Who can “bind” or “restrain” the light? The subject before us is the self-revealing power of the Gospel. Men may love darkness, but they cannot hide the advent of light, and can never be, in conscience and accountability, as if they had not seen the light. Evil men may wish the Christ out of the world, but they cannot hide His glory. All Christian light, whether its medium be teaching, or character, or life, or conversation, cannot be restrained. We cannot tell where influence reaches. It may leap forth long after we have finished our course. Men being dead, yet speak to us; facts in their history are disentombed, and we receive the light of their fidelity and heroism.

I. The light of Pleiades in a human sense. What the world wants is more light--the light of love. That sweetens all relationships, and is the only cement of all classes in our crowded communities. Love is the light of the universe. Let the rosy beams of affection shine in the character, its potent charm will be as irresistible as is the health-giving, gladdening light.

II. The light of the Pleiades in a Divine sense. Love is never impotent--never doubtful of its triumph. Our Saviour never distrusted the issues of the Cross. While men are questioning about Him, His influences are going forth. Sin, grief, and death are still here. But men cannot take Christ out of the world.

III. The light of the Pleiades in a historic sense. Light does not die. The great influence of the reformers will never be lost. You cart bind mere opinion; you can bind mere ecclesiasticism; you cannot bind the renewed Christlike soul.

IV. The light of the Pleiades in a personal influence sense. Words live long after their authors have uttered them. Deeds are vital long after great empires have passed away. Words and deeds go through the electric chain of schools, and families, and churches. None can bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades at home or abroad. (W. M. Statham.)

Spring

The Pleiades are a constellation, or group of seven stars, seen in the astronomical sign Taurus, making their appearance in the spring, and thence called spring signs, or tokens. The Hebrew term is expressive of beauty. In the text, the word translated “bind” signifies to compel or constrain. “Canst thou compel the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loosen the bands of Orion?” (winter). Canst thou force forward the spring, and abruptly break up the rigidity of winter?

I. How absolute is the rule of the most high in the natural world. Can man alter the Divine dispensations, or so much as either hasten or delay them? Let us mark our absolute dependence, and humble ourselves before the Almighty Ruler.

II. He who rules in the kingdom of nature rules also in that of providence. The events of life are no less under His control than are the stars in their courses. Canst thou compel or retain the sweet influences of prosperity; or canst thou loosen the bands of adversity? All our comfort and satisfaction, whether of a bodily or mental kind, is received from Him; and, when He pleases, is in a moment wrested from us. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, come and go at His command. It is true that men themselves, being free and intelligent creatures, do by their character and conduct modify and influence their fate and fortune; but this they do only in accordance with the laws of providence, How important it is that we should be earnest and faithful in improving the varying dispensations of providence which are successively appointed for our trial.

III. He who rules in nature and providence rules also in the kingdom of grace. If we look within, we shall find new proofs of our ignorance and weakness, and absolute dependence on the Author of our being. Can you loose the bands of guilt, or compel the sweet influences of pardoning mercy? God only can remit our offences; and the means He has employed for this end, in the incarnation, sufferings, and death of His own dear Son, afford the clearest demonstration of the foolishness of human wisdom, and the impotence of human power in this high concern. (H. Grey, D. D.)

Delightful influences of spring tide

The Pleiades are a well-known cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus. The ancients were in the habit of determining their seasons by the rising and setting of certain constellations. The Pleiades were regarded as the cardinal constellations of spring. These seven stars appear about the middle of April, and hence are associated with the return of spring, the season of sweet influences. The Hebrew word is derived from a word signifying delights. The influences of spring are delightful in many ways--

I. As temporal ministries. These influences come to bring great blessings to man, as a tenant of the earth.

1. Supplies of food. They come to mollify the earth, fertilise the soil, germinate the seed out of which come the material provisions for man and beast.

2. Pleasures to the senses. Spring mantles the world with a thousand robes of beauty, all with endless variety of hue and shape.

3. Exhilarates the spirit. The influences of spring are delightful--

II. As Divine manifestations. Spring tide is a new revelation of God. It reveals--

1. The profusion of His vital energy. Every spot teems with a new existence, and every new life is from Him.

2. The wonderful tastefulness of God. Spring brings a universe of fresh beauties to the eye.

3. The calm ease with which He works. How quietly He pours forth those oceans of new life that are now rolling over the earth.

4. The regularity of His procedure. For 6000 years spring has never failed to come.

III. As instructive emblems.

1. Spring is an emblem of human life. Both have vast capabilities of improvement. Both are remarkably changeable. Both are fraught with fallacious promises.

2. Spring is an emblem of spiritual renovation.

(1) The new spiritual life is like the spring in the season from which it has emerged.

(2) In the tenacity with which the past strives to keep its hold.

(3) It tends to a perfect future. The power of winter will gradually give way; summer will come, and then the golden autumn.

3. Spring is an emblem of the general resurrection, The Bible looks at it in this light (1 Corinthians 15:36; 1 Corinthians 15:41).

(1) Spring life is a resuscitation; it is not properly a new creation, it grows out of the past.

(2) Spring life is a resuscitation from an apparently extinct life. “That which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die.”

(3) Spring life is a resuscitation against which many antecedent objections might have been raised. So with the resurrection of the body. (Homilist.)

Influence and power

The Pleiades was looked upon as the constellation of spring; Orion, of winter. “The sweet influences of the Pleiades” were the life forces which caused the grass to spring, the plant to grow, and the flower to bloom. “The bands of Orion” were made of ice. They only could bind the sweet influences of spring; spring only, at its return, could loose them. Nothing but silent influence is strong enough to overcome silent influence. The greatest forces in this world are those which work, like the warmth of spring and the cold of winter, in silence. There is, in every man’s life, spring and winter; and there is war between them. In this world good influence has all the time to do battle with bad influence. A legend says that after the battle of Chalons the spirits of the slain soldiers continued the conflict for several days. And after we are dead, the silent, invisible influences we have brought into being will continue their battle for good or evil. Theodore Parker spoke a great truth when, dying in Italy, he said, “There are two Theodore Parkers; one of them is dying in Italy; the other I have planted in America, and it will continue to live.” We have, in spite of ourselves, an immortality upon earth. So far from blotting us out, death often intensifies our personality. But in Christianity there is more than influence. “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Influence is the sum total of all the forces in our lives--mental, moral, financial, social. Power is God at work. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples, and lo, I am with you.” God does not delegate power. He goes along with us, and exerts that power Himself. Christian influences are not sufficient for the needs of the Church. The success of the Gospel at first did not depend upon influence. The only time the word is used in the Bible is in this text from Job. The apostles were not men of influence. Few disciples were made from the influential classes, and as soon as made, they lost by their faithfulness most of the influence they had before. Christ did not choose to become a man of influence. God hath chosen power rather than influence. Mere influence never converted a soul. The Spirit can, of course, use influences. Influence without the Spirit never saved anybody. We should seek power even at the expense of influence. There is such a thing as gaining and retaining influence over a person in such a way as to lose all power with God. And there is such a thing as losing influence while we gain power. Paul had a good opportunity for gaining influence with Felix by flattering him in his sins, and could have made a splendid impression for himself by such a course. But as he gained influence with Felix, he would have lost power with God. He chose power before influence, and “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come” till Felix trembled under the hand of God. Paul and Silas did not have influence enough to keep them out of jail, but there was power enough with them to shake the old jail open. By a compromising course they might have pleased the authorities, and kept out of prison, but they would have lost all power. The disciples at Pentecost had little influence. They were the followers of One who had been crucified as a malefactor. The doctrines He preached were very unpopular. But they had power, and Christians with power can get along without much influence. If they had depended upon influence they would have set about the building of such houses and the establishment of such institutions as would have promoted it. All this would have taken time. Influences, like the forces of spring, work slowly. Power works suddenly. Not evolution, but revolution, was the effect of power at Pentecost. Not a word have I to say, let me repeat, against the use of all influences for good. What I insist upon is, that this world is not going to be converted by influences. (A. G. Dixon, D. D.)

Pleiades

The isolated group of the “Seven Stars,” from the singularity of its appearance, has been distinguished and designated by an appropriate name from the earliest ages. The learned priests of Belus carefully observed its risings and settings nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. By the Greeks it was called Pleiades, from the word pleein, to sail, because it indicated the time when the sailor might hope to undertake a voyage with safety. It was also called Vergiliae, from ver, the spring, because it ushered in the mild vernal weather, favourable to farming and pastoral employments. The Greek poets associated it with that beautiful mythology which, in its purest form, peopled the air, the woods, and the waters with imaginary beings, and made the sky itself a concave mirror, from which came back exaggerated ideal reflections of humanity. The seven stars were supposed to be the seven daughters of Atlas, by Pleione, one of the Oceanides--placed in the heavens after death. Their names are Alcyone, Merope, Main, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope, and Celaeno. They were all united to the immortal gods, with the exception of Merope, who married Sisyphus, King of Corinth, and whose star, therefore, is dim and obscure among her sisters. The “lost Pleiad,” the “sorrowing Merope,” has long been a favourite shadowy creation of the poetic dream. But an interest deeper than any derived from mythical association or classical allusion, is connected with this group of stars by the use made of it in Scripture. I believe that in the apparently simple and passing allusion to it in Job, lies hid the germ of one of the greatest of physical truths--a germ lying dormant and concealed in the pages of Scripture for ages, but now brought into air and sunlight by the discoveries of science, and developing flowers and fruit of rare value and beauty. If our translators have correctly identified the group of stars to which they have given the familiar name of Pleiades--and we have every reason to confide in their fidelity--we have a striking proof here afforded to us of the perfect harmony that exists between the revelations of science and those of the Bible--the one illustrating and confirming the other. So far as Job was concerned, the question, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?” might have referred solely to what was then the common belief--namely, that the genial weather of spring was somehow caused by the peculiar position of the Pleiades in the sky at that season; as if God had simply said, “Canst thou hinder or retard the spring?” It remained for modern science to make a grander and wider application of it, and to show in this, as in other instances, that the Bible is so framed as to expand its horizon with the march of discovery--that the requisite stability of a moral rule is, in it, most admirably combined with the capability of movement and progress. If we examine the text in the original, we find that the Chaldaic word translated in our version Pleiades is Chimah, meaning literally a hinge, pivot, or axle, which turns round and moves other bodies along with it. Now, strange to say, the group of stars thus characterised has recently been ascertained by a series of independent calculations--in utter ignorance of the meaning of the text--to be actually the hinge or axle round which the solar system revolves. It was long known as one of the most elementary truths of astronomy, that the earth and the planets revolve around the sun; but the question recently began to be raised among astronomers, “Does the sun stand still, or does it move round some other object in space, carrying its train of planets and their satellites along with it in its orbit?” Attention being thus specially directed to this subject, it was soon found that the sun had an appreciable motion, which tended in the direction of a lily-shaped group of small stars, called the constellation of Hercules. Towards this constellation the stars seem to be opening out; while at the opposite point of the sky their mutual distances are apparently diminishing--as if they were drifting away, like the foaming wake of a ship, from the sun’s course. When this great physical truth was established beyond doubt, the next subject of investigation was the point or centre round which the sun performed this marvellous revolution: and after a series of elaborate observations, and most ingenious calculations, this intricate problem was also satisfactorily solved--one of the greatest triumphs of human genius. M. Madler, of Dorpat, found that Alcyone, the brightest star of the Pleiades, is the centre of gravity of our vast solar system--the luminous hinge in the heavens, round which our sun and his attendant planets are moving through space. The very complexity and isolation of the system of the Pleiades, exhibiting seven distinct orbs closely compressed to the naked eye, but nine or ten times that number when seen through a telescope--forming a grand cluster, whose individuals are united to each other more closely than to the general mass of stars--indicate the amazing attractive energy that must be concentrated in that spot. Vast as is the distance which separates our sun from this central group--a distance thirty-four millions of times greater than the distance between the sun and our earth--yet so tremendous is the force exerted by Alcyone, that it draws our system irresistibly around it at the rate of 422,000 miles a day, in an orbit which it will take many thousands of years to complete. With this new explanation, how remarkably striking and appropriate does the original word for Pleiades appear! What a lofty significance does the question of the Almighty receive from this interpretation! “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?” Canst thou arrest, or in any degree modify, that attractive influence which it exerts upon our sun and all its planetary worlds, whirling them round its pivot in an orbit of such inconceivable dimensions, and with a velocity so utterly bewildering? Silence the most profound can be the only answer to such a question. Man can but stand afar off, and in awful astonishment and profound humility exclaim with the Psalmist, “O Lord my God, Thou art very great!” (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)

Orion

This cluster of stars--the Kesil of the ancient Chaldeans--is by far the most magnificent constellation in the heavens. Its form must be familiar to everyone who has attentively considered the nocturnal sky. It resembles the rude outline of a gigantic human figure. By the Greek mythologists, Orion was supposed to be a celebrated hunter, superior to the rest of mankind in strength and stature, whose mighty deeds entitled him after death to the honours of an apotheosis. The Orientals imagined him to be a huge giant who, Titan-like, had warred against God, and was therefore bound in chains to the firmament of heaven; and some authors have conjectured that this notion is the origin of the history of Nimrod, who, according to Jewish tradition, instigated the descendants of Noah to build the Tower of Babel. The constellation of Orion is composed of four very bright stars, forming a quadrilateral, higher than it is broad, with three equidistant stars in a diagonal line in the middle. The two upper stars, called Betelgeux and Bellatrix, form the shoulders; in the middle, immediately above these, are three small, dim stars, close to each other, forming the cheek or head. These stars are distinctly visible only on a very clear night; and this circumstance may have given rise to the old fable that (Enopion, King of Chios,--whose daughter Orion demanded in marriage,--put out his eyes as he lay asleep on the seashore, and that he recovered his sight by gazing upon the rising sun from the summit of a neighbouring hill. The constellation is therefore represented by the poets, as groping with blinded eyes all round the heavens in search of the sun. The feet are composed of two very bright stars, called Rigel and Saiph; the three stars in the middle are called the belt or girdle, and from them depends a stripe of smaller stars, forming the hunter’s sword. The whole constellation, containing seventeen stars to the naked eye, but exhibiting seventy-eight in an ordinary telescope, occupies a large and conspicuous position in the southern heavens, below the Pleiades; and is often visible, owing to the brightness and magnitude of its stars, when all other constellations, with the exception of the Plough, are lost in the mistiness of night. In this country it is seen only a short space above the horizon, along whose ragged outline of dark hills its starry feet may be observed for many nights in the winter, walking in solitary grandeur. It attains its greatest elevation in January and February, and disappears altogether during the summer and autumn months. In Mesopotamia it occupies a position nearer the zenith, and therefore is more brilliant and striking in appearance. Night after night it sheds down its rays with mystical splendour over the lonely solitudes through which the Euphrates flows, and where the tents of the patriarch of Uz once stood. Orion is not only the most striking and splendid constellation in the heavens, it is also one of the few clusters that are visible in all parts of the habitable world. The equator passes through the middle of it; the glittering stars of its belt being strung, like diamonds, on its invisible line. In the beginning of January, when it is about the meridian, we obtain the grandest display of stars which the sidereal heavens in this country can exhibit. The ubiquity of this constellation may have been one of the reasons why it was chosen to illustrate God’s argument with Job, in a book intended to be read universally. When the Bible reader of every clime and country can go out in the appropriate season, and find in his own sky the very constellation and direct his gaze to the very peculiarity in it, to which the Creator alluded in His mysterious converse with Job, he has no longer a vague, indefinite idea in his mind, but is powerfully convinced of the reality of the whole circumstance, while his feelings of devotion are deepened and intensified. The three bright stars which constitute the girdle or bands of Orion never change their form; they preserve the same relative position to each other, and to the rest of the constellation, from year to year, and age to age. They afford to us one of the highest types of immutability in the midst of ceaseless changes. (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)

Interrogations humble pride

The probability 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 hunting, of music, of husbandry, of medicine, 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 an interrogation point rightly thrust. Christ used it mightily. 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 question. The empire of ignorance is so much vaster than the empire of knowledge that after the most learned and elaborate disquisition upon any subject of sociology or theology the plainest man may ask a question that will make the wisest speechless. After the profoundest assault upon Christianity the humblest disciple may make an inquiry that would silence a Voltaire. Called upon, as we all are at times, to defend our holy religion, instead of argument that can always be answered by argument, let us try the power of interrogation. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

The “sweet influences” of life

My text called Job and calls us to consider “the sweet influences.” We put too much emphasis upon the acidities of life, upon the irritations of life, upon the disappointments of life. Ammianus Marcellinus said that Chaldea was, in olden times, overrun with lions, but many of them lost their power because the great swamps produced many gnats, that would get into the eyes of the lions, and the lions, to free themselves of the gnats, would claw their own eyes out, and then starve. And in our time many a lion has been overcome by a gnat. The little, stinging annoyances of life keep us from appreciating the sweet influences. And how many of these last there are t Sweet influences of home, sweet influences of the wife of friendship, of our holy religion. Of all the sweet influences that have ever blessed the earth those that radiate from Christ are the sweetest. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Influence cannot be restrained

You are in no danger of overestimating your influence upon others. The real danger lies in the other direction. You influence others and mould their characters and destinies for time and for eternity far more extensively than you imagine. The whole truth in this matter might flatter you; it would certainly astonish you if you could once grasp it in its full proportions. It was a remark of Samuel J. Mills that “No young man should live in the nineteenth century without making his influence felt around the globe.” At first thought that seems a heavy contract for any young man to take. As we come to apprehend more clearly the immutable laws of God’s moral universe, we find that this belting of the globe by His influence is just what every responsible being does--too often, alas, unconsciously. You have seen the telephone, that wonderful instrument which so accurately transmits the sound of the human voice so many miles. How true it is that all these wonderful modern inventions are only faint reflections of some grand and eternal law of the moral universe of God! God’s great telephone--I say it reverently--is everywhere, filling earth and air and sea, and sending round the world with unerring accuracy, and for a blessing or a curse, every thought of your heart, every word that falls thoughtfully or thoughtlessly from your lips, and every act you do. It is time you awoke to the conviction that, whether you would have it so or not, your influence is worldwide for good or for evil. Which? (Peter Pounder.)

Moral gravitation

is as powerful as material gravitation, and if, as my text teaches, and science confirms, the Pleiades, which are 422,000 miles from our earth, influence the earth, we ought to be impressed with how we may be influenced by others far away back, and how we may influence others far down the future. That rill away up amongst the Alleghenies, so thin that you think it will hardly find its way down the rocks, becomes the mighty Ohio rolling into the Mississippi and roiling into the sea. That word you utter, that deed you do, may augment itself as the years go by, until rivers cease to roll, and the ocean itself shall be dried up in the burning of the world. Paul, who was all the time saying important things, said nothing more startlingly suggestive than when he declared, “None of us liveth or dieth to himself.” Words, thoughts, actions, have an eternity of flight. As Job could not bind the sweet influences of the Seven Stars, as they were called, so we cannot arrest or turn aside the good projected long ago. Those influences were started centuries before our cradle was rocked, and will reign centuries after our graves are dug. Oh, it is a tremendous thing to live. (T. De Witt Talmage.)