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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, 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.)

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

WEB: "Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loosen the cords of Orion?