Let the river run
let all the dreamers wake the nation
Come, the New Jerusalem.
-- Carly Simon, Let the River Run (The New Jerusalem)

REVELATION

21:2     And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem....

21:16   And the city lieth foursquare.... The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

From the Liberty Harbor Foursquare Church website:

"Foursquare" is a Biblical term used to describe the tabernacle in the Book of Exodus, the Temple of the Lord in Ezekiel 40:47, and Heaven, as described in the Book of Revelation. Early in the 20th century, the term "foursquare" was often used to describe something or someone that was highly respected. It meant "solid", "balanced", "true". The term "Foursquare Gospel" was given as an inspiration to the denomination's founder,Aimee Semple McPherson, during an evangelistic campaign in Oakland, California in 1922. It represents that which is equally balanced on all sides, established and enduring.

From Frequently Asked Questions about the novels of Sinclair Lewis:

...Although almost all of [Elmer Gantry's] sermons seem to be variations on

"Love is the morning and the evening star,"

he is able to be successful because he tells people what they want to hear, even though he does not believe it himself. He starts out as a Baptist minister, but is forced to leave after an affair with Lulu Baines, the deacon’s daughter, is exposed. He later becomes an evangelist with Sister Sharon Falconer, an Aimee Semple McPherson type of preacher. When that affair ends in fire and calamity, he becomes a Methodist preacher with a self-conferred doctorate. The novel ends as he prays for the United States to be a “moral nation” and simultaneously admires the legs of a new choir singer.

Elmer Gantry was made into a movie in 1960 with Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry, Jean Simmons as Sharon Falconer, and Shirley Jones as Lulu Baines. Both Lancaster and Jones won Academy Awards for their roles, and Richard Brooks won for Best Adapted Screenplay.

For a less religious discourse on the morning and the evening star, see "On What There Is," a philosophical essay by Willard Van Orman Quine.

Here is a quote from Quine's essay, taken from the website "Quine and the Ontological Question"--

"The following example from Frege will [illustrate the difference between meaning and naming]. The phrase 'Evening Star' names a certain large physical object of spherical form, which is hurtling through space some scores of millions of miles from here. The phrase 'Morning Star' names the same thing, as was probably first established by some observant Babylonian. But the two phrases cannot be regarded as having the same meaning; otherwise that Babylonian could have dispensed with his observations and contented himself with reflecting on the meaning of words. The meanings, then, being different from one another, must be other than the named object, which is one and the same in both objects."

June 25, 2002 shc759