Twilight and Dawn; Or, Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation Part 16

But I wanted to tell you about the last day of Frank's life in that poor room in the noisy street. He was very weak and tired, and could not bear to talk much; but his father sat by his bed, and read to him the last chapter of Revelation. When he came to the words, "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord G.o.d giveth them light," he stopped and said as well as he could, for his heart was sore at the thought of the parting which was drawing so near, "Frank, my boy, this is your last night; you are going where there is no night." It was even so. Before morning came, Frank's redeemed spirit had gone to be "present with the Lord."

Do you know a hymn beginning

"Oh, they've reached the sunny sh.o.r.e, Over there!"?

One of the verses comes to my mind when I think of those last words which Frank's father read to him. The hymn speaks of the "street of s.h.i.+ning gold over there," and then goes on--

"Oh, they need no lamp at night, Over there!

For their Saviour is their light, And the day is always bright, Over there!"

There will be no need of the sun to measure the time when that eternal day has come; but now you know that his presence or absence makes our days longer or shorter. In summer, when he is sometimes above the horizon for sixteen hours, what beautiful long, light days we have! But in winter, when he rises late and sets early, our days are sometimes not more than half the length of the longest summer day.

I remember we had rather a long talk upon a difficult subject, after we had considered how the sun measures the length of our days. We were speaking of the verse which tells us that G.o.d said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years."

I am afraid I did not make this clear to the children, for it is difficult to understand how the sun makes one season different from another; but I will just tell you a little about it, and you may learn more by-and-by.

You know that there are four seasons: the Spring, when the gra.s.s begins to shoot forth its fresh blades, and the trees unfold their buds; the Summer, when the roses bloom and the fruits ripen; the Autumn, when the corn and fruits are gathered in; and the Winter, when the earth rests, often closely wrapped in a soft mantle of snow.

All these changes pa.s.s before our eyes. But if we wish to understand how it is that the sun is the cause of one season being so different from another, we must remember that as the earth takes its yearly journey round the sun it changes its place, getting nearer to him or farther away from him. In our summer-time the part of the earth where we live is turned more towards the sun, and so gets more of the light and heat which have their home there, than at any other time. Our winter days are so short, because at that time we are turned from the sun more than at any other. And in the spring and autumn we are not so much turned away from him as we are in winter, nor so directly in front of him as we are in summer.

You must remember also what you learnt about the motion of the earth, and how things are not what they seem. You know that the earth turns round once a day, though it _seems_ as if it stood still, and the sky, with its sun and moon and stars, turned round.

When you watch the rising sun, remember that, though it seems actually to climb the sky, and to mount higher and higher as the day goes on; and then, when it is setting, to go slowly down, down, behind the far away hills or the s.h.i.+ning waves--it is all seeming. Just as, when you are going along in a fast train, the fields and trees and sheep all seem to be in motion, flying past you; yet you know that _you_ are moving as the train moves, and flying past _them_; so it is not the sun moving across the sky which makes day and night, but these changes are caused by the movement of our earth, as she spins round upon herself like a great top.

You remember that Galileo was accused of denying the truth of the word of G.o.d, because the Bible speaks in many places of the sun _"arising"_ and _"going down."_ His accusers forgot that G.o.d does not teach us astronomy, but speaks in His word of things as they appear to our eyes.

We have seen that our earth, with her faithful companion the moon, is not only the traveller round the sun; he is the great centre, and around him all the moving-stars, or planets, travel in their varied paths. But the moon has a little journey of her own to take besides this long one, for she travels round the earth, and takes nearly thirty days on her way.

You know that the moon is always changing; you can never see it for two or three nights quite the same, but it seems each night a little smaller or a little larger than when you last saw it. When you looked out of the windows the other night, just before you went to bed, it was a very young moon indeed that you saw--not more than two days old, as we say in reckoning the moon's age. How small and thin it was--just like a curving rim of pale light upon the dark sky; but as you watch this crescent--or growing--moon, you will see it constantly getting larger and brighter, until from being half-moon it has become full-moon, for it faces the sun, and is bright all over that part which is turned towards you. When we speak of the "face of the moon," we mean that side which is always turned towards us. But why does "the gentle moon" always turn the same face to us? Astronomers tell us that it is because she also turns slowly round on her own axis while she is travelling round the earth. _How_ this is, I don't think I can explain to you: but it is true that we can see only one side of the moon, that side which catches the sunlight, and that hardly anything is known about the other side.

Next time the beautiful moonlight nights come, remember, as you watch all these changes, that this "waxing" and "waning" of the moon comes to pa.s.s, not because she really changes her shape, but because, as she goes round the earth, we see sometimes more, sometimes less of the bright part which is lit up by the sun. The moon is dark in herself, like our earth; not like the sun, and those stars which s.h.i.+ne by their own glorious light; if she had light of her own, it would be full moon every night; but all that soft brightness which makes everything look so beautiful in the quiet moonlight, really comes from the sun. When the sun has gone down, as it were, into the sea, or has disappeared behind some distant mountain, how do you know that there _is_ any sun? Look at the moon "walking in brightness," and remember that it is only as the light of the absent sun falls upon her and is reflected from her face (just as Chrissie said he had often seen the light of the setting sun thrown back from the windows) that she can s.h.i.+ne at all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YON CRESCENT MOON, A GOLDEN BOAT, HANGS DIM BEHIND THE TREE, O!"]

Little children love the moon. I have seen a baby who could hardly speak, clasp her tiny hands and call out, "Have it! have it!" as she saw it glow like a lamp behind the trees; and we do not lose this love as we grow older.

When we remember that the sun is four hundred times farther away from us than the moon, it makes our earth's silent companion seem very near by comparison; but still you will not think the journey to the moon a short one, when I tell you that if you could travel through the fields of air, rus.h.i.+ng along in a fast train, never stopping day or night, it would be eight months before you got to your journey's end. And when you did get there you would have arrived at a more desolate country than you ever dreamed of--a place much like what we might imagine our earth would have become if there were no water, no air (for if there is air, it is so thin that no creature like any we know could breathe it), no greenness or beauty, though there might be scenery grand in its awfulness.

Have you ever looked through a telescope at the moon? I have. Last summer I was staying at a seaside town, and one evening I noticed a crowd gathered on the sands. As I came nearer, I found that a man was showing the moon and planets through his telescope to any who wished to see what they could see.

He was selling peeps through the telescope, which was a pretty good-sized one, at a penny a peep. Now, though I had read a great deal about the moon, and had seen in books photographs of what are called lunar landscapes, I had never once had a chance of looking at her face through anything but a bit of smoked gla.s.s, at the time of an eclipse.

So I paid my penny, and when my turn came I stood upon the stool and had my peep. I can only tell you that the moon did not look nearly so beautiful to me through the showman's little telescope as she did when my peep was over, and I saw her once more sailing through the deep blue of the sky, the queen of night indeed.

I had read that astronomers had found that the nearer their great telescopes brought them to the moon, the more like a barren rock she became, and when I had this nearer view of her than ever before, she looked to me just as she had been described, like "a burnt-out cinder."

You know the shadowy figure which you can see, sometimes more distinctly than at others, on the face of the moon (when I was a child I was told that it was "the man in the moon"!), this appearance is caused by deep valleys, or by the shadows of terrible mountain peaks, which were once volcanoes, throwing out smoke and lava. While I was looking through his telescope, the showman pointed out to me two of the highest of these peaks, and told me their names, that is the names which the astronomers had given them; for these rocky heights have been marked upon maps of the moon, just as the Welsh mountains are marked upon the map of England and Wales. Upon these maps we can find Mount Tycho, Mount Ga.s.sendi, Mount Copernicus--all of them extinct volcanoes--and the name of Apennines has been given to a vast mountain-chain; and the heights of all these mountain peaks have been ascertained by measuring the shadows cast by them. There are oceans and seas also marked upon these moon-maps, but they were named at a time when it was not yet known that they were great plains; for, as I told you, no trace of water, cloud, or even mist has been discovered there.

Are you sorry to hear that the moon which looks so lovely to our sight, is found by those who can get a nearer view to be such a weird and desolate place that it seemed as if only death reigned there? I know I was, when first I read about it, and saw a picture of the moon, and wondered at its bare mountain peaks, with their rugged craters and dreadful precipices, and its "Ocean of Storms" and "Lake of Death," as two of the sea-like plains have been called. I wondered how it could have become, as it were, like a dead earth; but this is one of the things which G.o.d has not told us about.

What He _has_ told us is that He made this "lesser light to rule the night," and as she moves over the sky in her calm silent beauty, she speaks to us of His goodness in giving not only the sun to rule by day, but the moon and stars to rule by night, those wonderful stars whose silent voice is ever making known His power, and telling of His glory; as the poet Addison has beautifully said--

"For ever singing as they s.h.i.+ne, The hand that made us is Divine!"

This is a long chapter, but we have been speaking of a vast subject, and before I close it, I want to refer to two wonderful things about the stars, to which G.o.d draws our attention in His word. He tells us that "one star differeth from another star in glory," and astronomers have discovered that there was a deeper truth than they at first imagined underlying these words.

But what I specially want to speak of for a moment is the number of these heavenly bodies, and their distance from us.

In the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, two verses are placed close together, the one speaking of the power and greatness of G.o.d, the other of His tenderness and compa.s.sion towards His creatures.

"He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds."

"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by names."

And in the Book of Job we read--

"Is not G.o.d in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!"

There are wonderful things to learn about the colour of the stars, some yellow like our own sun, others of a dazzling whiteness, and others giving out beautiful rainbow-coloured light. But these wonders you must study by-and-by; just now we will speak first of their amazing number, as they appear to our eyes when by the help of the telescope we peer deeper and deeper into the blue depths of the sky. When alluding to the stars in a general way we include the seven planets--one of them our own earth--which move round our sun, and are as it were so near home that five of them may be seen without the telescope--though not more than three are visible at the same time--and also those myriads of "fixed stars," all of which are suns, many of them much larger than our own glorious sun, and removed from our ken by distances which our minds refuse to grasp.

I have been told that the number of stars which can be seen with the naked eye is five thousand, but that only half that number are visible at the same time.

If you ask me how many can be seen with the help of the telescope, I cannot tell you, because more powerful gla.s.ses are constantly being made, only to discover worlds beyond worlds, ever new and more distant, strewn in s.p.a.ce like golden dust, while stars. .h.i.therto invisible through the most powerful telescope can now be made to leave the impress of their rays upon the photographic plate--so that a great astronomer of our time can show us pictures of "invisible stars."

G.o.d who made them, G.o.d who has appointed to each its own path through the heavens, and also guides and controls each world and system of worlds in its course, so that in all His universe there is no jar, no clash, no being before or after time--He alone can tell their number.

And when we consider their height, their amazing distance from us and from, each other, the wonder only grows.

If we think of the worlds hung in s.p.a.ce like our own, our nearest neighbour among them, the "red planet Mars," is thirty-five millions of miles away, while the grand planet Saturn--the "ringed world"--though lighted up by our sun, is so distant, so "_high_," that the ever-hasting traveller whom we imagined some time ago rus.h.i.+ng through s.p.a.ce at the speed of an express train, would take two thousand years on his endless journey. Yet Saturn's rays actually come to our eyes from this vast infinity of distance--while the light of the nearest star--and you know we say "quick as light"--takes more than four years to reach us.

These things, so far beyond our scanty thoughts to conceive, are indeed too great for us, but how simply the Bible speaks of them--

"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth."

"By His spirit HE hath garnished the heavens."

"It is HE that buildeth His storeys in the heavens."

In the next chapter you will read a true story which I told my scholars as a reward for their attention while we had been speaking on a very difficult subject. I hope you will be as much interested in John Britt as they were.

Here are some beautiful verses, speaking of the way in which "the heavens declare the glory of G.o.d," and my story shows how they may "utter forth a glorious voice" to ears closed to every earthly sound.

"The s.p.a.cious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, The spangled heavens, a s.h.i.+ning frame, Their great original proclaim.

Th' unwearied sun, from day to day, Doth his Creator's power display.

And publishes to every land The work of an Almighty Hand.

"Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the list'ning earth, Repeats the story of her birth: While all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.

"What though, in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice nor sound Amidst their radient orbs be found; In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice; For ever singing as they s.h.i.+ne-- The hand that made us is Divine."

ADDISON