Twilight and Dawn; Or, Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation Part 6

Because water is what is called transparent; it does not drink in the light, but lets the whole ray pa.s.s through it, as it pa.s.ses through the window-pane.

Now my lesson about colours is over, and I will tell you a story. I don't know whether you have as good a memory as some of my children had, and whether you remember my promise to explain to you about types. I daresay you have heard this word used in more than one way, and a word which has two meanings is rather a puzzle, is it not? I know how it used to set me thinking, when I heard someone say of a new book that it was pleasant to read, because of its good type; the word was not new to me, but I had heard it used in quite another way, the way in which it is used when we say of the serpent of bra.s.s lifted up by Moses in the wilderness, that the dying people might look at it and live--that it was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up upon the cross, as He Himself tells us it was. I daresay, if I could ask you, you would tell me that "type" used in this sense means a picture. That was what Chris and Sharley said, but it was because I wanted the little ones as well as the elder ones to understand that meaning of the word that I told them this story which a friend of mine once told me, and which I am sure you will like to hear,

We were saying just now how dark it would be in the deep mines, far underground, where no daylight can come, if it were not for the lamp which the miner carries with him wherever he goes. You may think you would rather like to go down a mine, just for once, if you were quite sure of being drawn up safely in the miners' cage, but I think you would not go down, if you thought you would have to stay even a whole week in such a dismal place.

My story is about a boy who had never been anywhere else, for he was born in a mine, and all his childhood, while other children were running about in the fields, looking up at the sky and breathing the fresh air which makes your cheeks so rosy, this little boy might turn his bright eyes this way and that, but no trees and houses and gay gardens were to be seen, far or near; for though he was five or six years old, no one had ever taken him up to the top of the mine and let him see the sky, and pick the daisies, and feel the warm suns.h.i.+ne. Poor boy, he was an orphan; both his parents had died before he could remember, and he had no one to care for him in the way in which your dear father and mother have always cared for you. At last one of the miners thought what a sad life it was for a child to be always down underground, and he began to take notice of the lonely little boy, who had no father and mother to love him and be good to him, and in the evenings, when his work was done, he coaxed the child to come on his knee, and used to tell him stories about that wonderful world above ground which he had never seen.

Do you not think it must have been very difficult for the kind miner to talk about the blue sky and the birds, and the gra.s.s and trees, and all the beautiful sights which most children know so well, to a child who had never seen any of them? It was indeed a difficult task, but you know there is an old saying about difficulties which tells us that "love will find out the way" to overcome them. The miner became very fond of his pet, and he found out a way of making the things of which he spoke seem real to him.

"He could show him pictures," you will say. That was what little May thought, and it would have been a very good way; but remember that there were no beautiful picture-books such as you have, down in the mine. How then could the miner teach his little friend about things above ground?

The only way in which he could do this was by means of things in the mine which the boy knew well, and had been used to all his life. So he would take his lamp, and talk to him about it, and show him how its tiny flame lighted up the darkness, and then he would point upwards, and say that far above ground there was a great lamp burning all day long, and giving light to the people who lived in that upper world.

Now you would say that a miner's lamp was a very poor picture of the glorious sun; still, this child saw that in the under world, where he lived, it made all the difference between light and darkness whether the lamps were s.h.i.+ning or not; so the lamp was like the sun, at least in that respect, though it was so poor and dim, and such a tiny likeness of it.

In the same way--when his kind friend made the little boy look at the pails of water which were swung down into the mine, and explained to him that above ground, in that new world which he had never seen, the water ran along quickly in great streams called rivers, and that there was a great, great world of water called the sea--though you might say that a pail of water in a mine, water which would soon be used for the miners to drink or for cooking their food, would give a very poor idea indeed of the mighty ocean with its rolling waves, where the whales spout, and the s.h.i.+ps sail on their long voyages; still, poor as it was, that water in the pail was a likeness, a type of the rivers and seas, was it not?

The children were interested in this little boy, and they wanted to know how long he lived in the mine, and what became of him afterwards; but this I could not tell them, for I never heard any more about him.

And now I want you not only to be interested in this story, but to remember why I have told it to you. You understand now, I am sure, that a type is a figure of something not present; of course, inferior to the thing it represents, as the miner's lamp was inferior to the sun, or a man's shadow on the wall is to the man himself, but giving a true idea to a certain degree.

The light given by the miner's lamp was bright when compared with that given by one little candle in a cottage window, and yet that feeble ray, quietly s.h.i.+ning night after night, served to guide many a fisherman safely past a dangerous rock, which juts out into the sea, on the coast of one of the Orkney Isles. It was a young girl, the daughter of a fisherman, who lighted that candle and kept it burning. Her father's boat had been wrecked one wild dark night on "Lonely Rock," and his body washed ash.o.r.e near his cottage. The girl, in her grief, remembered other poor fishermen, and when night came on she set a candle in the window, and watched it as she sat at her spinning wheel. She did not do this once, or twice, but through long years that coast was never without the light of her little candle, by which the men at sea might be warned off the neighbourhood of the terrible rock.

In order to pay for her candles, this lonely girl with a faithful heart spun every night an extra quant.i.ty of yarn--for she earned her own living by her spinning wheel--and so the tiny flame was kept alight, and she found comfort in her sorrow by doing what she could, in her unselfish care, for "those in peril on the sea."

The meanest candle is a luminary in its way, for it possesses light, while the most brilliant diamond has none in itself, and can give back only what it receives.

And now that our lesson about the FIRST DAY is finished, we must not forget what we have been learning.

G.o.d, the Creator, alone in creation,

(_a_) "said, Let there be light: and there was light." (_b_) "saw the light, that it was good." (_c_) "divided the light from the darkness."

(_d_) "called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night."

"And the evening and the morning were the first day."

The astronomer Proctor, in his beautiful book, _Flowers of the Sky_, says that "light is the first of all that exists in the universe." And we are, told that the action of light was necessary to prepare the way for all life; but this is far too great a subject for us to speak of in this little book. Let us remember that G.o.d saw the light, that it was good, and that He made the division between light and darkness in nature which He uses as a figure in the New Testament, where we read that the children of G.o.d are called "children of light," and "not of the night nor of darkness"; and where "goodness, and righteousness, and truth" are spoken of as "fruits of the light," in contrast with "unfruitful works of darkness."

In all that is around us in this world which G.o.d made, if we had eyes to see, we should find pictures of the things which are unseen, but yet very real; so in the Book which He has written, He has given us pictures. The description in verse 2 of the waste empty earth, with darkness upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of G.o.d moving over the face of the waters, is a picture of the condition of everyone born into this world.

In verse 3 we have a picture of G.o.d as Light s.h.i.+ning into the dark and empty heart.

In verse 4 we see that G.o.d separates good from evil.

Now I want you to think of these things, and as we have been talking of the words,

G.o.d is Light, G.o.d is Love,

I am going to copy for you a hymn, which speaks of them very beautifully; my children know it well, and often sing it.

"G.o.d in mercy sent His Son To a world by sin undone.

Jesus Christ was crucified; _'Twas for sinners Jesus died_.

Oh! the glory of the grace, s.h.i.+ning in the Saviour's face, Telling sinners from above, 'G.o.d is Light,' and 'G.o.d is Love.'

"Sin and death no more shall reign, Jesus died and lives again!

In the glory's highest height-- See Him G.o.d's supreme delight.

Oh! the glory of the grace, s.h.i.+ning in the Saviour's face, Telling sinners from above, 'G.o.d is Light,' and 'G.o.d is Love.'

"All who on His name believe, Everlasting life receive; Lord of all is Jesus now, Every knee to him must bow.

Oh! the glory of the grace, s.h.i.+ning in the Saviour's face, Telling sinners from above, 'G.o.d is Light,' and 'G.o.d is Love.'

"Christ the Lord will come again, He who suffered once will reign; Every tongue at last shall own, 'Worthy is the Lamb' alone.

Oh! the glory of the grace, s.h.i.+ning in the Saviour's face, Telling sinners from above, 'G.o.d is Light,' and 'G.o.d is Love.'"

H. K. BURLINGHAM.

THE SECOND DAY.

THE OCEAN OF AIR.

"_Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge?... Hast thou with Him spread out the sky?_"--JOB x.x.xvii. 16-18.

"_When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compa.s.s upon the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep._"--PROVERBS viii. 27, 28.

"_Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span?_"--ISAIAH xl. 12.

In reading these beautiful verses, let us remember that in the second of them it is the Lord Jesus Christ who says of that time when G.o.d prepared the heavens, "I was there." And now, as we are going to think about what G.o.d did on the SECOND DAY of Creation, I want you not only very carefully to read those verses in the first chapter of Genesis which tell us about it (verses 6-9), but to keep your Bible open at the place, so that you may be able to refer to them constantly.

When we had read them together, my children noticed that in these verses we find once more three words which are used to tell us about the work of G.o.d upon the FIRST DAY. You see these words, do you not?

"G.o.d said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters."

"G.o.d divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament."

"G.o.d called the firmament Heaven."

And there is one word which has not been used before: "And G.o.d made the firmament."

It is quite simple to see this, but I daresay you want to know, as all the children--even the elder ones--did, the meaning of one very uncommon word which we find in each of these verses. "What does 'firmament' mean?" they said.

I told them that the word conveys the idea of something firm and strong and steadfast; and then I asked Sharley, who has a reference Bible, to look in the margin, and tell me what word she could find there which might be used instead of this uncommon one. She found, as you will find if there are references in your Bible, that the word is there translated "expansion."

And what does that mean?

You can understand something spread out wide, can you not?