it round. We are told that the sun, too, has an atmosphere--a colour-globe,
as it is called, because it is believed to be not air, but fiery gas. Then,
outside this colour-globe, is something very lovely; that corona, or crown,
of silvery light, which can be seen only during an eclipse of the sun. But
what is an eclipse?
When the moon, which has no light of her own, passes directly between the
earth and the sun, so as to hide his face from us, we say there is a solar
eclipse, or obscuring of the sun's light. When the earth comes directly
between the moon and the sun, instead of the sun's light falling upon the
moon, _she_ is eclipsed by the dark shadow of the earth passing over her
face. I think you may have watched an eclipse of the moon: a solar eclipse
is a much rarer sight, and there is something awful about it: as the
darkness deepens, the stars begin to shine out, and it seems so much like
night that the cocks and hens have been known to go to roost at midday.
It is then, when the bright, dazzling face of the sun is hidden, that his
lovely crown is seen, as a ring of soft light appearing all round the dark
face of the moon.
Now let us think of some of the things that this wonderful Star of Day does
for us. In the first place, he is the great source of light and heat, as he
shines, not for us alone, but upon all the other planets--those which are
so near to him as to get more heat than we could bear, and those which are
so far away that it seems to us as if they must be very cold indeed.
But, if we leave these distant worlds and think of our own, how wonderful
it is to know that, as we learnt when speaking of Light itself, not from
the sun alone, but from every star, waves of light and heat, like tiny
messengers from them to us, are always speeding on their noiseless way.
They travel to us through space, or rather through something finer than air
or water, which fills all the room between us and them--for no place in the
universe is really empty.
You may be surprised to hear that these messengers come from the stars by
day as well as by night; but remember that they are _always_ shining in
their places in the sky. We cannot see the starlight waves while the sun's
great light is shining upon us; but you know how beautifully they shine on
clear nights, when there is neither sunlight nor moonlight to quench their
soft beams.
But after all, the stars are so far away that we must think specially of
our own star, the sun, as the source of light and heat; he also makes for
us all form and colour, and gives us the pictures drawn by his light which
we call photographs, and which make us know something of people we have
never seen, and places which we may never visit.
You remember that sunlight also helps the plants to sift the air, so that
they take from it the part that suits _them_, and leave behind the part
that suits _us_--that precious oxygen which is so necessary for all animal
life.
Then we must not forget the work done by the heat-waves. These are called
"dark," because they cannot be seen. They not only strike upon the land,
waking up the hidden seed, and warming it into life, but they are the great
water-carriers. When we were talking about the clouds we learnt that from
every wet place, as well as from the seas, lakes, and rivers, water is
constantly being drawn up, so that we can see it again in the fleecy clouds
which float across the sky, and again when it comes down in the showers
which water the earth--the tiny heat-waves are the messengers which perform
this work of evaporation.
When we were speaking about the world of water, we learnt that the moon is
the chief cause of the tides, by whose constant ebb and flow the ocean and
rivers are purified; in like manner the sun, by causing the winds to blow,
keeps the air fresh and pure; but this is a subject rather beyond us. We
can, however, remember that one more thing which the sun does for us is to
tell us the time. God gave him "to rule the day ... and to divide the light
from the darkness," and he marks how long our day is to be, "keeping time,"
as May's verse says, all the world over--for he is the great clock which
tells the hours and the days--a clock which never needs to be wound up,
and which we can trust, for it never goes wrong. And he is a constant
silent witness to us of the power and the goodness of God, as "day unto day
uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech
nor language; their voice is not heard"--but "the heavens declare the glory
of God ... in them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun." If, as we look at
our watches, we are certain that men must have made them, how sure is it
that God made this great time-keeper, light-giver, and life-sustainer--this
mighty magnet that guides and controls the world of which it is the
glorious centre!
The sun "divides the light from the darkness" by being seen by us or hidden
from our sight. If you watch, after the sun has risen in the morning--and
you _can_ watch him in the winter, when you are often up before he is--you
will see that he seems to climb the sky, always mounting higher and higher,
until he is shining right above your head. Then, as the day goes on, and
it gets towards afternoon, he seems to go down, down, until he sinks into
the far away place where the earth and sky seem to meet, and we see him no
more. It is while he is hidden from sight in the far west, behind that line
which we call the horizon, that night wraps us in its deep shade; for the
sun, the day-star is, gone.
I wonder whether you have ever thought of this darkness, which would be so
dreadful did it last long, as one of the blessings which God has given us.
The night is the time of sleep and rest for animals and plants, as well as
for weary men and women, and children who can get tired even with their
play. God watches over you while you sleep--"the darkness and the light are
both alike" to Him--and you get up in the morning fresh, and ready for a
new day.
It is while we are in this world, which is a place of toil, and labour, and
sorrow, that we need the rest and quiet which the still, dark night brings;
but God has said that there is a rest for His people, His Sabbath, which
can never be broken; and when He speaks, in the last book of the Bible, of
the bright, golden city, He says, "there shall be no night there."
Not long ago a. boy was dying. He had been ill a long time, and all through
the hot summer nights he could not sleep, for his weary cough kept him
waking. Frank had not much to cheer him, for his house was in a noisy
street, where the carts were constantly rattling to and fro; and very
little fresh cool air found its way to the room at the top storey, where he
lay on his bed, often suffering and always very tired.
Once, when someone brought him some flowers, he was so delighted that he
buried his poor pale face in them, and seemed as if he would drink in their
sweetness.
"Oh, I do love roses!" he said; and the flowers came as God's own gift to
him, in that poor place where nothing green was growing. But better than
the flowers was the message which came with them.
The lady who sent them from her garden was sure that Frank knew the Lord
Jesus Christ as his own Saviour, and that he was on his way to be with Him,
and so she sent him those precious words which He spoke to His disciples at
Jerusalem, but which belong also to every one who is a child of God through
faith in Him--"The Father Himself loveth you"--this was the message which
was sent with the flowers; a beautiful message, was it not?
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 God
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 shore,
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 shining 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 God 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 grass 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 pass 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 shining 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
God, because the Bible speaks in many places of the sun _"arising"_ and
_"going down."_ His accusers forgot that God 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 pass,
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 shine 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 shine at all.
[Illustration: "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,
rushing 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 glass, 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 Gassendi, 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 God 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 shine,
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 God 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 God, the other of
His tenderness and compassion 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 God 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 glasses are constantly being made, only to
discover worlds beyond worlds, ever new and more distant, strewn in space
like golden dust, while stars hitherto 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."
God who made them, God 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 space 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 rushing through space 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 God," and my story shows how they may "utter forth a
glorious voice" to ears closed to every earthly sound.
"The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
The spangled heavens, a shining 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 shine--
The hand that made us is Divine."
ADDISON
STORY OF A DEAF BOY WHO HEARD THE SUN PROCLAIM THE GLORY OF GOD.