SUN, MOON, AND STARS.
"_When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained: what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?_"--PSALM viii. 3, 4.
"_The day is Thine, the night also is Thine: Thou hast prepared the light and the sun.... Thou hast made summer and winter._"--PSALM lxxiv. 16, 17.
"_Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun._"--ECCLESIASTES xi. 7.
"_One star differeth from another star in glory._"--1 CORIN. xv. 41.
When we had got as far in our reading of the first chapter of Genesis as the fourteenth verse, we noticed that it is very like the third; for both verses begin with those wonderful words which none but G.o.d could say--"Let there be."
But there is a great difference between the "light" of the third verse and the "lights" of verses fourteen and sixteen. The sun is called "the greater light," and the moon, which is so very much smaller, "the lesser light"; but in the language in which this part of the Bible was first written, these two lamps which give us light are called by a name which means, not the light itself, but that which holds it; not, as we might say, the candle which gives light as it burns but the candlestick in which it is set.
Let us read again carefully what G.o.d has told us about His work on the FOURTH DAY, and I think we shall see, as we noticed in the chapter on "Light," that we are not told that it was upon that Day that the sun and moon were _created_.
"And 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. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And G.o.d made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also."
You remember that in the whole of this chapter which speaks of G.o.d"s work in creation, the word "created" is used only on three occasions, though in the verse which tells of the creation of man, it is three times repeated (verse 27). And now I want you to turn to the hundred and fourth Psalm, and notice the verses which speak of the Days of Creation: you will see that light is spoken of in the second verse, and in the nineteenth we read--
"He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down."
Those who know the Hebrew language tell us that the word "appointed" in this verse is the very same as that which has been translated "made" in the sixteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis--so that we may read, "G.o.d appointed two great lights," just as in the eighth Psalm we read, "The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained."
We have seen that G.o.d could give light without the sun or moon;--an old writer quaintly says that before the sun was made "the whole heaven was our sun"--but He was pleased upon this Day of His creation to command the light, which He had called out of the darkness, to gather round the sun, so that he might, as the great light-bearer in all his splendour "rule the day"; and to cause light from that glorious sun to fall upon the moon, so that she, with her silvery shining, might "rule the night"--both sun and moon thus giving "light upon the earth."
May is fond of repeating a verse, which I daresay you know, about a little girl who, when it was too dark for her to see any more, folded up her work and put away her playthings with a "good-night, good-night" to them; for the time for working and playing had come to an end. "But," the verse goes on--
"She did not say to the sun "good-night,"
Though she saw him set like a ball of light; For she knew he had G.o.d"s time to keep All over the world, while others sleep."
Yes; this wonderful "ball of light"--so bright that the brightest light we know of looks dull when held up before its dazzling face--is ever, night and day, sending out rays of light and heat, like streams from an overflowing fountain, always making daylight somewhere. When you lie down in your bed, and settle yourself to sleep sound till morning, your little cousins in Australia and New Zealand are just beginning to sit up in theirs, and to rub their eyes, and think it will soon be breakfast time; and in the evening, when their day is done, yours will be just beginning again.
If there were any part of the world upon which the sun never shone, how cold and dark and desolate that forsaken spot would be! If no waves of heat warmed the earth, not a seed could spring up; no plant could live, no tree bear fruit, no flower lift up its head to the kindly light and show its fair colours; for do you not remember we learnt that the colours of flowers all come from the sunlight? Without the sun, the green earth would be changed into a frozen desert, with nothing living or moving upon it.
In old times the clever Greeks, who knew nothing of the G.o.d who made this wonderful star--for the sun is really a star, and the thousands of stars which we see on clear nights are suns, some larger and some smaller than our sun--worshipped it as the G.o.d Helios; and the Grecian philosopher who first ventured to say it was not so was tried for his life at Athens for his impiety; yet even he saw nothing in this wonderful light-bearer but a red-hot stone, half as big as his own country. If you have learnt better, if you know that "to us there is but one G.o.d, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him," you can think how good that gracious G.o.d has been in not leaving the world in the dark and cold, but giving this great light to shine upon us, and to cheer us by his warmth. For though the sun is so very far away, "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof"; every little leaf, every tiny creature that creeps upon the ground, lives and grows in the life-giving rays of the sun, and would perish without them. Have you ever stopped to think of what is more wonderful than this?
G.o.d, who made the sun, is Love, as the text you know so well, tells us; and His love is like His sun, always shining down upon you. All the love and kindness which you have known from the day when you came into the world, a little helpless creature, with "no language but a cry"; all this love which surrounds you and has made your life so happy and bright, comes from Him; for "love is of G.o.d," and "G.o.d is love."
But it is only when G.o.d turns our hearts to Himself, so that we can say that we have "known and believed" His love to us, that we can really thank Him for it. When one, who knew what it was to have had his own dark heart lighted up by this great love, was thinking of these things, he wrote some words which I am going to write down for you, for they deserve to be remembered.
"The creation of the sun," he says, "was a very glorious work; when G.o.d first rolled him flaming along the sky, he shed golden blessing on every sh.o.r.e. The change in spring is very wonderful; when G.o.d makes the faded gra.s.s revive, the dead trees put out green leaves, and the flowers appear on the earth. But far more glorious and wonderful is the conversion (that is, the turning to G.o.d) of the soul. It is the creation of a sun that is to shine for eternity; it is the spring of the soul that shall know no winter, the planting of a tree that shall bloom with eternal beauty in the paradise of G.o.d." McCheyne wrote like this because he knew that
"When this pa.s.sing world is done, When has sunk yon glaring sun,"
the spirit, that part of man which can never come to an end of its life, will still be living somewhere; and that those only who have been turned to G.o.d, and are His children by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, will live with Him all through that great _for ever_ which will go on when sun and moon and all that we can see may have pa.s.sed away.
And now, before I try to tell you a very little about the sun, I should like to know whether you have ever learnt any astronomy. My children thought it a hard name, but its meaning is beautiful, for it is only the Greek way of saying, "the law of the stars." Astronomy is the science which teaches us about the heavenly bodies, as the sun, moon, and stars are sometimes called; and all that we can learn about them is very wonderful and interesting, so that the more we know, the more we want to know. But the pleasantest way for you to learn would be if someone would talk to you a little, especially about the stars, and take you out of doors on clear nights, and show you some of those which are best known, so that in time you would learn to look for them yourself; _that_ would be a delightful way of beginning to learn.
I remember that I had a great wish to know about the different constellations, or groups of stars; I wanted to know where to find Orion, with his seven brilliant stars, and those other seven stars which form the group called Charles"s Wain; from an idea that they are so placed as to give a rough sketch of a waggon and three horses; and the wonderful cl.u.s.ter of the Pleiades--for I had heard of all these constellations; but I did not like the trouble of learning about them in difficult books. One day I met a gentleman who was very fond of sailing about in his yacht, and I thought he would teach me all about the stars, for I had heard that sailors knew them well. But, to my disappointment, I found that my new friend, though he was very kind to me, was not able to answer my questions; he said he did not know much about the stars, and that it was in the old times, before ships were steered by the compa.s.s, that sailors learned so much from watching them; though the moon considered in reference to the fixed stars is of very great importance as enabling them to ascertain their position.
Though it is a long time ago, I can remember how surprised I was when I first understood that the sun was a star, and that there are other stars very much like him, but most of them so very far from us that it is not possible to measure their distance. We do know how far our sun--the Star of Day, as he is sometimes called--is from us. Perhaps it may help you a little if I tell you that the astronomers say that if the sun was as far away from us as the nearest of these stars, he would appear but a point of light; but I think you will best understand how great the distance is if I tell you that a train, rushing along at full speed, as you see the express go by, and never resting, day or night, would take two hundred and ten years to reach him.
We cannot be surprised that very little is known certainly about a star so very far off, and yet nearer to us than any of the little points of light which you see so thickly sown over the sky; but we know that he is a great globe, like our earth, only twelve hundred thousand times as large--as much larger, I told the children when we were having our lesson in astronomy, as May"s curly head was larger than the little blue bead which I put upon it.
But this great globe is unlike the earth in one respect; for while _it_ is in itself quite dark, the sun which is used in the Bible as an emblem of G.o.d Himself shines by his own glorious light, and though he is believed to be made of the same materials as our earth, it is likely that they are in a state of very great heat.
Astronomers, who look at the sun through their wonderful telescopes, and so get much nearer to him than we can, tell us that we never see the sun himself; but that what we look at is the bright garment of light which is wrapped around him. They tell us also about great holes which sometimes appear in this bright covering; and they believe that they have actually seen, through these holes, the dark globe which is the real sun. These holes are called spots upon the sun, and very dark they look upon his bright face. The astronomers have long tried to find out what makes the sun-spots, and some of them now think that they are caused by furious winds which make great rents in this bright garment; for they tell us that there are sun-storms far more terrible than any storm that ever raged on sea or land.
It was while patiently watching the movement of these dark spots, through the little telescope which he had made and set up in Rome, that Galileo, nearly three hundred years ago, discovered that the sun moves round upon itself once during twenty-eight days, just as the earth turns round on herself once in twenty-four hours. But he lived in a time when it was believed that our earth was the centre of the universe, and that to say that it was only one of many planets moving round the sun was to deny the word of G.o.d; so to save his life, he pretended to give up what he knew to be true, and promised that he would never teach it again.
You remember that our earth has an atmosphere, a globe of air which wraps 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, pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 c.o.c.ks 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 s.p.a.ce, 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d ... 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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?