Читать книгу Twilight and Dawn; Or, Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation - Caroline Pridham - Страница 14

"Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?"—JOB xxxviii. 19.

"He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him."—DANIEL ii, 22.

"God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."—2 COR. iv, 6.

I want you to notice, in the beautiful verses which speak of "light," that God does not at first tell us anything about Himself. He speaks to us of what He did when in the beginning He created the heaven and the earth, and of what He said at the time when the earth lay in darkness, buried beneath the waters. In the midst of the silence and darkness a voice was heard, the voice of God, "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." This we read in the first page of God's Book; but it is very near its end that God makes it known that the One who made the light, the One at whose word light came from darkness, is Himself Light. It is His very Nature.

"God is light." Now we learn from God's Word that there are two kinds of light, and two kinds of darkness; let us talk a little about this.

We can well understand one kind of darkness, because we can see it: and we know it is caused by the absence of light. It grows dark when the sun, which makes our day, has set to us, and the night has come to wrap us round, as it were, in a curtain of shade that we may sleep quietly. It is dark too, not only by night, but all the day long in the deep caverns where the miner must carry his lamp to light up those dismal places where the sun never shines. This darkness, like that which rested upon the face of the deep before God spoke that word which brought the light, is caused by there being no light, and as soon as the light comes the darkness goes. The other kind of darkness we cannot see: it has to do, not with places, but with people, and we read about it very often in the Bible. It is that dreadful kind of darkness which has come through sin, and has settled down upon the heart of every one of us. This darkness God sees, and He speaks about it in His Word.

We find it hard to believe that our hearts are all dark when God looks at them; that He finds no love to Himself there; no bright spot anywhere; but God, who is Light, as He looks straight down to the depths of those hearts, and sees us through and through, has told us the truth about ourselves, as He sees us.

You do not like darkness better than light; the night better than the day, do you?

I remember how sorry I used to be when night came, and how fond I was of saying to myself a verse I had learnt, as I lay awake in the early morning and watched the dawning light—

"I saw the glorious sun arise

Far o'er yon mountain grey,

And as he rode upon the skies

The darkness went away;

And all around me was so bright

I wished it would be always light!"

Yes, we naturally love the light which is so cheerful, and shows us so plainly all the beautiful things around us.

But that other kind of light which shines from God into our hearts, do we like it?

No; one sad thing that sin has done is to make us love the dark, because we feel as though there we could hide away from God. We know quite well that if God is looking at us He sees us right, just as we are, not as we like to think we are, and this is why we try to forget that He is always looking at us. I know a little boy, who had done something naughty, and had been hiding it all day. No one saw Georgie go to the cupboard and take a piece of sugar. He had eaten it, and had gone back to his play as if nothing had happened, before his grandmother came back into the room. All day long Georgie kept in the dark; a darkness which could not be seen ruled in his heart—but it was a darkness that might be felt, and which made him miserable. At last when bedtime came, and he had said good-night to his grandmother, upstairs in his little room his aunt knelt down beside him and began to pray. Presently something happened which showed that Georgie was praying really himself, while Auntie said the words. He looked up for a moment and said softly, "Tell God about that sugar."

And then he went to bed, oh, so much happier than he had been all those long hours before he had come into the light, and told the truth about what only God and Georgie himself knew—nobody else in the world!

But while I say this I think I am forgetting what we so often forget when we do wrong. Satan knew about it, and he had tried all day long to keep this little boy away in the dark, hiding from God, and to make him think it was not worth while to tell the truth about such a little thing as a piece of sugar. If any such thought as that comes into your heart when you have done wrong, do not listen to it for one moment. Remember that the darkness and the light are both alike to God.

And now I want to tell you about another boy, older than Georgie, who was made very unhappy by the thought that he could not get away anywhere to hide from God. But why did Johnny want so much to hide from God? Had he been very naughty? It was not because he had done anything very naughty just then, but because something inside him—that voice that perhaps often seems to speak deep down in your heart—spoke to him and made him afraid. He did not like that God, who is Light, should come close to him. When people saw him crying, and said kindly, "What is the matter, my boy?" poor Johnny could only say, "God is looking at me." He had just this one thought always with him—God was looking at him, and God could see what no one else could, the real Johnny, and all the secret things which he could not bear that anyone should know.

But had God only just begun to look at this boy? No; all his life long—more than twelve years, I think—the eye that never sleeps had been watching him. Johnny had tried to hide himself behind his play and his pleasures, and, as he grew older, behind his carelessness; but now he had learnt that none of the things which may hide us from ourselves and from others, can hide us from God. He could only feel that God was looking at him, and in this way Johnny learned something of the meaning of the words "God is light." That is what God has to teach us all, and it would be a lesson too terrible for anyone to learn, if that were all God has been pleased to tell us about Himself. But there is another part of God's message to us, and it was when Johnny had learned it that he was not afraid or unhappy any more.

It was because God was looking for him that He allowed this boy to have that dreadful feeling that there was someone, from whom he could not hide away, who knew him perfectly. Johnny learnt this lesson, and then God taught him not only that "God is light," but that he need not be afraid to stand, just as he was, in the light which shows everything, because of this other wonderful little verse which tells us that "God is love."

And so at last Johnny learned to say to God what king David said—after he had told God all the truth about what he had done, and God had forgiven him—"Thou art my hiding-place." I have heard a very wonderful thing; but I believe it is true. It is said of light that "it conceals more than it reveals"; that there is no hiding-place like light, if it is only bright enough; and the brighter the light is, the more impossible it is to find what has been hidden there!

I remember when I first saw the electric light; it was in the middle of the night, as the boat on board which I had been crossing the sea which divides Wales from Ireland, came in at the pier. All around, the whole scene was lighted up; the dark water shone, and the people came on shore and looked for their luggage, and took their places in the tram, no one thinking of such a thing as a lamp, for all was clear as daylight.

But this light, bright as it was, lighted only a very little space; as the train moved off we left it behind us, and hurried on into the dark night. How much more wonderful is the light of the sun which shines night and day, always giving light to some part of the world!

But sunlight, moonlight, and electric light, all these shine upon the outside, upon what we can see. God, who is Light, shines upon what is within, upon that heart which is by nature so dark that there is not one bright spot there, so that if God did not shine into it no light could ever come.

Have you ever seen, when the moon has been shining over the sea, making a long, broad pathway of brightness, a ship, as it sails along, suddenly come into that bright track? It is a beautiful sight; just for one moment every mast and sail all stand out with such distinctness that you say, "Oh, I can see her now perfectly!" Then, while you look, she has crossed the shining path, and you can but just trace her dim outline, and know that a ship is sailing there.

[Illustration: CROSSING THE SHINING PATH.]

When the Lord Jesus Christ was in this world He said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." He showed people plainly that He knew them in a way that no one else could. Some people were glad; one poor woman, who had been in the dark all her life, went and told everyone about Him, and said, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did." Others could not bear that that light should show them to themselves, so we read that one day those who had been with Him, "went but one by one," until they were all gone. Which would you rather be like—the people who went away into the darkness, rather than be found out by the Light, or the one who stayed, and heard those words she could never forget—"Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more"?

The only way not to be afraid of the light is to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, who has said of every one that follows Him, that he shall not "abide in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

But hiding—hiding from God—only means getting deeper into the dark, farther away from Him who is Light.

Now that we have spoken of these solemn and important things—things which I like to speak to you about, but which God alone, who loves you so much, can really teach you:—I should like to tell you a little about the light as we see it all around us.

Now, what can we learn about it?

First, we learn that it was called into existence by the voice of God. God said, "Let there be light; and there was light" on the FIRST DAY, but it was not until the FOURTH DAY that those great light-bearers—the sun and the moon—were made lights to the earth, and set "for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years." But the question, "What is light?" is not one easily answered.

We can all understand that light is that which makes everything visible, but you will perhaps be surprised to hear that it has taken a very long time even to find out how the light comes to us.

It is now generally believed that light, which is one of the strongest powers in the world, is caused by motion; and that it is because every light-giving body is always moving very fast, that it gives out light. But no one can explain how this rapid movement began, nor what that "ether" is through which the "vibrations" travel until they reach a wonderful little screen which we have at the back of each of our eyes, by means of which we are able to see.

We may think of the air around us as a vast ocean, through which waves conveying light and sound are constantly travelling. When a sound-wave strikes the ear, we hear; when a light-wave, moving like a water-wave, reaches the eye, we see. Light comes chiefly from the sun: it is beautiful to think, is it not?—of waves of light streaming always, day and night, from that wonderful sun so far away, and coming, wave after wave, to paint beautiful pictures on our eyes! For if you and I both look at the same lovely view, we have each a picture of it—the mountains, and sea, and green fields, and houses—all to ourselves; and so it would be if, not two people, but two hundred were looking. One thing about light of which we are quite sure is, that it travels very quickly. It makes its noiseless journey all round this great earth eight times in one second—in less time than it takes for my watch to give one tick; and it comes all the long, long way from the sun to the earth in less than ten minutes.

I spoke just now of the light painting pictures upon our eyes. Did you know that if there were no light there would be no beautiful colours? Where the sun shines very brightly, in those parts of the world called the tropics, it is not only very hot, but travellers tell us that there the green of the leaves is darker than we are accustomed to see it, and the colours of the flowers and of the birds' feathers are more brilliant than in our own country, where the sunlight is never so strong.

Then, though the sunlight gives their lovely colours to the anemones and seaweeds, as it shines into their homes in the shallow places near shore, if you could go far down into the ocean depths, where the light can hardly reach, you would find the colours of any creatures, or plants, or shells that might be there soft and pure, but not brilliant.

But how does the light make the colours? It seems only white, or perhaps gold-coloured, in itself.

This is what I should like to explain to you, for it is a very beautiful lesson, and not difficult to learn.

When I asked the children if they could tell me what we mean when we say that a thing reflects the light, Chrissie said he had often seen the red sunset reflected by the windows opposite, but he could not quite tell how to explain it.

We may read in books this explanation: "The reflection of light is the turning back of its rays by the surface upon which they fall." And while we read this we must remember that the surface or outside of everything has some peculiarity about it, which affects the light as it falls upon it.

The light of the sun is made up of seven colours, though God has so perfectly blended them that we see only white light; but all these colours may be traced in the seven-coloured arch, which is a token to men of His mercy, and a sign that while the earth remains "seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease."

The smallest portion of light which we can speak of is called a ray of light. You have seen, when what you call a beam of light comes in at a hole, before the shutters have been opened, how the little specks of dust glance up and down in it, as if they were at an endless game of puss-in-the-corner. But have you ever seen beautiful colours, like those of the rainbow, dance about the room—now on the ceiling, now on the floor?

You can best see this lovely little rainbow by darkening the room, and letting just one ray of light stream in through a small hole. Then take a bit of glass, cut so that it has at least three sides—a "drop" of cut glass from the lustre on the mantelpiece will do—and hold it up between you and the light. This little piece of glass, which is called a prism, because it has been sawn or cut, will do a wonderful thing, as you turn it about in the sunbeam. The ray of light, as it passes through the three-cornered bit of glass, will be turned out of its straight path, and this causes it to be split up into many colours, so that you will have a tiny rainbow, which can be seen beautifully if you allow it to fall upon a sheet of white paper; and the colours are always arranged in the same way. Look! in the centre of your rainbow there are green and yellow; then comes red, then blue, then violet. You can easily see these five colours; and two more are counted; indigo, or dark blue, and orange. The only difficulty about saying how many colours you can see is this. If you begin with the violet, and count till you come to the red, you will find that the soft hues are so blended, or run into each other, that it is not easy to see where one ends and the other begins.

I want you to make this little rainbow, not only because the colours which it paints upon the ceiling are so pure and beautiful, and it is so curious to see the bright band of red and blue and green dancing from place to place as you turn your bit of glass, but because you can see in this way how a ray of light spreads itself out when it passes through this glass with three sides. The colours are separated from each other because no two waves of light are of quite the same length; some move slowly and others fast, and the faster a wave travels the more it is turned aside out of the straight road.

This is a difficult subject, but I think you will understand that if all rays were alike, the whole beam would be bent; but as some are more easily bent than others, as they pass through the prism they are spread out.

Long ago, the great philosopher Newton bought a prism, and thus "analysed" or broke up the sunbeam, and discovered what is called the "prismatic band" of colours. He found that what seemed to be white light was made up of tints really infinite in number; for though we count only seven prismatic colours, they are shaded off, one into the other, as you see.

Having thus broken up the beam of light, Newton, by means of two prisms, put together again the rays which he had separated, and the sunbeam was "white" as before. Perhaps you wonder why we do not always see coloured light: the reason is that the waves of light, unless interfered with and turned out of their straight path, all travel together in their rapid, noiseless course, and so remain unbroken.

You will find it very interesting to make the first of Newton's experiments yourself, and some day perhaps you will hear what wonderful things about the sun and the stars are being learnt in our own time by means of the spectroscope, which is an instrument having a fine slit through which the ray is passed before it is allowed to fall upon the prism.

And now what do we mean when we talk of things being of different colours? When we say of snow that it is white we mean that, as the light falls upon the snow, it is all sent back again. The surface of the snow reflects all the light, and keeps none. The other day, when I was buying some flowers to plant in the garden, the woman who was selling them showed me a black pansy. "I am sure you would like to have this root," she said, "black pansies are so rare."

[Illustration]

I did not buy the flower, for I did not think it nearly so pretty as the purple and yellow pansies, which seemed to look up at me with such knowing little faces; but I was interested to see it, because (and are you not glad that it is so?) black flowers are very rare. But why was this pansy black? Ah! it was quite different from the snow; it kept all the light which fell upon it, and gave away none. You see that God has given to some things the power of absorbing light and to others that of reflecting it. If it were not so, our world would be very different from the beautiful world which it is—as different as an engraving is from a coloured picture, with fields, gardens, sea and sky all of varied hue. Almost all the flowers are so beautiful because, while they keep some of the colours from the light which falls upon them, they do not keep all.

Now look at the flowers in that glass upon the table. The lovely rose keeps part of its ray of light, but gives us back the red; the larkspur gives back the blue; and those pure white lilies, which show so fair beside the roses, give back all the light in its bright whiteness just as it comes to them, so that a poet, who loved them well, calls them "those flowers made of light."

And the water in the glass, why is it white?

Because water is what is called transparent; it does not drink in the light, but lets the whole ray pass through it, as it passes 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 brass 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 sunshine. 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 grass 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 shining 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 ships 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 shining 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 ashore 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 quantity 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.

God, 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God as Light shining into the dark and empty heart.

In verse 4 we see that God separates good from evil.

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

God is Light,

God 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.

"God 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, Shining in the Saviour's face, Telling sinners from above, 'God is Light,' and 'God is Love.'

"Sin and death no more shall reign,

Jesus died and lives again!

In the glory's highest height—

See Him God's supreme delight.

Oh! the glory of the grace,

Shining in the Saviour's face,

Telling sinners from above,

'God is Light,' and 'God 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,

Shining in the Saviour's face,

Telling sinners from above,

'God is Light,' and 'God 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,

Shining in the Saviour's face,

Telling sinners from above,

'God is Light,' and 'God is Love.'"