Читать книгу Twilight and Dawn; Or, Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation - Caroline Pridham - Страница 20

"The sea is His, and He made it."—PSALM xcv. 5.

"Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand?"—ISAIAH xl. 12.

"Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters."—PSALM civ. 3.

"He hath compassed the waters with bounds."—JOB xxvi. 10.

We have been learning something about the wonderful world of air, in which we live and move about. To-day we shall think a little of that vast world of water which is the home of so many of God's creatures. I daresay you know a pretty song about the ocean, beginning in this way (it is meant to be sung by a sailor):

"The sea! the sea! the open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;

It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies;

Or like a cradled creature lies."

The philosophers say that if our earth were quiet and at rest, instead of being the never-resting traveller that it is, the great mass of water would surround it everywhere, just as the atmosphere does. We cannot imagine such a thing, but we can see many ways in which the two great oceans are alike.

Both have their waves. Though we cannot see those in the world of air, we can hear them, as you know.

Both are colourless in themselves, yet blue in their heights and depths.

Both are made of two airs or gases, beautifully combined.

At first sight we might say that this is almost too strange a tale to be a true one; for few things seem more unlike than air and water. You will think it stranger still when I tell you that one of the gases which goes to form water is that same oxygen which gives life to the air we breathe, and which will burn so fast if only a tiny spark comes in contact with it; while the other is the gas called hydrogen, the "water-maker," which also burns. And yet these two fiery gases make the water which the brave firemen pump in streams upon a burning house to put out the flames. How wonderful this is! If you were to mix them together as carefully as you could, using exactly the same proportion of each as is found in water, you would make something very dangerous, which might blow up with a terrible noise like gunpowder. It is only when they are "combined," which means very closely joined together, that they form water.

Perhaps this is rather hard to understand; but we have been taking only a very little peep into that page of what is called the Book of Nature, which tells to those who will take the trouble to read it something about the chemistry of things—not so much how they are made, for that is a lesson too great for us, but what goes to the making of them.

And now we are going to read the verses in our chapter which tell us of the time when, at the word of God, "the sea and the dry land" were made.

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good."

Once more you have read these words, "God said," "God called," "God saw." They are quickly read. But who shall say how wonderful is that of which they speak? God has been pleased in these few words to tell us what no one could ever have found out about the birthday of that mighty world of waters, when it was gathered together unto the place which He had prepared for it, and received its name from Him.

I wonder whether you have ever seen the sea. If you have, you know it and love it so well that there is no need for me to try to describe it to you. If you have not, if your home has always been in the country among the quiet fields, far away from the sound of the waves as they break upon the strand; or if you have lived all your life in the town, where the streets are full of noise and bustle, and busy folk hurrying to and fro—then I think it would be almost as difficult for me to give you an idea of what the boundless ocean is like, as it was for the kind miner to make his little friend understand all about seas and lakes and rivers, as he talked to him over that poor little pail of water, deep down in the dark mine.

Ah! you must see the great ocean-world for yourself; you must sail over the crests of the waves, and learn to swim and dive. If you have never yet been to the seaside, there is indeed a treat in store for you some day, and I should like to be with you when that day comes, and catch a sight of your face, so full of wonder and pleasure. I remember hearing of a little "city sparrow" of a boy who was taken with a great many town children to spend a long summer's day by the seaside. When he first came in sight of the bay, with its bright, dancing waters, and saw the tide rolling in, wave after wave, upon the yellow sands, he gave one long, satisfied look, and then said, "How nice it is to see plenty of anything!"

Poor child, these words of his told their own touching tale; he had never, in his parents' home, known what plenty was, and so his first thought about the "great and wide sea" which God had made, was that there was enough of it and to spare—no stint there, at any rate. To another little boy, the first sight of the sea brought this thought, "How great God, who made it, must be!"

It is delightful to live, as I did when a child, within sight and sound of the sea; but I suppose it is only those who really live upon the world of waters, sailing away in a swift ship, day after day, for thousands of watery miles, and seeing nothing but the two oceans, "the blue above and the blue below," as that same sailor-song says, who can really know anything of its vastness. How strange it must seem, to be neither a fish nor a bird, and yet to live as it were between sea and sky; each morning finding yourself farther away from land, each night lying down to be "rocked in the cradle of the deep," and to hear the wash of the waves as the boat cuts her way through them, and the sighing of the wind, not through the trees on the lawn, but among the sails and ropes of your floating home!

I have sometimes thought that the sight of "water, water everywhere," during a voyage of three months, must make one more ready to believe what we are told by those who have done what they can in the way of weighing and measuring—that upon our globe "water is the rule, and dry land the exception"; and also that, although we read in geography books about the five great oceans, yet the ocean is really one, for it "embraces the whole earth with an uninterrupted wave." As we think of this wonderful wave which thus girdles the earth about, constantly breaking against the shore, yet always flowing back again, at its appointed time, into its own place, we may well remember that THIRD DAY of Creation, when "God spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast"; when "He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment."

In a Psalm which has been called the "Psalm of Creation," because it speaks of the greatness and glory of God, and of how the Lord shall rejoice in His works, we find a description of what happened at this time. There is a beautiful verse which speaks of God covering the earth "with the deep as with a garment"; and of a time when it was so covered and hidden that "the waters stood above the mountains."

[Illustration: "WHEN SPRING-TIDES ARE LOW"]

And then we read how, at God's word, that waste of waters went into the place prepared for it, and the dry land appeared. "At Thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of Thy thunder they hasted away. The mountains ascend, the valleys descend, unto the place which Thou hast founded for them" (you will find the verse reads like this in the margin of your Bible). "Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth" (Psalm civ. 7–9). I was very young when I learnt this long Psalm; and though I understood very little of it, and certainly did not know that these verses spoke about what we have been reading of in the Book of Genesis, I was very fond of repeating it, and I especially liked the part which describes the "great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to play therein." Of course I need not tell you that I did not know what the leviathan was; but I liked the name because it was such a long, difficult word, and I have known other children who were particularly fond of strange and hard names. As we grow older we learn many things; and so—for I told you my home was by the sea—I got, in time, to know the meaning of a very difficult verse; that one which speaks of the "bound" which God has set, beyond which the sea with its proud waves "may not pass." When the tide was coming in I used to watch the long blue waves with their foamy crests coming nearer and nearer, and when I heard them break with a loud noise against the strong rocks I was quite sure that those stern barriers were the "bound" which kept them back, and would not allow them to come any further.

But by-and-by I went to a place where the shore was quite different. There were no rocky cliffs, like giants, guarding the land; only a long reach of soft white sand, with which I was never tired of playing—making forts with moats round them to keep off the enemy; or gardens with straight paths, and trim beds in which I planted sea-daisies and poppies.

It seemed as if there was nothing about this shore strong enough to keep back the great waves. They rolled in upon the sand with an angry roar when the wind was high, and swept away my castles and gardens in no time. Still, even here there was a bound, for the sea did not overflow the land; and so I learnt that those waves, which threaten to overwhelm everything in their resistless march, are kept in their place by God, who alone can say to the restless ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

As the poet George Herbert has beautifully said,

"Tempests are calm to Thee; they know Thy hand,

And hold it fast as children do their father's,

Which cry and follow, Thou hast made poor sand

Bound the proud sea, even when it swells and gathers."

I do not mean that the waves, as they rush like an invading army upon the land, have no effect upon it. Look at the Map of England, and see how the outline of the coast on the east and south has been jagged and broken. Or go and see the Needles in the Isle of Wight, and you will learn how the constant dash of the ocean can hollow out not only caves, but deep coves and spreading bays, especially when the land against which it breaks is made of chalk, or some of the softer rocks. Thus in the course of long centuries, the seashore may rise or sink; peninsulas may become islands by the narrow neck which united them to the mainland sinking into the water—but whatever the land loses in one place, it gains in another, by the quantity of sand and mud cast up by the waves. Many changes are caused by the restless sea, but yet, even in its wildest moods, it owns the curbing hand of its Maker; it may ebb and flow, but still keeps in its appointed place.

This ebbing and flowing, which is caused by the coming in and going out of the tides, was a great puzzle to me long ago. I used often to hear the fishermen say at what hour it would be "full tide"; but I saw no mark which could help them to fix the time, and wondered, when I found their words came true, how they could know so surely. When I was older I learnt, what is very interesting, that the gradual rising of the ocean, which is called the "flow," and the gradual going back again of the water, which is called the "ebb," do not happen at any chance time, for nothing is by chance in God's creation, but at regular intervals, and in obedience to one of those wonderful rules made by God, which people call the "laws of nature"—rules which never change as the rules which men make so often do. And so we notice that for about six hours from the time when the tide begins to rise, the sea gains upon the land, either stealing on, step by step, over the pebbly beach, and creeping tip the mouths of the rivers, or, when the winds are abroad, rushing over the sand, and dashing against the rocks, as if it would sweep all before it. No power upon earth can stop that steady onward march of wave upon wave, until the unseen boundary is reached. Then we say, "It is full tide." The mighty ocean seems to pause for a few minutes, then some old fisherman, who has known that shore all his life, says, "The tide has turned"; and for six hours the gradual fall goes on. At last the lowest point of the "ebb" is reached—a few minutes' rest, and then the "flow" begins again.

To those who have seen it all their lives there is nothing strange about this, but when some brave Roman soldiers, who were accustomed to conquer wherever they came, saw for the first time this ebb and flow of the tide, they were more frightened than they would have been if they had seen an army of savage men with spears and clubs rushing upon them with their fierce war-cry. They were in the presence of a power which they could not understand, and in terror they besought their general to lead them against foes whom they could face, or to take them back to their own land!

By-and-by you will be interested in learning more about the tides, but I will only tell you now that they are caused by the sun and moon. Two pair of waves travel round the earth every day, the greater pair obedient to the moon, which, because she is so much nearer to us, has a greater power of drawing the water to herself than the sun has; the lesser pair obedient, in like manner, to the attraction of the sun. This is all that I can tell you now about a very difficult subject, and it is more than I told Chrissie or Ernest when we were talking about the sea; but then you know we had not much time for matters hard to be explained. One thing which I think we did talk about was the depth of the sea, and I know there were some differences of opinion about this as well as about its colour.