Читать книгу Twilight and Dawn; Or, Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation - Caroline Pridham - Страница 7

"As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his masters."—PROVERBS xxv. 13.

"The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times."—PSALM xii. 6.

I wonder whether you are as fond of asking questions as I was long ago—so fond that I did not mind asking them when I well knew I could get no answers, because I spoke to things, not to people who could speak to me again?

Still, if any mere thing could be supposed capable of answering for itself, I think a book might; and so perhaps as you take this book of mine into your hand, and run away to some quiet place to have a look at it, you may be taking it into your confidence, and asking it some such questions as these:

(a) What are you all about? Are you a lesson-book?

(b) Have you any stories—real stories, not made-up ones?

(c) Any pictures?

(d) I wonder whether I shall like you? Does the person who made you like children, and know the sort of things they care for?

Now before you put any more questions to my book, I will answer for it; and that we may not miss any, we will call them questions (a), (b), (c), (d), and answer one at a time.

Your first question (a)—the first part of it at least—is what grown people as well as children have a right to ask of a book; and it would be a poor thing for the book to answer, "Oh, I am about nothing in particular! I can't quite tell you why I was written." But most books are about something in particular, and what that is you can best find out by reading them right through; for many people miss their way in a book by beginning at the end and travelling backwards, or beginning about the middle, and not knowing whether to go backwards or forwards. So you see I want you to find out for yourself the answer to question (a), only I will just say that the book is mostly about your own dwelling-place. I do not mean your body, though that is, in one sense, your dwelling-place; neither do I mean your own home, nor even that part of England where you were born. By your own dwelling-place I mean this wonderful world which you see all around you, where God has made so much for you to see and enjoy; and learn about too, that you may use and enjoy it better.

[Illustration: GOOD-BYE TO THE SWALLOWS]

So you will find in this book something about the firm ground upon which you trod as soon as you were old enough to run about the fields and pick the daisies. Something too about the blue sky, where the lark sings and the swallows fly; and the great wide sea, where the fishes live; and a little about what the Bible tells us of how all that you see around you came to be; long, long ago, when everything was quite new and beautiful, and God said that all that He had made was "very good."

"Then it is a lesson-book?" I hear you say.

Yes, in one way, and yet not quite all lessons, for you will find some stories here too.

And now I must answer the (b) question about these same stories, for I want you to know, before you begin to read them, that they are all true, and there is no pretending or making-up about them.

Question (c), about the pictures, you can soon answer for yourself; so now I have only the (d) question to answer, and I can only say for my book, that I do not know whether or not you will care for it; but I do know that the person who made it loves children, and very much likes teaching them and talking to them. And that you may better understand that I know something about children, I will explain that, though I am only talking to you just now, I shall tell you in this book the very same things which I told to some children who came every morning to do their lessons at my house, three or four years ago—at least, I will write down for you all I can remember of the talks these children and I had together, and I will tell you the same true stories which I told them. I used to ask them to give me their ears, and I must ask you to give me your eyes; for writing is different from talking, is it not? You cannot look up in my face and ask me questions as my children did; and when I ask you a question, I cannot hear you answer, but am obliged to fancy what you would be likely to say. Still, I think we shall be friends, and get to know each other a little, even by means of this dumb-show talk, as I speak to you with my hand and you listen to me with your eyes.

And now I want to tell you about my children. It was a beautiful morning in September when I opened the schoolroom door, and found them, all the seven, sitting round the table, waiting to begin school again, for the long summer holidays were over. I was afraid they would think it rather hard to sit still and do lessons, especially when the sun was shining brightly and it was as pleasant a day as could be out of doors; but as I looked at their bright faces, I thought they did not seem as if they minded coming back to school so very much after all.

I wonder what you feel like, when the holidays are over and your little work-a-day world begins again? Does it seem too bad to be true? or are you just a tiny bit glad to have something that you really must do, instead of all play and no work? Do you know—and you remember I told you I knew children pretty well—I have actually met with girls, and boys too, who have sometimes, especially on a very wet day in the holidays, found this delightful having nothing to do all day long harder work than the most difficult of their lessons?

And now for the names of my children. You would like to know them, would you not? for they are real boys and girls, not children in a story book.

My eldest boy was Ernest, and he sat at the bottom of the table, opposite the place where I always sat, and where someone had put a chair for me. Next in age came Charlotte, Ernest's sister; and then Chrissie, the elder brother of Eustace and Dick. I put Sharley and Chrissie together, because they were both ten years old and did most of their lessons out of the same books. Next came another little pair: May, Ernest's younger sister, and Eustace. Last of all, the little ones: Ernest's youngest brother, Leslie, and Chrissie's youngest brother, Dick. These little boys were only six years old.

Now that you know the ages of my children you will be able to tell whether any of them were about your own age; perhaps you may be older than Chrissie and Sharley, or even Ernest, who was nearly twelve, but I am quite sure that if you are younger than any of my elder children, you will be able to understand some of the lessons which we had from the Bible every morning.

Before the holidays we had been reading in the New Testament, and had finished the Acts of the Apostles; and it was settled that when they came back to school we should read some of the Old Testament, and begin at the beginning. The children remembered this, and were just going to open their Bibles and find the first chapter of Genesis, when I said that I should like to ask them one question before a word was read.

I should like you, too, to think about it, and try to give an answer; for my question—

Why is the Bible different from any other book?

concerns you as well as the children of whom I asked it.

They all said at once that the Bible is different from every other book in the world because it is God's Book. Yes, that is the great difference; the Bible is God's own Book, in which He has spoken to us His own words, and it is the only Book in the world which tells us all the truth.

How wonderful it is to think of this, that every child who can read, and has a little Bible of his own, can learn what God has said!

Will you try to remember when you open that beautiful Bible, which was given you on your birthday, that there God is speaking—speaking to you just as much as if you were the only person in the world?

If you think of this it will make you very still and quiet, that you may hear what He says to you.

When we say that God has spoken to us, we mean that long ago He told those holy men whom He allowed to write His Book exactly how He would have them write. When you read in your Bible, you do not read what Moses and David wrote out of their own minds. God gave them His words to write for Him, so that we might know for certain, not what they thought God meant them to say, but what He really did say.

Do you understand this?

Perhaps not quite; so I will tell you a story to make it plainer.

I know a boy who is very fond of running errands, and a very useful boy he is. If I give him a message he is off like a shot, and back again with the answer almost before I know that he has gone. So willing and quick a messenger is Willie, that it is a pleasure to send him anywhere.

But there is just one thing that has sometimes hindered him from being a really good messenger. Can you guess what it is? You will soon find out if you remember that, besides being willing and quick, a messenger must deliver the exact message entrusted to him. He must give it just as it was given to him if he would deliver it faithfully.

Now Willie prefers to give his messages in his own way, and so, although he is willing and quick, he cannot always be relied on as a faithful messenger.

One day, when his mother said "Willie, run to the nursery and give Nurse a message for me," the little boy hardly waited to hear what the message was, but ran upstairs as fast as his feet could carry him. Very quickly back he came and went on with his play—I think he was just then building a fine house with wooden bricks. Now, as the message was an important one, his mother wished to be quite sure that it had been correctly delivered; so presently she said, "What did Willie say to Nurse?"

"The right thing," said he, going on with his building, quite unconscious that this was not enough for his mother, who must know exactly what Willie had told Nurse, or go upstairs to see whether she was doing what she had desired her to do.

You understand now, I am sure, that we could not be quite certain that we had God's message—and the Bible is a message or letter from God to us—we could not be sure that we had it right, if we did not know that He had given it to us in His own way and in His own words.

So, then, our question is answered. The Bible is different from any other book because it is God's Book, in which He speaks to us. Now I am going to ask you one more question.

If it is God who is speaking, and if He speaks to you, what must you do?

You must listen, not only with your eyes, when you read the words, or with your ears, when someone reads to you, but with your heart.

Do you remember what we are told in the Bible about a child to whom God once spoke? It was in the night that this boy heard God's voice calling him by his own name—the name which his mother had given him when he was a baby. Samuel had never heard the voice of God before, and he did not know who was speaking to him in the quiet night.

But he did what he was told to do by one who knew that God was calling him, and the next time the voice came he answered, "Speak, for Thy servant heareth."

Then, when God spoke again, he listened to the message which God gave him to give for Him.

How near God was to this child!

Yes, He was very near to Samuel as he slept; but He is as near to you, as you lie in your own bed at home. He keeps you safely all through the dark night: when you cannot even think about yourself He thinks about you and cares for you; and He speaks to you by His Holy Word just as much as if He called you by your own name.

Do not forget that it is really true that when you take God's Book into your hands, and open it, and listen with your heart, God is near you and speaks to you, your own self. For this reason, when we read the Bible, as the children said, "We must attend, or we shall not know what God has said."

And for another reason, too, we must attend: that is, because it is God who is speaking.

God's Word is the only thing in this world that is quite sure; but it is, because it has come straight from Him, and He is the God of truth.

God's Word can never pass away; for He has said that it endures for ever.

God's Word can speak, even to a child, and can make that child "wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

For it is of Jesus, the Son of God, that God has spoken to us in His book.

I think you will like this poem, which speaks of a time when the Bible was not only a rare, but in most countries a forbidden book, bought in secret, and read in fear by those to whom it became all the more precious because it cost them so dear. We are told that at this time the actual cost of a Bible was £30, and that the wages of a labouring man were only 1–½d. a day; so that he would have to work fifteen years to pay for one copy of the Word of God!