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"Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands: they shall perish; but Thou remainest."—HEBREWS i. 10.

To-day let us talk a little about the very first words which God has spoken to us in His Book. You would like to find them in your own Bible, I daresay.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

And we will find one other verse, because it is the first verse of a chapter which also speaks of "the beginning."

"Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?" (Prov. viii. 1).

Now that we have read these verses; I must tell you that Ernest and Chris and Charlotte and May used each to learn a verse for me every day, and say them in turn; indeed, they usually said two verses, for I liked them always to repeat along with the new verse the one they had said the day before, in order that they might not forget it. I am glad to tell you that the verses were generally learned so perfectly, and repeated so distinctly, that it was quite a pleasure to hear them; for even little May knew that if we repeat anything from God's Book we must be careful not to put in any words of our own. If we did, we should be like Willie, giving the message in our own way, should we not? Then, every one of God's words must be remembered, and none left out; not even a little word like "and" or "the," which perhaps would not very much matter if we were repeating merely what men had said.

Perhaps you may think this chapter about Wisdom was a difficult chapter for my boys and girls to learn, and not so interesting as some of those which you know. I will tell you the reason why I especially wished them to learn it; but I will first ask you to find in the New Testament three verses which also tell us of "the beginning"—

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was

God.

"The same was in the beginning with God.

"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John i. 1–3).

The "Word" is one of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful and wonderful name. Suppose you have been playing with something that has made your hands very dirty, and mother says, "Come to me, dear, and I will make them clean." Through mother's words you know what is in her heart; you know that she loves you, and wants you to be with her, and fit to be with her. So it is through the Word, the One who was with God in the beginning, the One by whom everything was made, that God has spoken to us so that we may know His thoughts about sin, which made us unfit to be with Him, and His feelings towards the men and women in the world, who are His creatures, and yet have tried to find happiness away from Him. But it was because the chapter, which my elder scholars were learning, speaks of the Lord Jesus by another wonderful and beautiful name that I wished them to learn it. He is called "Wisdom" not only in the Old Testament, where we are told in other verses of the same chapter (Prov. viii.) that He was "from the beginning" with God (vv. 22–31), but also in a letter which the apostle Paul wrote to some clever people who lived in Greece long ago he speaks of Him as "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. i. 24).

I can remember that we had a good deal of talk after we had read the verse, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"—those few words, so quickly read, in which God has told us what the wisest man of all the wise men who ever lived could not have found out for us; for God alone can speak about what He did so very long ago, before the sun shone, or the grass and the trees grew, or the birds sang in the branches, or lambs played in the fields.

Did you ever think, as you watched the great sun going down behind the crimson clouds, that there was a day, long, long ago, when that sun, in all its glory, set for the first time?

I daresay you never thought of the beginning of the sun, or of the first time that it set, but were just pleased to see the sky so red and glowing, and sorry when the beautiful sunset colours faded and the clouds became cold and grey.

Or perhaps, as you have shaded your eyes from his noonday splendour, you may have remembered that it was God in heaven who made that wonderful sun to light up the sky, and that he has been shining down upon this earth ever since; but did you ever stop to ask such a question as this—

How long has that great sun, which is now above my head, been shining in the sky? Or, again, as he passed in glory out of sight, How many beautiful sunsets have there been since he first began to "rule the day" and to rise in the east and set in the west?

Ah! so long a time that no thought of ours could measure it; so many sunsets that we could never count them. All we can know about it is that there was a time, long, long ago, when the sun first set and a time when he rose upon the earth, which was then so beautiful—fresh from the hand of God.

This world of ours is a very old world, but there was a time when all was new; not only the sun and moon, but all that you see around you had a beginning—a birthday. There was a time when no such things were, and there was a time when they began to be. Now it is about this beginning that I want you to think a little.

[Illustration: "HOW PLEASANT THE LIFE OF A BIRD MUST BE!"]

As we open our eyes to-morrow morning and see the light come in at the window, let us thank God that He has made His sun to shine upon us, to send away the darkness and bring a new day. And as the light grows and grows, and we lie awake and listen to the morning songs of the thrushes and blackbirds and the chatter of the sparrows, do not let us forget that God gave its own sweet note to every one of those warblers, and that the air has been full of the songs of birds ever since the day, so long ago, when the first little lark flew up, up, up into the blue sky and sang its first song, so full of gladness. Then, as the pleasant sound of the lambs, bleating after their mothers, comes to us from the fields, let us remember there was a day when that sound, which you know so well, was heard for the first time; and as we go for our walk and look around us at the green fields and the trees with their leaves and blossoms, and then far away to where the strong mountains lift their heads against the sky, let us say to ourselves, "All these things, which seem as if they had been there always, had a beginning; there was a time when there were none of them, and then there came a time when they were there, for God had made them to be."

While we were talking about this, the elder children and I, the little boys were very quiet; but I was afraid it was all rather difficult for them, so I asked Leslie and Dick to tell me what we mean when we speak of the beginning of anything.

I forget whether I got the answer from them or from one of the elder ones, but I know I thought it a good answer when somebody said, "The beginning of a thing is the first of it."

Then we spoke about the beginning of the table at which we were sitting—I suppose we chose that to talk about because it was so close to us—how it was made of wood, and the wood was once a tree; and if it was an oak, that giant tree must have been long, long ago only a tiny acorn in its pretty green cup. Each of those children, too, as they sat round the table, had had a beginning. Have you ever thought of this? There was a time, not so very long ago, and yet you cannot remember it, when your life had not begun. And then your birthday came, the first of all the birthdays; that day when your dear father and mother thanked God for giving you to them to love and take care of, and everyone at home was so glad because God had sent a little child to the house; someone who had never been there before.

Just think, you were that little child; only a tiny thing, but as you opened your baby eyes to the light, and stretched out your little clasping fingers, your first cry, and every movement of your little body, showed that you were alive. Then, by-and-by, the nurse said, "Hush, baby is asleep!" and everyone moved about softly, so as not to wake the little creature, who had not been there yesterday, the baby whose life had just begun, the little traveller who had just started on its journey through time to the great eternity beyond.

But you knew nothing about this; only your mother knew, as she watched you in your sleep, that one more tiny vessel had been launched upon that stream which flows on, on, till it meets the ocean which has no shore—the time which never ends.

I remember, a very long time ago, how fond I used to be of making boats. Not far from where I lived a real ship was being built, and I used to watch how it was made, and think that when I grew up I should like above all things to be a shipwright, for I had heard someone say that was the name of the man who was building this beautiful vessel. Of course, the boats which my brother and I used to make were only toy boats—we generally made them of paper—but however small they were, we were very particular to give each of them at least three tall masts. Then, when it came to sailing them, we had to be content with any water we could find, and generally these three-masted vessels made very short voyages, from one side of a big tub to the other; and though, by rocking the tub, we used to manage to make pretty stormy weather for them, they generally reached the end of their voyage in safety. It was quite another thing when we set our vessels afloat upon what we thought a real river, like the Thames or the Severn; but it was only a brown stream, which, ran along the bottom of a meadow, and was crossed, not by a bridge, but by stepping-stones. Sometimes, on a lovely day in June, we were allowed to go down to our river, and we used to sit for hours among the flags which grew beside it, hidden by the tall reeds and the yellow flowers, making little green boats out of the broad leaves of the flags, while the sound of "Cuckoo, cuckoo" came from the orchard close by.

When we had made as many boats as we could carry, each with a curly-whirly bit of a leaf for its sail, we used to balance ourselves carefully on the stones—for we knew that if we got wet we should not be allowed to go to our river again—and launch our little fleet, one by one, on the brown water, and then eagerly watch each green vessel upon its course. We wanted them to sail across to the other side; but I need not tell you that the river water was very far from being so calm as the water in the tub, and I do not think many got safely over.

One little boat would start off very straight, and then suddenly stop because it had run against some hidden rock; the greater number, in spite of all our efforts to steer them, would get into the current, and so be carried down the stream out of our sight; while some at once turned on their sides, got filled with water, and became dismal wrecks.

I can remember well how happy we were in spite of all such disasters and losses!

But we should have been surprised indeed in those days if anyone had told us, as we launched our boats, and watched them sail away from land—to "America" or "India," or any of those far-away places where we used to pretend they were going—that we were like those boats of ours. And yet it would have been true, for we too had been launched; the voyage of life had begun for us; and every birthday that came found us a little farther from the place from whence we had started—a little nearer to the end of the voyage, the place whither we were bound. Yes, in this sense you and I and all the people in the world are voyagers on the stream of time. But this voyage of our life—how long will it be?

That is one of the things which no one can tell. God alone knows.

In one sense the story of your life may be soon told; your little voyage down the stream of time may be very short, and your boat may reach the great ocean of eternity before many birthdays have come and gone. But in another sense it is a story without an end; and this is what makes your beginning such a great thing to think of. It is a beginning which has no end; the part of you which is most really yourself, must live on always. You can never stop living for one moment; for there is on board your little boat a wonderful passenger. God has put into you a living soul, which can never die.

But how soon God may call that soul back to Himself, away from the body, where it lives now, who can tell?

I am just now thinking of some young voyagers whose passage from time to eternity was indeed short, but the story is so sad that I could not tell you about it if I did not remember what the Lord Jesus once said, when He was teaching His disciples. He called a little child to Him, and began to speak to them about such little children, and one of the things which He said was this, "The Son of man is come to save that which was lost" (Matt. xviii. 11). And again He said (you will find this verse in the same chapter), "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."

Since even the very little children have gone astray from God, so that the Lord Jesus spoke of them as "lost" and "perishing," how could I tell you this story, if the Lord from heaven, He who called Himself the "Son of man" when He was here in this world, had not come to save that which was lost?

This is the sad, true story:

It was on a beautiful Monday morning, in the bright June weather, that the scholars belonging to a large Sunday-school in Ireland were travelling with their teachers and friends from the town where they lived to spend the day at a lovely place by the seaside. How proud and happy they were, all these boys and girls, as they marched through the town waving their flags and singing, and how much they had to say about the grand time they were going to have! You may be sure they liked a long holiday out of doors, with games and races, and buns and oranges, as much as you do, and so they got into the train in high glee.

But that train never reached the lovely place at the seaside. Before it had gone very far on its way there was a dreadful accident; some of the carriages were crushed and broken, as if they had been matchboxes, and many of those bright boys and girls were killed all in a moment—the short voyage of their life was over; oh, how soon! By-and-by some doctors came hurrying to the place where the ruined train lay, and began to look about to find those who might not be dead, only hurt. It was a sad sight they saw, and one they can never forget. While they were busy, giving help here and there, someone noticed two little ones, sitting on the green bank, beside the wreck of the train. A doctor went up to see if they were hurt. No, they were picking the daisies which grew among the grass; they were too young to understand what a dreadful thing had happened.

"Were you in the train, my dears?" said the kind doctor.

"Yes," said a little girl of six years old, "we were in the train, and she was too," and she pointed to where another child lay quite still upon the grass; not picking daisies—no, she could not speak or move, she was dead.

Put your finger on your wrist, and keep very still for a moment. Listen. You feel something, do you not? Something alive, and it goes beat, beat; one, two, three, like the ticking of a watch. As long as you live, that tick, tick will go on; but for this little girl it had stopped, because her heart had ceased to beat. When the doctor put his hand upon her wrist, he could feel nothing moving there. "She is quite dead," he said, as he took her body up from the grass that it might be carried back to her home, the home which she had left that morning, so happy and gay.

At the Sunday-school these children had been taught about the "wondrous, glorious Saviour," of whom you sometimes sing, and we may believe that the spirit of this dear child, redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ, went straight from that wrecked train to spend its long for ever with the One who had loved her and given Himself for her; and that God, who takes care of the poor little body which was laid low in the grave with many a sad tear, will raise it in glory, one day, when "death is swallowed up in victory."

But there were not only very little children in that wrecked train. We are told of a boy who was terribly hurt, but lived an hour after the crash came. As he lay by the wayside, a young girl with a pitiful heart came and knelt beside him.

"I will pray you up to heaven," she whispered.

"I am going there!" said the dying boy; "Lord Jesus take me, I am ready."

Of another his poor mother said—

"I asked him before he started—'Well, dear, have you committed yourself to your heavenly Father?' 'Yes, mother, I have,' he said. So I gave him my blessing and sent him off, and that was the last time I ever saw him alive."

These boys did not think as they left their homes that morning that they would never return, but they had learned to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their own Saviour, and so when danger and death came, they were ready to leave this world and go to Him: their boats were not wrecked; they sailed right into port.

And now that we are coming to the end of our lesson for to-day, let us "think back," and see if we can remember what it is all about, and then we will mark the subjects (a), (b), (c), (d), to help us to keep them in mind.

The subjects were—

(a) That very far away time which God speaks of as "the beginning."

(b) It is God alone who can tell us about this time.

(c) God, who made all that has a beginning, Himself had no beginning. This means that there never was a time, no matter how long ago, when God was not. If you think back, back, even to the time when there was no sky, no earth, no great ocean, you can never come to a time when there was no God.

(d) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." The "Word" is one of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to this world that He might show us how very much God His Father loves us, and who could say, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

For He who was once born a little child in this world and laid in the

manger at Bethlehem, and who grew up in the home of Joseph and Mary at

Nazareth, is the Same who was "in the beginning with God," for He "was

God."

This is what God has told us about His great Eternity, when Time, with its days and weeks and months and years, had not begun.