Twilight And Dawn by Caroline Pridham

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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 God 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. God 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 God 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 God'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 God 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?

But I wanted to tell you about the last day of Frank's life in that poor
room in the noisy street. He was very weak and tired, and could not bear to
talk much; but his father sat by his bed, and read to him the last chapter
of Revelation. When he came to the words, "And there shall be no night
there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God
giveth them light," he stopped and said as well as he could, for his heart
was sore at the thought of the parting which was drawing so near, "Frank,
my boy, this is your last night; you are going where there is no night." It
was even so. Before morning came, Frank's redeemed spirit had gone to be
"present with the Lord."

Do you know a hymn beginning

"Oh, they've reached the sunny shore,
Over there!"?

One of the verses comes to my mind when I think of those last words which
Frank's father read to him. The hymn speaks of the "street of shining gold
over there," and then goes on--

"Oh, they need no lamp at night,
Over there!
For their Saviour is their light,
And the day is always bright,
Over there!"

There will be no need of the sun to measure the time when that eternal day
has come; but now you know that his presence or absence makes our days
longer or shorter. In summer, when he is sometimes above the horizon for
sixteen hours, what beautiful long, light days we have! But in winter, when
he rises late and sets early, our days are sometimes not more than half the
length of the longest summer day.

I remember we had rather a long talk upon a difficult subject, after we had
considered how the sun measures the length of our days. We were speaking
of the verse which tells us that God 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."

I am afraid I did not make this clear to the children, for it is difficult
to understand how the sun makes one season different from another; but I
will just tell you a little about it, and you may learn more by-and-by.

You know that there are four seasons: the Spring, when the grass begins to
shoot forth its fresh blades, and the trees unfold their buds; the Summer,
when the roses bloom and the fruits ripen; the Autumn, when the corn and
fruits are gathered in; and the Winter, when the earth rests, often closely
wrapped in a soft mantle of snow.

All these changes pass before our eyes. But if we wish to understand how it
is that the sun is the cause of one season being so different from another,
we must remember that as the earth takes its yearly journey round the sun
it changes its place, getting nearer to him or farther away from him. In
our summer-time the part of the earth where we live is turned more towards
the sun, and so gets more of the light and heat which have their home
there, than at any other time. Our winter days are so short, because at
that time we are turned from the sun more than at any other. And in the
spring and autumn we are not so much turned away from him as we are in
winter, nor so directly in front of him as we are in summer.

You must remember also what you learnt about the motion of the earth, and
how things are not what they seem. You know that the earth turns round once
a day, though it _seems_ as if it stood still, and the sky, with its sun
and moon and stars, turned round.

When you watch the rising sun, remember that, though it seems actually to
climb the sky, and to mount higher and higher as the day goes on; and then,
when it is setting, to go slowly down, down, behind the far away hills or
the shining waves--it is all seeming. Just as, when you are going along
in a fast train, the fields and trees and sheep all seem to be in motion,
flying past you; yet you know that _you_ are moving as the train moves, and
flying past _them_; so it is not the sun moving across the sky which makes
day and night, but these changes are caused by the movement of our earth,
as she spins round upon herself like a great top.

You remember that Galileo was accused of denying the truth of the word of
God, because the Bible speaks in many places of the sun _"arising"_ and
_"going down."_ His accusers forgot that God does not teach us astronomy,
but speaks in His word of things as they appear to our eyes.

We have seen that our earth, with her faithful companion the moon, is not
only the traveller round the sun; he is the great centre, and around him
all the moving-stars, or planets, travel in their varied paths. But the
moon has a little journey of her own to take besides this long one, for she
travels round the earth, and takes nearly thirty days on her way.

You know that the moon is always changing; you can never see it for two or
three nights quite the same, but it seems each night a little smaller or a
little larger than when you last saw it. When you looked out of the windows
the other night, just before you went to bed, it was a very young moon
indeed that you saw--not more than two days old, as we say in reckoning
the moon's age. How small and thin it was--just like a curving rim of pale
light upon the dark sky; but as you watch this crescent--or growing--moon,
you will see it constantly getting larger and brighter, until from being
half-moon it has become full-moon, for it faces the sun, and is bright all
over that part which is turned towards you. When we speak of the "face of
the moon," we mean that side which is always turned towards us. But why
does "the gentle moon" always turn the same face to us? Astronomers tell us
that it is because she also turns slowly round on her own axis while she is
travelling round the earth. _How_ this is, I don't think I can explain to
you: but it is true that we can see only one side of the moon, that side
which catches the sunlight, and that hardly anything is known about the
other side.

Next time the beautiful moonlight nights come, remember, as you watch all
these changes, that this "waxing" and "waning" of the moon comes to pass,
not because she really changes her shape, but because, as she goes round
the earth, we see sometimes more, sometimes less of the bright part which
is lit up by the sun. The moon is dark in herself, like our earth; not like
the sun, and those stars which shine by their own glorious light; if she
had light of her own, it would be full moon every night; but all that soft
brightness which makes everything look so beautiful in the quiet moonlight,
really comes from the sun. When the sun has gone down, as it were, into the
sea, or has disappeared behind some distant mountain, how do you know that
there _is_ any sun? Look at the moon "walking in brightness," and remember
that it is only as the light of the absent sun falls upon her and is
reflected from her face (just as Chrissie said he had often seen the light
of the setting sun thrown back from the windows) that she can shine at all.

[Illustration: "YON CRESCENT MOON, A GOLDEN BOAT, HANGS DIM BEHIND THE
TREE, O!"]

Little children love the moon. I have seen a baby who could hardly speak,
clasp her tiny hands and call out, "Have it! have it!" as she saw it glow
like a lamp behind the trees; and we do not lose this love as we grow
older.

When we remember that the sun is four hundred times farther away from us
than the moon, it makes our earth's silent companion seem very near by
comparison; but still you will not think the journey to the moon a short
one, when I tell you that if you could travel through the fields of air,
rushing along in a fast train, never stopping day or night, it would be
eight months before you got to your journey's end. And when you did get
there you would have arrived at a more desolate country than you ever
dreamed of--a place much like what we might imagine our earth would have
become if there were no water, no air (for if there is air, it is so thin
that no creature like any we know could breathe it), no greenness or
beauty, though there might be scenery grand in its awfulness.

Have you ever looked through a telescope at the moon? I have. Last summer I
was staying at a seaside town, and one evening I noticed a crowd gathered
on the sands. As I came nearer, I found that a man was showing the moon and
planets through his telescope to any who wished to see what they could see.
He was selling peeps through the telescope, which was a pretty good-sized
one, at a penny a peep. Now, though I had read a great deal about the moon,
and had seen in books photographs of what are called lunar landscapes, I
had never once had a chance of looking at her face through anything but a
bit of smoked glass, at the time of an eclipse.

So I paid my penny, and when my turn came I stood upon the stool and had my
peep. I can only tell you that the moon did not look nearly so beautiful to
me through the showman's little telescope as she did when my peep was over,
and I saw her once more sailing through the deep blue of the sky, the queen
of night indeed.

I had read that astronomers had found that the nearer their great
telescopes brought them to the moon, the more like a barren rock she
became, and when I had this nearer view of her than ever before, she looked
to me just as she had been described, like "a burnt-out cinder."

You know the shadowy figure which you can see, sometimes more distinctly
than at others, on the face of the moon (when I was a child I was told that
it was "the man in the moon"!), this appearance is caused by deep valleys,
or by the shadows of terrible mountain peaks, which were once volcanoes,
throwing out smoke and lava. While I was looking through his telescope, the
showman pointed out to me two of the highest of these peaks, and told me
their names, that is the names which the astronomers had given them; for
these rocky heights have been marked upon maps of the moon, just as the
Welsh mountains are marked upon the map of England and Wales. Upon these
maps we can find Mount Tycho, Mount Gassendi, Mount Copernicus--all of
them extinct volcanoes--and the name of Apennines has been given to a vast
mountain-chain; and the heights of all these mountain peaks have been
ascertained by measuring the shadows cast by them. There are oceans and
seas also marked upon these moon-maps, but they were named at a time when
it was not yet known that they were great plains; for, as I told you, no
trace of water, cloud, or even mist has been discovered there.

Are you sorry to hear that the moon which looks so lovely to our sight, is
found by those who can get a nearer view to be such a weird and desolate
place that it seemed as if only death reigned there? I know I was, when
first I read about it, and saw a picture of the moon, and wondered at its
bare mountain peaks, with their rugged craters and dreadful precipices, and
its "Ocean of Storms" and "Lake of Death," as two of the sea-like plains
have been called. I wondered how it could have become, as it were, like a
dead earth; but this is one of the things which God has not told us about.
What He _has_ told us is that He made this "lesser light to rule the
night," and as she moves over the sky in her calm silent beauty, she speaks
to us of His goodness in giving not only the sun to rule by day, but the
moon and stars to rule by night, those wonderful stars whose silent voice
is ever making known His power, and telling of His glory; as the poet
Addison has beautifully said--

"For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is Divine!"

This is a long chapter, but we have been speaking of a vast subject, and
before I close it, I want to refer to two wonderful things about the stars,
to which God draws our attention in His word. He tells us that "one star
differeth from another star in glory," and astronomers have discovered
that there was a deeper truth than they at first imagined underlying these
words.

But what I specially want to speak of for a moment is the number of these
heavenly bodies, and their distance from us.

In the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, two verses are placed close
together, the one speaking of the power and greatness of God, the other of
His tenderness and compassion towards His creatures.

"He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds."

"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by names."

And in the Book of Job we read--

"Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars,
how high they are!"

There are wonderful things to learn about the colour of the stars, some
yellow like our own sun, others of a dazzling whiteness, and others giving
out beautiful rainbow-coloured light. But these wonders you must study
by-and-by; just now we will speak first of their amazing number, as they
appear to our eyes when by the help of the telescope we peer deeper and
deeper into the blue depths of the sky. When alluding to the stars in a
general way we include the seven planets--one of them our own earth--which
move round our sun, and are as it were so near home that five of them may
be seen without the telescope--though not more than three are visible at
the same time--and also those myriads of "fixed stars," all of which are
suns, many of them much larger than our own glorious sun, and removed from
our ken by distances which our minds refuse to grasp.

I have been told that the number of stars which can be seen with the naked
eye is five thousand, but that only half that number are visible at the
same time.

If you ask me how many can be seen with the help of the telescope, I cannot
tell you, because more powerful glasses are constantly being made, only to
discover worlds beyond worlds, ever new and more distant, strewn in space
like golden dust, while stars hitherto invisible through the most powerful
telescope can now be made to leave the impress of their rays upon the
photographic plate--so that a great astronomer of our time can show us
pictures of "invisible stars."

God who made them, God who has appointed to each its own path through the
heavens, and also guides and controls each world and system of worlds in
its course, so that in all His universe there is no jar, no clash, no being
before or after time--He alone can tell their number.

And when we consider their height, their amazing distance from us and from,
each other, the wonder only grows.

If we think of the worlds hung in space like our own, our nearest neighbour
among them, the "red planet Mars," is thirty-five millions of miles away,
while the grand planet Saturn--the "ringed world"--though lighted up by our
sun, is so distant, so "_high_," that the ever-hasting traveller whom we
imagined some time ago rushing through space at the speed of an express
train, would take two thousand years on his endless journey. Yet Saturn's
rays actually come to our eyes from this vast infinity of distance--while
the light of the nearest star--and you know we say "quick as light"--takes
more than four years to reach us.

These things, so far beyond our scanty thoughts to conceive, are indeed too
great for us, but how simply the Bible speaks of them--

"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by
the breath of His mouth."

"By His spirit HE hath garnished the heavens."

"It is HE that buildeth His storeys in the heavens."

In the next chapter you will read a true story which I told my scholars as
a reward for their attention while we had been speaking on a very difficult
subject. I hope you will be as much interested in John Britt as they were.

Here are some beautiful verses, speaking of the way in which "the heavens
declare the glory of God," and my story shows how they may "utter forth a
glorious voice" to ears closed to every earthly sound.

"The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
The spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
Th' unwearied sun, from day to day,
Doth his Creator's power display.
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty Hand.

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the list'ning earth,
Repeats the story of her birth:
While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

"What though, in solemn silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice nor sound
Amidst their radient orbs be found;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing as they shine--
The hand that made us is Divine."

ADDISON

STORY OF A DEAF BOY WHO HEARD THE SUN PROCLAIM THE GLORY OF GOD.

This story is about an Irish boy who was deaf and dumb. Do you know what
that means? Thank God, you who cannot know. I have been in a school where
every scholar was deaf and dumb. These children had been patiently taught
the finger language, and they had also learnt to express themselves by the
quicker language of signs, so that they could understand a great deal, and
could do many clever things; but it made me very sad to see so many of them
at once, for I knew that this world was to them a silent world. They could
see people speak and smile, but never hear one sound; they might watch the
fingers of anyone who was playing the piano move quickly over the keys, but
not one note of music could reach them. Think how sad it must be never to
have heard your mother's voice, never to be able to speak to those you love
except by signs, which can tell so little of what you want to say, even
if they are understood. Ah, you cannot tell _how_ sad it is! Ernest and
Sharley and May were with me when we went to the school; and when some of
the elder boys acted little plays, just as you might act "dumb charades,"
to amuse the visitors, they were delighted with their cleverness, and
laughed heartily; and I daresay the boys were pleased to see them laugh,
though they could not hear them. These boys spoke very quickly on their
fingers, and wrote beautifully on the black board, in answer to questions
which they were asked. I do not remember what these questions and answers
were; but I know we all thought some of the questions too difficult, and
wondered at the good and thoughtful answers which were given. They reminded
me of the reply to a difficult question I once saw a deaf and dumb boy
write.

The teacher of his school asked the visitors who had come to see it, to
put any questions they liked to the boys. Some questions in history and
geography and arithmetic were asked and answered; and then a lady said,
"Ask them to tell what is the amount of the Christian's riches."

There was a pause; but presently a boy of fourteen stepped forward, took
the chalk, and wrote this text as the answer: "Having nothing, and yet
possessing all things." I think he must have known what it is to be "rich
unto God."

It is sad to think that when the ear, that "gateway of knowledge," is shut,
a poor child may, for want of teaching, and often for want of love and
sympathy, grow up almost like an animal; his friends thinking him stupid,
because he cannot ask questions or tell anything that is in his mind, until
at last he really becomes stupid, and his mind grows dull from want of use.

I am glad to tell you that a way has lately been found, by which children
who have never heard a sound may be taught, not only to understand the
speech of others, but to speak themselves. It is true that their talk
sounds strange and unnatural, and is not easy to understand, but where
this method is known it makes a wonderful difference in the lives of the
poor children who have been so cut off from intercourse with others.
By carefully watching the lips of their teachers, those who learn this
"lip-reading" can tell what is said, and I have seen them write it down,
just as you would write a dictation lesson; and quite as correct, though
they only see the words, and you hear them. But before they have learned to
understand in this way, and still more before they have learned to speak,
great patience is needed, both in teachers and children. I have heard that
in the schools where lip-reading is taught, the children are forbidden to
make signs to each other or talk on their fingers, and so some of them
learn this much better plan wonderfully quickly.

Sometimes children become deaf after a fever, sometimes from a fall or
a heavy blow, or from a fright; some are born so. I do not know how it
happened in the case of this boy whose story I want to tell you, because
the lady who has written an account of him never knew him till he was
eleven years old; but I think he must either have been born deaf, or have
lost his hearing when he was a baby, for he had never spoken a word, and up
to the time when his story begins he had never been taught anything. His
name was John Britt, but everybody called him Jack; not that it mattered
to him what, he was called, for he had never heard his own name, nor the
shouts of the boys with whom he played, nor the crowing of the cocks, as
they flapped their wings in his mother's yard; all the world was dumb and
silent to poor Jack.

When he first came to the house of the lady who was to be such a kind
friend to him, Jack looked a very stupid boy. I am sure he was shy too, for
he had never before been in any house but the poor little cottage where he
was born, or the cottages of the neighbour folk; and when this lady from
England tried to make him understand that she wanted to be friends with
him, he kept looking round at all the fine things in her drawing-room. Some
people would have thought him a very rude boy, but she only watched him
with pitying eyes, and longed to teach him about God. But how could she
begin to teach him, since he could not hear a word she said?

This was what May was most anxious to know; and I could not tell her how
the very beginning was made, nor how Jack liked his first lesson. It must
have been a very difficult task, but you know what you have often heard,
"Where there's a will there's a way." Jack's lady greatly longed to do
something for the poor boy; she was deaf herself, and was obliged to use
an ear trumpet, by which the voices of those who spoke to her were brought
nearer to her ear, and perhaps this made her pity one who had never heard
at all, more than she might otherwise have done. But God had given her a
feeling of love and tenderness towards him, and a great longing and earnest
purpose to help him, and He showed her the way to put His truth within the
reach of this poor boy, whose life had been almost as lonely as if he had
been, shut up in prison, and gave her faith and patience, and courage to
undertake what seemed a hopeless task. One of the things she did was to
get a box of letters, and she held Jack's hand while he copied them on a
slate--I think this must have been his first real lesson--and when he had
copied the letters a great many times, without any idea of what he was
doing, but just to please his kind friend, she took the three letters D-O-G
and put them together. Her pet dog was lying in his basket by the fire, and
she pointed to him, and then pointed to the letters, and after she had done
this over and over again many times, she saw that the boy was beginning to
understand that the letters, in some strange way, must have something to
do with the dog. When this step was gained, she threw the D, O, and G back
into the box, and Jack had to pick the three letters out, one by one, and
put them together again. Then, when this word was quite learnt, she taught
him the names of other things which he knew--all in three letters--and last
of all showed him how to make the letters on his fingers, teaching him what
is called the deaf and dumb alphabet.

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