Twilight And Dawn by Caroline Pridham

C >> Caroline Pridham >> Twilight And Dawn

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

Certainly it would be so, if God had not made a beautiful provision for
keeping the air fresh, which I will try to explain to you.

You may remember that the Lord Jesus, after He had made the five barley
loaves and two small fishes prove enough for thousands of hungry men and
women and little children, turned to His disciples, and said, "Gather up
the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." So, in the world around
us, we may often see that God gives freely, but does not allow what He has
freely given to be lost or wasted.

Now when you take a long breath, and breathe in the air, you presently
breathe it out again. But what you breathe out is not the same; the part
of it by which you live is gone, and a poisonous air has taken its place.
Then, if every person in the world, and even the smallest animal, is
constantly using up the good part of the air, and breathing out that which
has been spoilt for animals, and would kill them if they had nothing else
to breathe--why are not all animals poisoned? What becomes of this air
which has been spoilt for them? Is it good for anything?

Ah! there is a wonderful, beautiful answer to these questions going on all
day long, surely and silently, unseen by any of us.

This air which has been used by us, and is no longer fit for our use,
feeds the plants and trees, the grass, and all living things which are
not animals; the plants, through tiny mouths at the edge of their leaves,
breathe it in. They grow by it; and, wonder of wonders, all day long, if
only the plant is where the sun can shine upon it, every green bit of it
is busy making this same air fit for us to breathe again; using up what it
wants, and what we do not want; every fragment, as it were, being gathered
up, and nothing lost.

I used to think, when I first learnt this beautiful lesson, that every part
of a plant was useful in purifying the air, and also that plants are always
busy at this purifying work, and so I liked to keep geraniums and fuchsias
in my room at night, for I thought that while I was asleep they would keep
the air fresh and sweet. But now I know--for as long as we live in this
world we can always be learning--that it is only in the daytime, when there
is light, that a plant can keep the air pure, by using up what we have
spoilt for our own use, and giving away what is good for us to breathe; and
also that, it is only the green part of it that has the power to take out
of the air the carbonic acid which we are constantly breathing into it,
using the carbon for its own food, and giving the oxygen back into the air
for our use; the parts which are not green, such as the roots and flowers,
breathe just as animals do, and spoil the air for us instead of making it
more fit for us to breathe.

You never thought, did you, that you help to feed the trees, and to keep
them alive and green, and that the trees and grass in their turn help to
keep you alive?

We were saying the other day how a ray of light will come through a little
round hole in the shutters when they are closed, or by any cranny through
which it can force its way. As long as that one ray is shining into the
darkened room you may watch the little grains of dust, like bright specks,
dancing up and down in it. But someone opens the shutters, the room becomes
all light, and you no longer see those tiny specks--and yet the dust is
still there, not only where you saw it, but all over the room.

Why could you see the dust just where the ray of light shone, and nowhere
else? The light did not make the dusty specks, they were in the room
already, but it showed them to you.

Just so there are many wonderful things going on around us in earth and sky
and sea--in what people call Nature--which we cannot see or hear or feel;
for God is always working mightily and graciously, unseen and unheard by
us, though He does allow us to know "parts of His ways," and to look with
wonder upon many more which we cannot understand.

We are apt to think that all things continue as they were from the
beginning of the world: but in reality the earth is never at rest; it has
passed through many changes, and still the old story goes on; on the one
hand there is change and decay, and on the other that constant building up
and repair by which "the face of the earth" is "renewed." Nothing is lost;
nothing stands still; and things which seem to have no relation to one
another, yet depend upon each other and work together in ways more
wonderful than we could ever have imagined: each is a part of the great
whole, and you could not take away any portion without spoiling the rest.

And now let us read again the 7th and 8th verses of our chapter.

"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were
the second day."

What are the "waters which were above"?

They are those beautiful clouds which seem to float in the ocean of air. I
am sure you have often wondered at their pure loveliness, as they sailed
over the sky, soft and white against the blue, as the foam upon the sea.
It was such clouds as these which two little boys saw once when they were
out driving. They were sitting close together in the back seat, and their
father heard them talking about the sky.

"Look," said one of the children, "God lives in the blue."

"No, Georgie," said his brother, "He lives in the white."

They were both right, for God is everywhere.

A little child of whom I have heard used to think, because she understood
that brightness and glory go together, that the stars were holes in the
floor of God's dwelling, to let the glory through. In the book of Job the
clouds are spoken of as "the treasure-house of the rain and snow," and
as the "bottles of heaven," and these names become full of meaning when
we know that the water, which falls from the clouds at every shower, is
constantly being drawn up again to fill them once more. This is done by
what is called evaporation, and very much of the water which rises to the
clouds comes from the sea, along shore, as well as from rivers and lakes.
Have you seen a pond dry up in summer? No? Then perhaps you have looked
into the ink bottle when all the ink had gone, and only some dry black dust
was left in it. What has happened? All the water in the ink has flown away;
the heat has turned it into vapour, which is lighter than air, and so it
has risen up through the air to form part of those snowy clouds which you
love to watch, when the light of the setting sun turns them to crimson and
gold. This change of water into vapour is one of the beautiful things which
we cannot often see, but which is always going on. The rain from heaven
falls upon the thirsty land, making it bring forth and bud, that there may
be bread for us, and food for every living thing; and then, when its work
is done, all that is not wanted goes back again, and is stored up in the
treasure-house of the clouds--nothing is lost.

I remember when we were speaking of this, I asked my children what the
earth would be like if all the rain that fell remained upon it. Chrissie
was the only one who had an answer ready; he said it would soon be a swamp,
and nothing could grow well, and no one could live. We can all understand
that if there were no rain to "satisfy the desolate ground," the earth
would soon be a parched desert; but it is just as true that, while the
rain is such a blessing, if God had not provided for its returning to the
clouds, the earth would indeed become a desolate waste of water. I must
tell you that little Dick was very much interested about this, and he
remembered that he had seen, in a place where the sun was shining, the
water going back from the earth to the clouds. "It went up in streaks," he
said, "and I saw it quite plainly."

Generally we look up at the clouds, but I remember once looking down and
seeing them below me. I had climbed a high mountain, and just when I got to
the top it happened that the peak was quite clear, but around it, a little
lower down, a wreath of white cloud was floating. Every now and then,
through a rift in the cloud, I could see the beautiful valley below, with
its smiling fields and winding river, and far away there was the sea, with
hundreds of green islands; all this I saw for a moment, as if through a
soft thin veil, and then the cloud closed again, and shut out the view.
I can quite understand travellers saying how lovely it is when they sail
through the air in balloons, to get up into a clear still height, and see
the "plains of clouds" below them. But there is one thing which makes
voyages in balloons dangerous. The higher people go, the more thin and
difficult to breathe the air becomes. One celebrated traveller, when he
had got as high as seven miles in his balloon, lost his senses, and his
companion was nearly frozen to death by the piercing cold. This traveller
tells us that about six or seven miles above the earth no sound can reach
the ear to break the perfect stillness and silence. This is because the
air at this height is so thin. On the top of Mont Blanc a pistol-shot can
scarcely be heard even though it is fired quite close; but if the same
pistol were to be fired off in the next field you would hear it, and put
your hand to your ears because the report was so loud.

But what makes the report? The pistol was fired into the air, and hit
nothing.

It was the air which was struck, and which sent back the sound. You
remember learning how light is turned back or reflected. Just as the
light-waves come back again, so do the sound-waves; very quickly if the
reflecting surface is near; after some time if it is far off. You know what
an echo is. There is a lovely place where some children I know used often
to go for a picnic. What they cared for most in Coombe Dingle was a wood
which they called the "Echo wood." They would stand beside a gate, and call
across the fields, and then listen. Very soon their own words, and even
their own tones, were sent back to them. The waves of air carried the
sounds along until they reached a pine wood which shut in the field. They
struck the tall trees, and were reflected, or sent back again, almost as
clearly as when first spoken.

Just in this way echoes of sound are, like birds, ever on the wing: the
whole air is alive with them. The walls of our rooms give back the tones
of our voices, but we hear no echo, because they are so near that the
repeating of the sound comes almost at the same moment as the sound itself.
There are echoes on all sides of us, and no sound is ever lost. How can
this be?

If you stand beside a quiet pool, and drop a stone into it, the stone sinks
down to the bottom and lies there; but from the spot where its fall broke
the calm surface, ring after ring ripples the water. Just so a single word
dropped from the lips of a child into the ocean of air is carried on, wave
after wave; so that, as a great philosopher once said, "the air is one vast
library, on whose pages is for ever written all that man has ever said or
even whispered."

[Illustration: THE "ECHO WOOD"]

There is a poem which you may know, that begins with this line--

"Kind words can never die."

This is quite true; but we might alter the first part of it a little, and
say, "No word can ever die." Not only the soft, loving words, but the
rough, angry ones, which we may well wish we had never spoken, all live in
this "vast library," and tell their own story.

How much it ought to make us think about our words, to know they can never
be lost!

THE RED, RED SKY.

"In the early, early morning, beyond the islands green,
Beyond the pines and palm trees, and the purple sea between,
Like the glow through a crimson window the morning rises slow,
And the isles lie dun in the glory, and the sea is all aglow.

"In the dim and misty evening the purple mountains stand,
And the glooms that hush the woodlands lie over all the land,
And high in dark blue heavens the red light bums and glows.
Like the Jasper of God's city, like the deep heart of the rose.

"Oh, why does morning dawn, and why ends the golden day,
With the crimson glow and glory, while the children kneel and pray?
Is it thus that God would tell me before the day begins
Of the morn of the Day of pardon, the Blood that has washed my sins?

"The morn of the day of gladness, the day of His love and grace,
When like the sun in his glory, the Lord unveiled His face,
And His love shone forth in beauty where all was dark before,
For the Blood had been shed which saved me, once and for evermore.

"Is it thus that God would tell me the evening draweth nigh,
When we pass beyond the mountains, beyond the purple sky?
And then, in God's great glory, the golden gates I see,
And sing, 'The Blood of Jesus has opened them for me!'"

FRANCES BEVAN

Taken, by permission, from _Hymns by Ter Steegen and Others_. Second
series.

THE THIRD DAY.

THE WORLD OF WATER.

"_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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24