THE FOURTH DAY.
SUN, MOON, AND STARS.
"When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained: what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"—PSALM viii. 3, 4.
"The day is Thine, the night also is Thine: Thou hast prepared the light and the sun…. Thou hast made summer and winter."—PSALM lxxiv. 16, 17.
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun."—ECCLESIASTES xi. 7.
"One star differeth from another star in glory."—1 CORIN. xv. 41.
When we had got as far in our reading of the first chapter of Genesis as the fourteenth verse, we noticed that it is very like the third; for both verses begin with those wonderful words which none but God could say—"Let there be."
But there is a great difference between the "light" of the third verse and the "lights" of verses fourteen and sixteen. The sun is called "the greater light," and the moon, which is so very much smaller, "the lesser light"; but in the language in which this part of the Bible was first written, these two lamps which give us light are called by a name which means, not the light itself, but that which holds it; not, as we might say, the candle which gives light as it burns but the candlestick in which it is set.
Let us read again carefully what God has told us about His work on the
FOURTH DAY, and I think we shall see, as we noticed in the chapter on
"Light," that we are not told that it was upon that Day that the sun and
moon were created.
"And 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. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also."
You remember that in the whole of this chapter which speaks of God's work in creation, the word "created" is used only on three occasions, though in the verse which tells of the creation of man, it is three times repeated (verse 27). And now I want you to turn to the hundred and fourth Psalm, and notice the verses which speak of the Days of Creation: you will see that light is spoken of in the second verse, and in the nineteenth we read—
"He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down."
Those who know the Hebrew language tell us that the word "appointed" in this verse is the very same as that which has been translated "made" in the sixteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis—so that we may read, "God appointed two great lights," just as in the eighth Psalm we read, "The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained."
We have seen that God could give light without the sun or moon;—an old writer quaintly says that before the sun was made "the whole heaven was our sun"—but He was pleased upon this Day of His creation to command the light, which He had called out of the darkness, to gather round the sun, so that he might, as the great light-bearer in all his splendour "rule the day"; and to cause light from that glorious sun to fall upon the moon, so that she, with her silvery shining, might "rule the night"—both sun and moon thus giving "light upon the earth."
May is fond of repeating a verse, which I daresay you know, about a little girl who, when it was too dark for her to see any more, folded up her work and put away her playthings with a "good-night, good-night" to them; for the time for working and playing had come to an end. "But," the verse goes on—
"She did not say to the sun 'good-night,'
Though she saw him set like a ball of light;
For she knew he had God's time to keep
All over the world, while others sleep."
Yes; this wonderful "ball of light"—so bright that the brightest light we know of looks dull when held up before its dazzling face—is ever, night and day, sending out rays of light and heat, like streams from an overflowing fountain, always making daylight somewhere. When you lie down in your bed, and settle yourself to sleep sound till morning, your little cousins in Australia and New Zealand are just beginning to sit up in theirs, and to rub their eyes, and think it will soon be breakfast time; and in the evening, when their day is done, yours will be just beginning again.
If there were any part of the world upon which the sun never shone, how cold and dark and desolate that forsaken spot would be! If no waves of heat warmed the earth, not a seed could spring up; no plant could live, no tree bear fruit, no flower lift up its head to the kindly light and show its fair colours; for do you not remember we learnt that the colours of flowers all come from the sunlight? Without the sun, the green earth would be changed into a frozen desert, with nothing living or moving upon it.
In old times the clever Greeks, who knew nothing of the God who made this wonderful star—for the sun is really a star, and the thousands of stars which we see on clear nights are suns, some larger and some smaller than our sun—worshipped it as the god Helios; and the Grecian philosopher who first ventured to say it was not so was tried for his life at Athens for his impiety; yet even he saw nothing in this wonderful light-bearer but a red-hot stone, half as big as his own country. If you have learnt better, if you know that "to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him," you can think how good that gracious God has been in not leaving the world in the dark and cold, but giving this great light to shine upon us, and to cheer us by his warmth. For though the sun is so very far away, "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof"; every little leaf, every tiny creature that creeps upon the ground, lives and grows in the life-giving rays of the sun, and would perish without them. Have you ever stopped to think of what is more wonderful than this?
God, who made the sun, is Love, as the text you know so well, tells us; and His love is like His sun, always shining down upon you. All the love and kindness which you have known from the day when you came into the world, a little helpless creature, with "no language but a cry"; all this love which surrounds you and has made your life so happy and bright, comes from Him; for "love is of God," and "God is love."
But it is only when God turns our hearts to Himself, so that we can say that we have "known and believed" His love to us, that we can really thank Him for it. When one, who knew what it was to have had his own dark heart lighted up by this great love, was thinking of these things, he wrote some words which I am going to write down for you, for they deserve to be remembered.
"The creation of the sun," he says, "was a very glorious work; when God first rolled him flaming along the sky, he shed golden blessing on every shore. The change in spring is very wonderful; when God makes the faded grass revive, the dead trees put out green leaves, and the flowers appear on the earth. But far more glorious and wonderful is the conversion (that is, the turning to God) of the soul. It is the creation of a sun that is to shine for eternity; it is the spring of the soul that shall know no winter, the planting of a tree that shall bloom with eternal beauty in the paradise of God." McCheyne wrote like this because he knew that
"When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon glaring sun,"
the spirit, that part of man which can never come to an end of its life, will still be living somewhere; and that those only who have been turned to God, and are His children by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, will live with Him all through that great for ever which will go on when sun and moon and all that we can see may have passed away.
And now, before I try to tell you a very little about the sun, I should like to know whether you have ever learnt any astronomy. My children thought it a hard name, but its meaning is beautiful, for it is only the Greek way of saying, "the law of the stars." Astronomy is the science which teaches us about the heavenly bodies, as the sun, moon, and stars are sometimes called; and all that we can learn about them is very wonderful and interesting, so that the more we know, the more we want to know. But the pleasantest way for you to learn would be if someone would talk to you a little, especially about the stars, and take you out of doors on clear nights, and show you some of those which are best known, so that in time you would learn to look for them yourself; that would be a delightful way of beginning to learn.
I remember that I had a great wish to know about the different constellations, or groups of stars; I wanted to know where to find Orion, with his seven brilliant stars, and those other seven stars which form the group called Charles's Wain; from an idea that they are so placed as to give a rough sketch of a waggon and three horses; and the wonderful cluster of the Pleiades—for I had heard of all these constellations; but I did not like the trouble of learning about them in difficult books. One day I met a gentleman who was very fond of sailing about in his yacht, and I thought he would teach me all about the stars, for I had heard that sailors knew them well. But, to my disappointment, I found that my new friend, though he was very kind to me, was not able to answer my questions; he said he did not know much about the stars, and that it was in the old times, before ships were steered by the compass, that sailors learned so much from watching them; though the moon considered in reference to the fixed stars is of very great importance as enabling them to ascertain their position.
Though it is a long time ago, I can remember how surprised I was when I first understood that the sun was a star, and that there are other stars very much like him, but most of them so very far from us that it is not possible to measure their distance. We do know how far our sun—the Star of Day, as he is sometimes called—is from us. Perhaps it may help you a little if I tell you that the astronomers say that if the sun was as far away from us as the nearest of these stars, he would appear but a point of light; but I think you will best understand how great the distance is if I tell you that a train, rushing along at full speed, as you see the express go by, and never resting, day or night, would take two hundred and ten years to reach him.
We cannot be surprised that very little is known certainly about a star so very far off, and yet nearer to us than any of the little points of light which you see so thickly sown over the sky; but we know that he is a great globe, like our earth, only twelve hundred thousand times as large—as much larger, I told the children when we were having our lesson in astronomy, as May's curly head was larger than the little blue bead which I put upon it.
But this great globe is unlike the earth in one respect; for while it is in itself quite dark, the sun which is used in the Bible as an emblem of God Himself shines by his own glorious light, and though he is believed to be made of the same materials as our earth, it is likely that they are in a state of very great heat.
Astronomers, who look at the sun through their wonderful telescopes, and so get much nearer to him than we can, tell us that we never see the sun himself; but that what we look at is the bright garment of light which is wrapped around him. They tell us also about great holes which sometimes appear in this bright covering; and they believe that they have actually seen, through these holes, the dark globe which is the real sun. These holes are called spots upon the sun, and very dark they look upon his bright face. The astronomers have long tried to find out what makes the sun-spots, and some of them now think that they are caused by furious winds which make great rents in this bright garment; for they tell us that there are sun-storms far more terrible than any storm that ever raged on sea or land.
It was while patiently watching the movement of these dark spots, through the little telescope which he had made and set up in Rome, that Galileo, nearly three hundred years ago, discovered that the sun moves round upon itself once during twenty-eight days, just as the earth turns round on herself once in twenty-four hours. But he lived in a time when it was believed that our earth was the centre of the universe, and that to say that it was only one of many planets moving round the sun was to deny the word of God; so to save his life, he pretended to give up what he knew to be true, and promised that he would never teach it again.
You remember that our earth has an atmosphere, a globe of air which wraps it round. We are told that the sun, too, has an atmosphere—a colour-globe, as it is called, because it is believed to be not air, but fiery gas. Then, outside this colour-globe, is something very lovely; that corona, or crown, of silvery light, which can be seen only during an eclipse of the sun. But what is an eclipse?
When the moon, which has no light of her own, passes directly between the earth and the sun, so as to hide his face from us, we say there is a solar eclipse, or obscuring of the sun's light. When the earth comes directly between the moon and the sun, instead of the sun's light falling upon the moon, she is eclipsed by the dark shadow of the earth passing over her face. I think you may have watched an eclipse of the moon: a solar eclipse is a much rarer sight, and there is something awful about it: as the darkness deepens, the stars begin to shine out, and it seems so much like night that the cocks and hens have been known to go to roost at midday. It is then, when the bright, dazzling face of the sun is hidden, that his lovely crown is seen, as a ring of soft light appearing all round the dark face of the moon.
Now let us think of some of the things that this wonderful Star of Day does for us. In the first place, he is the great source of light and heat, as he shines, not for us alone, but upon all the other planets—those which are so near to him as to get more heat than we could bear, and those which are so far away that it seems to us as if they must be very cold indeed.
But, if we leave these distant worlds and think of our own, how wonderful it is to know that, as we learnt when speaking of Light itself, not from the sun alone, but from every star, waves of light and heat, like tiny messengers from them to us, are always speeding on their noiseless way. They travel to us through space, or rather through something finer than air or water, which fills all the room between us and them—for no place in the universe is really empty.
You may be surprised to hear that these messengers come from the stars by day as well as by night; but remember that they are always shining in their places in the sky. We cannot see the starlight waves while the sun's great light is shining upon us; but you know how beautifully they shine on clear nights, when there is neither sunlight nor moonlight to quench their soft beams.
But after all, the stars are so far away that we must think specially of our own star, the sun, as the source of light and heat; he also makes for us all form and colour, and gives us the pictures drawn by his light which we call photographs, and which make us know something of people we have never seen, and places which we may never visit.
You remember that sunlight also helps the plants to sift the air, so that they take from it the part that suits them, and leave behind the part that suits us—that precious oxygen which is so necessary for all animal life.
Then we must not forget the work done by the heat-waves. These are called "dark," because they cannot be seen. They not only strike upon the land, waking up the hidden seed, and warming it into life, but they are the great water-carriers. When we were talking about the clouds we learnt that from every wet place, as well as from the seas, lakes, and rivers, water is constantly being drawn up, so that we can see it again in the fleecy clouds which float across the sky, and again when it comes down in the showers which water the earth—the tiny heat-waves are the messengers which perform this work of evaporation.
When we were speaking about the world of water, we learnt that the moon is the chief cause of the tides, by whose constant ebb and flow the ocean and rivers are purified; in like manner the sun, by causing the winds to blow, keeps the air fresh and pure; but this is a subject rather beyond us. We can, however, remember that one more thing which the sun does for us is to tell us the time. God gave him "to rule the day … and to divide the light from the darkness," and he marks how long our day is to be, "keeping time," as May's verse says, all the world over—for he is the great clock which tells the hours and the days—a clock which never needs to be wound up, and which we can trust, for it never goes wrong. And he is a constant silent witness to us of the power and the goodness of God, as "day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language; their voice is not heard"—but "the heavens declare the glory of God … in them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun." If, as we look at our watches, we are certain that men must have made them, how sure is it that God made this great time-keeper, light-giver, and life-sustainer—this mighty magnet that guides and controls the world of which it is the glorious centre!
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."