THE THIRD DAY.
THE EARTH BENEATH.
"He hangeth the earth upon nothing."—JOB xxvi. 7.
"The pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them."—1 SAM. ii. 8.
"As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires; and it hath dust of gold."—JOB xxviii. 5, 6.
Have you ever noticed that some words have two meanings, both their own, but giving us very different thoughts about the things of which they speak, according to the way in which we use them?
It is so with our earth. We may speak of it as the firm ground upon which we stand, and may think of the wonderful time of which we are going to read in our chapter in Genesis, when God caused it to bring forth and bud, and clothed all its waste places, so that it has been ever since the green earth which is so fair to look upon. This is the way in which we generally speak of the earth, is it not?—but we may also think of it, not as it appears to us, but as a great globe hung up in the heavens by the mighty hand of God, who "hangeth the earth upon nothing"; for "the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He hath set the world upon them."
If you could look at a star through a telescope, I think the first thing that would strike you is that there is nothing by which it is upheld and kept in its place. You might say, as you saw it, as it were, hanging in the depths of the sky, "Why, it is hung upon nothing!"
It is just so with our earth: there is nothing that we can see by which it is supported, no "pillars" for it to rest upon—but yet it is kept in its place. God set it there, and God keeps it there.
The Hindu has tried to account for this in his own way: he says the earth does rest upon something; it is supported upon the backs of four great elephants and when he is asked, "Where do they stand?" he replies, "Upon the back of a huge tortoise." This shows the folly of men who have tried to explain what filled the patriarch Job with awe and wonder, even before God had asked him those questions which He alone could answer. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who hath laid the corner stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
Once in a time of great danger and trouble, Luther wrote thus to a friend: "I recently saw two miracles; you listen to hear of something startling: some great light burning in the heavens, some angelic visitation—some unusual occurrence; but you hear only this. As I was at my window, I saw the stars, the sky, and that vast and glorious firmament in which the Lord has placed them. I could nowhere discover the columns on which the Master has supported this immense vault, and yet the heavens did not fall! And here was the other miracle: I beheld clouds hanging above me like a vast sea—I could neither perceive ground on which they reposed, nor cords by which they were suspended, and yet they did not fall upon me."
We find it difficult to think of our own globe as a star; but so it is, and when you go out at night and look up at the sky, all covered with little points of light, you may remember that our great earth, with its mountains and forests, seas and plains, and all its cities and towns alive with busy men and women, is but a tiny speck in God's universe; many of those stars which seem so small, as their "twinkle, twinkle" comes from so far away, are themselves suns, larger than that mighty sun of ours which it takes the earth a whole year of days to travel round; and all these wonderful worlds belong to Him "for whose pleasure they are and were created."
Looked at in this way, our earth is but one of a group of eight stars, which have been called planets, or wanderers, because, while other worlds, which are called fixed stars, keep constantly in the same position with regard to each other, these planets are always moving. They have two movements; I think you know that our earth turns round upon itself, as your top does when it spins, and that in this way the changes of day and night come to us; the other movement is that by which it, along with the other planets, travels round the sun.
This yearly journey round the sun which the earth takes is a long one, but so swiftly does it move that it may be said rather to fly than to wander. Shut your eyes and count "One," "two," "three," "four," "five"; in this little moment of time the earth will have got over a hundred miles of its journey. You see it flies along faster than any bird; and what a noiseless flight it is! How is it that we do not feel it moving? Ah, you must remember that the earth carries you along with it; you know nothing about the rapid journey, and yet you are a traveller in spite of yourself—a traveller round the sun.
All the planets, like our earth, move round the sun, and are kept in their places by means of a wonderful power which we cannot see, but which is one of those "laws of nature," as the rules which God has made for His great universe are sometimes called, about which I told you that they never alter. It is a law, or rule, that, in the world around us, "the same causes always produce the same effects." If you think a little about this, it will become plain to you that it is so, and if you observe carefully you will see that this rule is the same in connection with the smallest as well as the greatest things; if it ever seems that it is not so, be sure that this is only because you do not yet know all about what you have been observing. And now learn a little about the beautiful rule by which the planets are kept in their places.
Two hundred years ago, Sir Isaac Newton discovered that everything in the universe attracts or draws every other thing to itself, and this power or attraction he called "the force of gravitation." I cannot do much more than tell you the name of this "law," but you will learn more about it one day I hope, and see how simple and yet how wonderful it is. An astronomer of our own day says, in his Story of the Heavens, that there are "grounds for believing that the law of gravitation is obeyed throughout the length, the breadth, the depth, and the height of the entire universe," and a little observation and thought will enable you to see something of its working in the world around us.
Do you remember my telling you how fond I was of swimming boats long ago? When my brother and I used to launch our paper boats—not on the river, but in that big tub in the yard—our great difficulty was to keep them from running each other down, and becoming dismal wrecks before they had completed their first voyage. We did not know why, but it seemed as if the vessels of our tiny fleet would drift towards each other, in spite of all our efforts to keep them apart. Have you not found it so with your boats? It certainly was with ours, but we should have been surprised if anyone had told us that as they ran against each other, our paper boats were but obeying the "law of gravitation," each little vessel drawing the other to itself by a power which it had of attracting it. Knowing this rule makes many things plain. If you throw your ball high into the air, it is sure to come down again. Why? Because the earth, which is a much larger ball, attracts it to itself by the law of gravitation; by the same law, the drops of rain in a shower fall to the ground; by the same law, we and all the people upon the globe are able to stand firm on it; by the same law, the great earth itself, the moon, and all the planets are kept in their places. But what is the mighty magnet which has power to draw the earth to itself? It is that wonderful globe the sun, which is more than a million times as large as the earth; and though it is so far, far away—at a distance greater than we can have any idea of—yet by its mighty power of drawing them to itself, makes our earth, as well as the other planets, move round it in the most beautiful order, and keeps them all in their places.
Although Newton felt sure that this unseen but resistless power, of which he afterwards spoke reverently as "the finger of God," kept the moon going round the earth and the earth round the sun, yet he was at first silent about his great discovery; he worked and waited for long years, until he had proved that it was not merely a happy guess, but that he had really discovered the rule which governs the motion of sun, moon and stars. Then he explained the reason why the moon is always moving round the earth, and the earth and other planets round the sun, instead of all moving on in a straight line; it is because everyone of the heavenly bodies attracts all the rest, and thus the smaller move round the larger, all in perfect order and harmony.
[Illustration: SAILING THE BOAT]
You must not think that this force set them all moving; it only governs their movements, the earth pulling the moon to itself, and the sun in like manner pulling all the planets with gentle but resistless power, and keeping them all moving round himself—their glorious centre.
You will learn by-and-by what has been found out about the other planets. All I shall tell you of them now is, that they are, like the earth, quite dark in themselves. The light they give is reflected light from the sun; just like the light which comes to us from another planet, which belongs, not to the sun, but to our earth, and indeed is so near home that I am sure you can find out its name for yourself. Of the seven other planets which belong to the sun, the nearest in size to our earth is one which shines with a lovely soft light, and is sometimes the evening, sometimes the morning star. Ask someone to show you Venus; and I think you will soon learn to look for her in the evening, and to love her pure, calm radiance. This star is peculiarly beautiful in the early morning, when she seems to shine alone in the sky, and reminds us how, in the last book of the Bible, the Lord Jesus speaks of Himself, and says, "I am the … Bright and Morning Star." What a beautiful name for us to know the Lord Jesus by! There are some children who know Him by that name, and they are watching for that bright star to appear.
I will tell you of one. Her name is Sharley; but she is not May's sister Sharley, and I do not think she is quite so old. This little girl had been obliged to go away from her home, to stay for some time in the Children's Hospital. This is a bright, pretty place, with pictures and flowers and toys. But it was not at all like home to poor little Sharley; and as she thought of her mother and her sisters she sobbed and cried in her little bed, and buried her head under the pink quilt, and refused to be comforted. A lady came to see her, and brought her a picture-book; but still she hid her face, and cried, "Oh, do let me go home!" The lady tried to please her by showing her a stuffed squirrel, and telling stories about how she had seen the merry little creatures, with their bright eyes and red bushy tails, running about in the beech-woods, eating nuts. But no, nothing that she could do or say would win a smile or a bright look. At last she noticed a little Testament lying upon the tray across her bed, beside the toys which had been given her to play with, and she said, "Is that your own Testament, Sharley? Will you find the place and read me your favourite verse?"
In a moment the little girl stopped crying, and turned over the leaves of her Testament till she came to the very end; and she put her finger on the verse, "Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." As she pointed to the words the lady read them, and then asked, "Do you want Him to come?"
Sharley did not speak, but nodded her head.
"Why do you want to see Him? What has He done for you?"
"He died for me," said the little girl. And then she asked just one question, "If the Lord Jesus hasn't come before Monday, do you think mother will come and take me home?"
I am glad to tell you that little Sharley had not long to stay in the hospital; she soon got well enough, to be allowed to go home. But I tell you about her that yon may see that she was not too young to know what the Lord Jesus had done for her, and to be looking out for Him to come—watching for the "Bright and Morning Star."
And now I want you to find one more verse about the earth as it hangs in the sky, a very beautiful verse in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. "It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." What is meant by the "circle of the earth"? You have learnt that the earth is round, like the sun and moon; for you see how round the globe in the schoolroom is, and you know that it is meant to be as like the earth in shape as it can be made. Besides, you have read of sailors who have made voyages round the world, and brought their ships back again to the very place from whence they set sail. It seems quite plain to you, now that you have been taught so much about the form of the earth, that it must be round. But I wonder whether you have ever thought that, long before a geography-book was written or a globe was made—at a time when no one had ever sailed round the world, but all the wise men thought the earth was flat (except where the mountains and hills were), and that if they could only travel far enough, they would in time get to the world's end—God had spoken of it as round. He had spoken of Himself as the One who "sitteth upon the circle" (or "arch") "of the earth"; and of the inhabitants thereof—all the people who have lived and died upon it—as "grasshoppers"; creatures of a day.
When we learn something about other worlds, and find out that this world, so large in our eyes that we cannot think of anything to compare with it for greatness, is yet so small that it is like a grain of sand in the vast universe which God created at the beginning, we may well ask
"Why did the Son of God come down
From the bright realms of heavenly bliss,
And lay aside His kingly crown,
To visit such a world as this?
"Why in a manger was He born,
Who was the Lord of earth and sky?"
The answer to this question is to be found in the verse which you know so well, where the Lord Jesus Christ Himself tells us that "God so loved the world"—this place which is "a little city" indeed compared with other worlds; and the "few men within it"—all sinful people who had gone away as far as they could from Him—God so loved this lost world, "that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The Son of God gave up "all that He had" to buy back this lost world, for the sake of the treasure which was hidden there. Do you know what that treasure is?
And now we will look again at a verse in the Book of Job, which tells us something very wonderful about the inside of this great globe of ours, upon the fair outside of which we live and move. You would never have thought it possible that such a great ball could be weighed. But by weighing and measuring—not with scales and weights, you may be sure, but by clever ways which are known to learned philosophers—it has been found out that our earth is very, very heavy. The philosophers thought it could not be so heavy if it were made of earth and rocks all through, and they wondered what could be far down beneath the deepest mines, in those secret places which they could not reach. But long before these wise men had begun to weigh and measure, and to guess and wonder, God had said, "As for the earth, out of it cometh bread"—you know that in many places the surface of the earth is rich with waving corn—"and under it is turned up as it were fire."
I remember well when I first heard about this fire always burning at the heart of the earth. I had been told that the world was round like a ball, and yet that people lived upon every part of it. And when I turned the globe in the schoolroom round until I had found New Zealand—that land which is just opposite our own country, as you can see for yourself if you look—I used to think how wonderful it was that the New Zealanders should be there "walking about under my feet," as I had been told they were; and a great desire came into my mind to make a way right through to them, and see what they were like. I believe I thought they were men who walked on their heads, for in those days I much preferred guessing at things I did not understand, to asking someone who knew how to explain them to me. So you see I understood so very little, that I actually thought that by getting up early and working hard it would be quite easy for me, with my little spade, to dig right down to the other side of this mighty globe!
However, one day, before I had made more than an opening to my tunnel, I listened to a conversation about digging deep wells and mines. I could not understand most of what was said, nor did I know the meaning of any of the long words which I then heard for the first time; but there was one thing which I did understand, and this made me stop short in my work, afraid to dig another spadeful of earth. I had thought it would be so delightful to walk through my tunnel, and come out at the other side where the strange New Zealand people lived; but now my great dread was lest I should get to the inside of the earth before I was aware of it, when I had dug perhaps only a little hole; for those who were speaking about it, said how impossible it was to get very far below the surface,—or, as they called it, very deep into the "crust" of the earth—because of the great heat, which makes the men who work in deep mines glad to throw off their clothes. "The deeper the bore, the greater the heat," they said; and then went on to speak of this crust as if it covered the earth as the shell covers an egg, so that I thought it might perhaps be broken just as easily. "And how dreadful it would be," I said to myself, "if I could get to the inside of the earth and find it all on fire!"
It was a pity that I did not ask a little about what surprised and frightened me so much, and especially that I did not get someone to explain to me the meaning of this new word, the "crust" of the earth. I know now that it is the name that has been given to that part of the earth which is known to be firm and solid—the bed of the ocean as well as the dry land. Beneath this crust lies the inner part or kernel of the earth, and no one knows of what it consists; all that can be done is to examine the rocks which rest upon it, and whether the lowest of these layers of rock has yet been reached, we do not know. If you have ever been to a quarry where the rocks have been blasted and cut away, you have seen a little way down into this earth-crust. I remember once, when I was living in a country warmer than England, seeing a beautiful sight. It was a great quarry in a hillside. In part of it men were busy, cutting out the stone and carrying it away; but all over one side, which was no longer worked, a beautiful vine had woven its lovely green leaves and purple clusters of grapes.
You would have thought, perhaps, that the side where the rough, hard rock was hidden by the fruitful vine, was the only part of the quarry worth looking at; but the other side, where the quarrymen were at work, was very interesting to anyone who would take the trouble to notice how the rocks lay, piled one upon another, and especially to one who had learnt a little about the different kinds of rock of which the earth-crust has been made. Even if you have never learnt much of what is called geology, by keeping your eyes open and your mind awake you may see a great deal in the stones which have perhaps seemed to you most uninteresting. A block of granite from one of the Dartmoor hills, and a piece of slate from a Welsh quarry—how different these two kinds of stone are! We see this at once; but they become much more interesting when we know that each has its own history. The granite is one of the fire-made rocks, so called because there are marks upon it, like letters written long ago, quite plain to those who have the skill to read them; which show that though it is now so hard, it was once soft, as soft as iron becomes when melted by very great heat. The mountains of Devon and Cornwall, the Grampians of Scotland, even Mont Blanc, the "Monarch of Mountains," are made of the grey or red granite which takes such a beautiful polish when cut that it is much prized for buildings.
The piece of slate has quite a different history. It is one of the water-made rocks, in which so many fossils have been found; while in the fire-rocks there are no remains of anything which ever lived. The water-rocks are so called because water has had so much to do with the making of them; for they have been very slowly formed by the gravel and grains of sand which have been washed down by streams and torrents, and left behind in their course. In these slate and sandstone rocks the wonderful fossil animals, which are to be seen in the Museum, have been found. A fossil means what has been dug out of the earth; and numbers of animals are to be found buried deep in the rocks along the coast of Yorkshire—huge creatures which lived on the earth long, long ago, of which the hard parts, such as bones and teeth, have gradually been turned into stone.
All this is very wonderful to think of, and I am sure the poet, who spoke of finding "sermons in stones," was wiser than he knew; but what will you say when I tell you that one kind of rock—the chalk with which you are so fond of drawing upon the black-board—is made of shells, most of them very tiny ones, which can be seen only by a microscope? What myriads of living things once made their homes in those little shells, and what sort of life they lived, we cannot tell; but there the shells remain in the white chalk, and the microscope will show them to you, as it shows so many hidden wonders in this wonderful world, where the very great and the very small meet on every hand.
Only the other day, May brought me a lovely branch of white coral. "Look," she said, "when baby was out for a walk, a lady gave her this." She thought it very pretty, but she was surprised when I showed it to her through a magnifying-glass, and told her that it had been made by a very tiny kind of jelly-fish; a plant-animal some people call it, of the same kind as the sea-anemone; and she wondered still more when we found in a book a picture of a coral island, and I told her that such little creatures have been busy ever since the world began, constantly building up the coral-rocks. These rocks, which are strong enough to resist the force of the waves, rise out of the sea naked and bare, but are soon covered with green, and become the resting-place of the sea-birds, until at last they are like that lovely island, fringed with tall cocoa-palms, which we saw in the picture. If it were not for the myriads of tiny jelly-fishes, who work on and on, each forming its own little bones from the lime it gets from the sea-water, dying, and leaving its skeleton behind for others to build upon, there would be none of these beautiful green isles of the sea of which sailors love to tell us.
We were speaking of contrasts some time ago; now for a contrast. Beside the coral, with its lovely branching sprays, we will put a piece of coal. You think the coal very black and ugly, not fit to be put alongside the white coral; but let me tell you that there is that in the coal which was once far more beautiful than the coral—which is only a bare skeleton after all—could ever be; for, though coal and coral are alike dead now, both were once full of life.
But the coal, which is certainly more useful than beautiful at present, has had a wonderful past. Besides the fossil-animals which are dug out of the earth's crust, there are also fossil-trees and ferns, and it is of them that coal, which seems only like a black stone, is made. I have read that in a part of England where there are now great coal mines, for a long time no one knew the worth of coal except some old women, who said they could make their fires burn beautifully by putting those black bits of stone upon them. How strange this seems; and what should we do now if we had not these black stones to burn? Coal is generally called a mineral, as all things which are dug from mines are called; but it is really a vegetable. You may perhaps pick up in some swampy place, a piece of wood, very black, which breaks as you handle it. Look at it well, for this wood is being turned into coal; but for what was once a forest to become a coal-mine takes a very long time indeed, with a strange history of change and decay; yet it is true that the coal dug out of mines is nothing else than trees and ferns and mosses, long ago buried by mud and sand, and so crushed together that they have become like a piece of black stone.
The other day Chrissie had what you would consider a rare treat, for his father took him and his brother down a coal-mine. They put on some of the miners' clothes, and then got into the "cage," and were let down by a strong chain; down, down, until they reached the bottom of the shaft, as the tunnel from the mouth of the coal-pit to the place where men are at work below is called. I have never seen a mine of any kind, but if I ever find myself at the bottom of a coal-pit, I think I shall use my eyes, and see whether, even in such a grimy place, I cannot find something beautiful. I shall hold my safety-lamp high, and look carefully at the roof and sides of the mine, for I have been told that in all coal-mines remains of the plants from which the coal is made are to be found; so I should not be surprised to find here and there in the dark shining walls traces of leaves and branches; and upon the hard clay which forms the roof, beautiful patterns of ferns, which lived long, long ago, and have lain buried for ages.
"In a valley, centuries ago,
Grew a little fern-plant, green and slender,
Veining delicate and fibres tender,
Waving in the wind, crept down so low;
Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it;
Playful sunbeams darted in and found it;
Drops of dew stole down by night and crowned it;
But no foot of man e'er came that way,
Earth was young and keeping holiday."
We can speak of the roof and the floor of a coal-mine, because the coal lies in what are called seams, between layers of slate or hard clay. I cannot tell you much about the sedges and reeds and giant ferns, the remains of which have been found in these seams of coal, but I know that they are of the same kind as plants which are now found in damp and warm places, though they were giants indeed compared with them. Some of these old-world plants would not grow in our country now, but there are great mare's-tails, just the same as the small ones which I have often found beside a pool of black water on an Irish bog; and I have read that some plants with stems fifty feet long, which are found in coal, are of the same kind as a pretty little moss which grows upon the mountains almost all over England.
You remember the story about the boy who was brought up in a mine. Now I want to tell you about a little girl who did not live in a coal-mine, but was often taken there by her father. Her mother had died when she was a baby, and as she grew older her father was her constant friend, and loved his little daughter so much that he liked to have her always near him. And so, though she was only seven years old when he came to work in this mine, he very often took her with him in the cage, and she had leave to stay underground until his work was done and he could take her home again. Children can always find ways of amusing themselves, and this child had a happy time in her strange nursery, and many a merry game she played among the coal. As she grew older her father allowed her to carry a lantern, as the miners did, and she would go fearlessly through the dark passages by herself, until she knew all their windings as well as you know the paths in your father's garden.
But all at once this happy life came to an end: three years had passed, and she was just ten years old, when a great sorrow came to this child. As her dear father was going down the shaft one morning the chain broke, and the cage fell to the bottom of the mine. When his mates ran to the spot, they knew at once that he had been killed by that terrible fall, and slowly and sadly they took up his crushed and wounded body and carried it home. The first thing that the dear little daughter knew about the accident which had made her an orphan child, was when she saw the men, who had worked with her father, coming towards his cottage with their sad burden.
She at once ran to meet them, asking when father would be home; but the sight of their faces soon told her, young as she was, all the truth. When first she understood what had happened she cried with a bitter cry, for her father was all she had in the world. Then, while the rough miners, amid their tears, tried to comfort her, she suddenly knelt down on the grass where they had laid the body and prayed as her dear father had taught her to pray.
[Illustration: THE MINER'S LITTLE DAUGHTER.]
What a touching thing it must have been to see the child kneeling there, and to hear her, in her great grief, say three times over, "Thy will be done!"
One of the miners took her to his home, and they all tried to comfort her. At first it seemed as if she could not recover from the shock, and they feared she would die of grief; but by-and-by she began to try to help the kind woman—who was like a mother to her—in the care of her little children, and at last she got courage to go down into the mine again, to the very place where her poor father had been killed.
But she did not come now to run about and play hide-and-seek among the winding ways; those days were over, and the sorrowful time, which had passed since then, had taught her precious lessons. Her father's Friend was her Friend now, and she loved to carry the Bible, which had belonged to her father, down into the mine, and while the miners were taking their dinner or their short rest, she used to sit beside them and read them chapters and psalms, and so became a little messenger to tell them of the love of God. Do you know a hymn about shining in this world—where so "many kinds of darkness" are found—for the Lord Jesus Christ? I do not know whether this child had ever heard of it, but it is very sweet to see that the Lord had taught her to shine—as the hymn says—"first of all for Him"; then in her little corner in that humble cottage where she tried, in spite of her own sore trouble, to be a cheer and comfort to the miner's wife; and then He gave her a little corner in the dark mine where she might shine
"Like a little candle
Burning in the night."
The rough men loved this gentle child who had known sorrow so early. They listened as she read to them, and used to say she was their good angel. If we remember that an angel means a messenger, we shall perhaps think it not a wrong name to give to her, since she read to them God's Book, which is His message to us.
While we were talking about the earth-crust, I daresay you were wishing to know, as I did, how thick it is—how far down the layers of rocks go, and what lies underneath the lowest layer of all.
These are questions which cannot be answered; for no one has ever been able to search so far into the hidden parts of the earth as to tell us what lies beneath those fire-rocks, which are the lowest known, although they are sometimes found upon the tops of mountains, cast up by a mighty heaving of the crust, such as happens when there is an earthquake, or what is called the "eruption" of a volcano.
But what power could be strong enough to heave up solid rocks, and to make the firm ground upon which we tread, and upon which the houses are built, waver to and fro like the restless sea, so that the strongest buildings begin to totter and fall, and the bravest men run for their lives?
It is the mighty power of steam—caused by the great heat far down below—which, when it does come to any part of the earth's surface, makes itself known in very terrible ways.
We do not often hear of earthquakes near home; but in some of the most beautiful parts of the world they are so common that the houses are built only one storey high, and of wood, not stone, because low houses are less likely to fall, and wooden ones are easily built up again, if overthrown. I think you have heard of the boiling springs in Iceland, which burst through the ground, shaking it and making it tremble; just as the steam shakes the lid of the teakettle; and rising almost to the clouds, with a noise like fireworks; and perhaps you may have seen the hot springs at Bath, from which a cloud of steam rises almost in the heart of the beautiful old city, and which are believed to come from a depth of nearly a mile.
Such is the force of this steam that even the bed of the sea has been heaved up by it into a burning mountain, from which great stones are cast high into the air; while down its sides flow melted rocks and metals, forming the lava which, when seen at night, looks like a stream of liquid fire, but quickly cools into a river of mud. All these strange things tell us terrible tales of the great heat which is somewhere in the heart of the earth, and help us to understand the verse which tells us all we really know about it: "As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire."
New Zealand is a country where there are many hot springs, and several mountains which were once volcanoes, but were supposed to have died out. One of these, Mount Tarawera, was situated in what was called the Hot Lake district, because there were not only boiling springs, but pools of hot water there. The Hot Lakes valley was not only a lovely green spot, but it was noted for the wonderful Pink and White Terraces, which were so beautiful as to be one of the sights which people from all countries came to see.
Imagine, if you can, basins of white and pink marble rising one above another, filled with water of the deepest blue, by a warm stream which kept flowing over them in a constant cascade. You would have enjoyed a bath there, I am sure, and would have been interested to see the country-people cooking their food in some of the neighbouring springs where the water came from so great a depth that it was always boiling.
But this lovely place was full of hidden dangers; for miles around these lakes the ground was hot and crumbling, and in many places so thin that if you did not tread very carefully, you might find yourself sinking into hot mud.
It was in June, which you know is winter-time in New Zealand, in the year 1885, that the people of Wairoa, a beautiful place where some missionaries had settled that they might teach the Maoris, were awakened at midnight by a heavy shock of earthquake, accompanied by a fearful roar, which made them rush out of their houses in terror. The sight which greeted them was grand but awful. Ernest has a picture of it in his room; but I suppose it would not be possible for any picture to give an idea of what the poor frightened people saw. Mount Tarawera had been asleep for a hundred and twenty years, so that it was supposed to have burnt itself out, and to be no longer dangerous. But it was awake now: the fearful roar which had aroused the sleepers was caused by its having suddenly burst into flame; and it continued to throw high into the sky fire and mud and stones, while the inhabitants of the peaceful little village saved what they could carry, and then fled away in their night-dresses.
As morning broke, a dense pillar of ashes rose from the burning, roaring mountain; the school-house, where sixty Maori boys and girls used to be taught, was struck by lightning; and while burning, overwhelmed with torrents of hot mud and stones. Sad to say, the schoolmaster and most of his family were killed, the two eldest daughters only being rescued from the buried house. How well it is to know that Mr. Hazard and the four children who were taken out dead from the ruins, were ready, quite ready for whatever might happen, because they knew the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour!
God allowed them to lose their lives upon that dreadful day; but for them the eruption of the volcano was only the "chariot of fire" by which He was pleased to take them away in a moment, to be for ever with the Lord, who had loved them and given Himself for them.
The darkness caused by the ashes which fell in a ceaseless shower for eighteen hours, continued till noon the next day, when it was seen that not only had the beautiful marble terraces vanished, but the whole valley had been blown into the air by the tremendous force of imprisoned steam. A traveller describing the scene of desolation says,[Footnote: Miss Gordon Cumming on "The Eruption of Tarawera in 1885.">[ "Even living birds were coated with mud, while for some days after the eruption the poor bewildered cattle roamed about this dreary wilderness mad with hunger and thirst, gnawing boughs of trees or decayed wood, bellowing pitifully, and with eyes bloodshot and nostrils choked with greasy slate-coloured mud, which lay an inch thick all over their coats." And of the smiling valley itself, she says: "Where, but a few days previously, the wild fowl were swimming securely among the reeds and sedges which bordered the quiet lakes, there now exists only a chaotic wilderness of cones and craters all in hideous activity, ejecting clouds of pestilential black smoke and showers of stones. One large crater was in full action on the spot where the beautiful Pink Terrace had hitherto gladdened all visitors by its loveliness, and another apparently close to the White Terrace was throwing up masses of black dust and steam, which rose in columns thousands of feet in height."
There is a verse in the hundred and fourth Psalm which tells how God "touched the hills, and they smoke." There are many burning and smoking mountains in different parts of the world, besides those which have risen from the depths of the sea; some of them have destroyed whole cities by hot streams of lava or showers of ashes; there are some whose high peaks are covered with snow, and yet from those snowy heights the fire sometimes breaks forth; and there are others which are called extinct volcanoes, because the fire no longer breaks forth from them as it once did; but Mount Tarawera has taught us not to be too sure that a volcano which has been quiet for more than a hundred years is really extinct.
Hot springs, earthquakes, burning mountains, all tell the same tale: somewhere beneath the earth's surface there is a quantity of heated material, and these "convulsions of nature" which are so terrible in their effects come from the efforts made by it to escape from its prison. A friend who had been in a South American city during an earthquake told me of the terror-stricken feeling which he experienced when he ran out of the house in alarm, only to see buildings reeling and falling, and to feel the solid earth itself rocking beneath his feet, while from beneath came a rumbling noise, and a sound as of the clanking of chains. This trembling and rocking of the earth has led savage nations to speak of some monster underground turning his huge body. Shocks of earthquakes are occasionally felt in England, and in the north-west of Ireland sheets of lava show that volcanoes were once nearer home than we think. The Giants' Causeway, in the north of Ireland, and Fingal's Cave, in the Island of Staffa, off the north-west coast of Scotland, have been made by this lava having cooled and split up into beautifully formed columns, which look like stone pillars.
"BEAUTIFUL THINGS.
"What millions of beautiful things there must be
In this mighty world!—who could reckon them all!
The tossing, the foaming, the wide flowing sea,
And thousands of rivers that into it fall.
"Oh, there are the mountains, half covered with snow,
With tall and dark trees, like a girdle of green,
And waters that wind in the valleys below,
Or roar in the caverns too deep to be seen.
"Vast caves in the earth, full of wonderful things,
The bones of strange animals, jewels and spars;
Or far up in Iceland, the hot boiling springs,
Like fountains of feathers or showers of stars!
"Here spread the sweet meadows, with thousands of flowers;
Far away are old woods, that for ages remain;
Wild elephants sleep in the shade of their bowers,
Or troops of young antelopes traverse the plain.
"Oh yes, they are glorious, all to behold,
And pleasant to read of, and curious to know;
And something of God in His wisdom we're told
Whatever we look at—wherever we go!"