In order to pay for her candles, this lonely girl with a faithful heart spun every night an extra quantity of yarn—for she earned her own living by her spinning wheel—and so the tiny flame was kept alight, and she found comfort in her sorrow by doing what she could, in her unselfish care, for "those in peril on the sea."
The meanest candle is a luminary in its way, for it possesses light, while the most brilliant diamond has none in itself, and can give back only what it receives.
And now that our lesson about the FIRST DAY is finished, we must not forget what we have been learning.
God, the Creator, alone in creation,
(a) "said, Let there be light: and there was light." (b) "saw the light, that it was good." (c) "divided the light from the darkness." (d) "called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night."
"And the evening and the morning were the first day."
The astronomer Proctor, in his beautiful book, Flowers of the Sky, says that "light is the first of all that exists in the universe." And we are, told that the action of light was necessary to prepare the way for all life; but this is far too great a subject for us to speak of in this little book. Let us remember that God saw the light, that it was good, and that He made the division between light and darkness in nature which He uses as a figure in the New Testament, where we read that the children of God are called "children of light," and "not of the night nor of darkness"; and where "goodness, and righteousness, and truth" are spoken of as "fruits of the light," in contrast with "unfruitful works of darkness."
In all that is around us in this world which God made, if we had eyes to see, we should find pictures of the things which are unseen, but yet very real; so in the Book which He has written, He has given us pictures. The description in verse 2 of the waste empty earth, with darkness upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, is a picture of the condition of everyone born into this world.
In verse 3 we have a picture of God as Light shining into the dark and empty heart.
In verse 4 we see that God separates good from evil.