"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.