"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!"
ANNE TAYLOR.
THE THIRD DAY.
THE GREEN EARTH.
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof."—PSALM xxiv. 1.
"Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it:… Thou preparest them corn, when Thou hast so provided for it."—PSALM lxv. 9.
"Every tree is known by his own fruit."—LUKE vi. 44.
I want you to read carefully verses 11, 12, 13, and then 29 and 30, of our chapter in Genesis; for in them God has told us of His work upon the THIRD DAY of Creation, when at His word the earth—no longer waste and bare, as when it came up from beneath the waters—was clothed in garments of beauty; "dressed in living green," as the hymn says.
I remember that when we began our morning lesson about the THIRD DAY, we noticed that God caused the earth, which had no life in itself, to bring forth that which was alive; for every green thing which grows upon the surface of the earth, no matter how tiny it may be, is quite different from those rocks which form its crust, about which we have been learning. Rocks and stones are without life, but every blade of grass which you tread under your feet, every blossom which scents the breeze, is alive.
We had a good deal of talk about this, for life is a very wonderful thing; one of those "secret things" which belong to God, and which no one has ever been able to understand. But though we cannot know what this wonderful secret is, we can understand how great a difference there is between living things and those which have never had any life in them. If you were to take a pebble and hide it in the earth, you might water it every day, and the sun might shine upon it, while you waited and waited till you were quite old; but no change would come to the pebble, If you dug for it you would find it a pebble still.