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,"