Part 19

McCHEYNE.

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.

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.