Part 47

As Eve gave her confidence to the serpent, she lost confidence in God, and went on to believe that when God had said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," and the serpent said, "Ye shall not surely die," it was the serpent that spoke the truth. How dreadful it was for God's creatures to look to the devil for happiness, to give up God who created them, and take Satan for their master!

Instead of happiness they found only shame and misery. The serpent had said that their eyes should be opened, and they should be as gods, knowing good and evil. We read, "And the eyes of them both were opened;" but God in His word tells us of those whose eyes "the God of this world hath blinded." They had no power to choose what was good; and tried to hide away from God.

And so the first man was driven out of God's garden, and there has never been any way back to it at all! No way back to God either, for Adam or for his children, except through Christ, "the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven."

It was of this wonderful way, of Him who is "the Way," that God spoke when He told the serpent that the Seed of the woman should bruise his head.

The Lord Jesus Christ was "the Seed," the One who loved us and gave Himself for us: the One whom "God so loved the world" as to give, "that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" the One who "once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God."

We have been learning something of how dreadful the bites of serpents are, how full of deadly poison: and we have been reading how, by listening to the old serpent, the poison of sin--having our own will, and thinking hard thoughts of God--came into the hearts of God's creatures, bringing sorrow, and shame, and death with it. How beautiful that the righteous One in whom was no sin, and who come to take away our sins, should tell us that "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." The serpent of brass was not kept in Moses's tent; it was lifted high, for all to see it. God, who knew His people's sin, and had sent those fiery serpents to bite them, had Himself told Moses to make that serpent of brass, and those who were bitten had only to look at it and live. If they looked at their own hurt, or at each other, or at Moses--all was of no avail; but "it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived."

God--who knew that every one of us born into this world is born away from Him, and with the dreadful poison of sin, like the serpent's bite, in us--gave His only begotten Son to be lifted up, that "whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And He tells us to look at Him and live, just as the poor sinful people, dying of the serpent's bite, looked at the serpent of brass, and their deadly wound was healed. God has told us to look straight to His Son, dying for sin, dying in our stead; but it is not our looking that saves us, it is the blessed Saviour whose name is called Jesus, "for He shall save His people from their sins."

I must not forget to tell you that many of the extinct animals whose skeletons are to be seen in museums belonged to the class of Reptiles.

We read that "God created great whales"--or sea monsters--and remains have been found of enormous lizard-like creatures. One has been called the Fish-lizard; it seems to have had a crocodile's head, with a body like that of a small whale.

Another had a long swan-like neck, the body and tail of a quadruped, and paddles like a turtle.

Another, called the Winged-lizard, had bat-like wings and dreadful jaws armed with numerous teeth. All these "Saurians" are believed to have frequented the sea or rivers; but another called the Great-lizard, was a land-animal, as was the Forest-lizard, and a monster kind of Toad with very curiously formed teeth. But no description will give you an idea of the size of these creatures, though I may tell you that a party of gentlemen dined inside the body of one great extinct lizard at the Crystal Palace, where models, not very accurately made, of the most remarkable ancient animals are to be seen. I think my first thought when I see the actual remains of these old-world monsters, with their terrible jaws, is that of thankfulness that they have passed away from sea and land. But we know that God who created them "saw that it was good," and in the Book of Job we may read His description of mighty and terrible creatures which show forth His power.

We were speaking of a monster toad whose fossil remains have been found; and I must tell you that before we had done with the "Creeping Things," I was asked a difficult question. "To what class do the frogs and toads and newts belong? Are they Vertebrate animals? Do they belong to the land or the water?"

I said they certainly do belong to the great Backboned family, and are placed in a class by themselves, as they are neither Mammalia, Birds, Fishes, nor Reptiles, properly speaking, and are called Amphibia, because they live, as it were, a double life.

They have gills, which enable them to breathe in water, to begin with, and lungs which enable them to breathe in air, later on. They are mostly without scales, and do not need to drink, because they imbibe moisture from the air through their soft damp skin. When you see a frog hopping across your path, you see a creature which has known many a change in its life, for frogs are among those very interesting animals which undergo what are called metamorphoses. We have met with this word before, and may remember that it is used to express the change from one form to another which is wrought in some living creatures in the course of their growth. I daresay you imagine as I once did, that all young animals are like their parents, only on a smaller scale; for you see that a young horse, or elephant, or whale, a pup or a kitten, is at its birth in all respects just what it will be when full-grown, only smaller. So it is with the reptiles and the birds--the young ones, when hatched, are like the parents. But in the case of frogs and newts, and also most insects, the young ones do not merely increase in size as they grow, but pass from one stage of growth to another, each different from the former, until like the butterfly when it emerges from the chrysalis, they reach what is called their perfect state--and these metamorphoses or changes are very curious and interesting indeed.

When Master Froggie was a young tadpole, some pond or ditch was his home, for he was an aquatic animal; but now that he is full-grown he has passed into another way of living: he breathes, or rather swallows air, and must, as he swims about with his beautifully webbed feet, come to the surface of the water now and then, or he would die. I am sure you know the frog well enough, and you may even have heard the harsh croak from which it has its name, as you have passed some damp meadow or weedy pond, on a summer evening. But I wonder whether you know frogs' eggs when you see them?

My brothers and I did not, long ago, when we used to fish with sticks in a pond by the cross-roads for what we called "bunches of grapes!" The grapes were little balls of jelly with a tiny black spot in each, and we never guessed that they were really eggs, and that the little black spot in the slimy covering would one day actually turn into a live, leaping, croaking frog. If we had had the patience to watch, we should have seen that little black dot grow and grow, until it seemed to have become a creature almost all tail, with the head and body still only a tiny ball. By-and-by we should have seen legs and feet begin to appear, and as the legs grew longer, the tail become shorter, until it quite disappeared. Meanwhile, other changes which we could not see would have taken place; instead of the gills, which made the tadpole a water-breather, Master Froggie would have acquired lungs, like any land animal; the aquatic would have changed into an aërial, the herbivorous into a carnivorous creature, so that we may well say it has lived two lives.

The beautiful little newts' life-history is much the same, only that their transformation is not quite so complete, for they never lose their lizard-like tails, but remain little crocodiles to the end of the chapter.

"Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father who is in heaven is merciful."

"Turn, turn thy hasty foot aside, Nor crush that helpless worm; The frame thy wayward looks deride None but our God could form.

"The common Lord of all that move, From whom thy being flow'd, A portion of His boundless love On that poor worm bestow'd.

"The light, the air, the dew He made To all His creatures free, And spreads o'er earth the grassy blade For them as well as thee.

"Let them enjoy their little day, Their lowly bliss receive; Oh! do not lightly take away The life thou can'st not give."

GISBORNE.

THE SIXTH DAY.

THE ANIMAL WORLD.

"Every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills."--PSALM l. 10.

"... God ... who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven."--JOB xxxv. 11.

"Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"--ECCLESIASTES iii. 21.