Generally we look up at the clouds, but I remember once looking down and seeing them below me. I had climbed a high mountain, and just when I got to the top it happened that the peak was quite clear, but around it, a little lower down, a wreath of white cloud was floating. Every now and then, through a rift in the cloud, I could see the beautiful valley below, with its smiling fields and winding river, and far away there was the sea, with hundreds of green islands; all this I saw for a moment, as if through a soft thin veil, and then the cloud closed again, and shut out the view.

I can quite understand travellers saying how lovely it is when they sail through the air in balloons, to get up into a clear still height, and see the "plains of clouds" below them. But there is one thing which makes voyages in balloons dangerous. The higher people go, the more thin and difficult to breathe the air becomes. One celebrated traveller, when he had got as high as seven miles in his balloon, lost his senses, and his companion was nearly frozen to death by the piercing cold. This traveller tells us that about six or seven miles above the earth no sound can reach the ear to break the perfect stillness and silence. This is because the air at this height is so thin. On the top of Mont Blanc a pistol-shot can scarcely be heard even though it is fired quite close; but if the same pistol were to be fired off in the next field you would hear it, and put your hand to your ears because the report was so loud.

But what makes the report? The pistol was fired into the air, and hit nothing.

It was the air which was struck, and which sent back the sound. You remember learning how light is turned back or reflected. Just as the light-waves come back again, so do the sound-waves; very quickly if the reflecting surface is near; after some time if it is far off. You know what an echo is. There is a lovely place where some children I know used often to go for a picnic. What they cared for most in Coombe Dingle was a wood which they called the "Echo wood." They would stand beside a gate, and call across the fields, and then listen. Very soon their own words, and even their own tones, were sent back to them. The waves of air carried the sounds along until they reached a pine wood which shut in the field. They struck the tall trees, and were reflected, or sent back again, almost as clearly as when first spoken.

Just in this way echoes of sound are, like birds, ever on the wing: the whole air is alive with them. The walls of our rooms give back the tones of our voices, but we hear no echo, because they are so near that the repeating of the sound comes almost at the same moment as the sound itself.

There are echoes on all sides of us, and no sound is ever lost. How can this be?

If you stand beside a quiet pool, and drop a stone into it, the stone sinks down to the bottom and lies there; but from the spot where its fall broke the calm surface, ring after ring ripples the water. Just so a single word dropped from the lips of a child into the ocean of air is carried on, wave after wave; so that, as a great philosopher once said, "the air is one vast library, on whose pages is for ever written all that man has ever said or even whispered."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "ECHO WOOD"]

There is a poem which you may know, that begins with this line--

"Kind words can never die."

This is quite true; but we might alter the first part of it a little, and say, "No word can ever die." Not only the soft, loving words, but the rough, angry ones, which we may well wish we had never spoken, all live in this "vast library," and tell their own story.

How much it ought to make us think about our words, to know they can never be lost!

THE RED, RED SKY.

"In the early, early morning, beyond the islands green, Beyond the pines and palm trees, and the purple sea between, Like the glow through a crimson window the morning rises slow, And the isles lie dun in the glory, and the sea is all aglow.

"In the dim and misty evening the purple mountains stand, And the glooms that hush the woodlands lie over all the land, And high in dark blue heavens the red light b.u.ms and glows.

Like the Jasper of G.o.d's city, like the deep heart of the rose.

"Oh, why does morning dawn, and why ends the golden day, With the crimson glow and glory, while the children kneel and pray?

Is it thus that G.o.d would tell me before the day begins Of the morn of the Day of pardon, the Blood that has washed my sins?

"The morn of the day of gladness, the day of His love and grace, When like the sun in his glory, the Lord unveiled His face, And His love shone forth in beauty where all was dark before, For the Blood had been shed which saved me, once and for evermore.

"Is it thus that G.o.d would tell me the evening draweth nigh, When we pa.s.s beyond the mountains, beyond the purple sky?

And then, in G.o.d's great glory, the golden gates I see, And sing, 'The Blood of Jesus has opened them for me!'"

FRANCES BEVAN

Taken, by permission, from _Hymns by Ter Steegen and Others_. Second series.

THE THIRD DAY.

THE WORLD OF WATER.

"_The sea is His, and He made it._"--PSALM xcv. 5.

"_Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand?_"--ISAIAH xl. 12.

"_Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters._"--PSALM civ. 3.

"_He hath compa.s.sed 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 G.o.d'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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d, "the sea and the dry land" were made.

"And G.o.d said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And G.o.d called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and G.o.d saw that it was good."

Once more you have read these words, "G.o.d said," "G.o.d called," "G.o.d saw."

They are quickly read. But who shall say how wonderful is that of which they speak? G.o.d has been pleased in these few words to tell us what no one could ever have found out about the birthday of that mighty world of waters, when it was gathered together unto the place which He had prepared for it, and received its name from Him.

I wonder whether you have ever seen the sea. If you have, you know it and love it so well that there is no need for me to try to describe it to you.

If you have not, if your home has always been in the country among the quiet fields, far away from the sound of the waves as they break upon the strand; or if you have lived all your life in the town, where the streets are full of noise and bustle, and busy folk hurrying to and fro--then I think it would be almost as difficult for me to give you an idea of what the boundless ocean is like, as it was for the kind miner to make his little friend understand all about seas and lakes and rivers, as he talked to him over that poor little pail of water, deep down in the dark mine.

Ah! you must see the great ocean-world for yourself; you must sail over the crests of the waves, and learn to swim and dive. If you have never yet been to the seaside, there is indeed a treat in store for you some day, and I should like to be with you when that day comes, and catch a sight of your face, so full of wonder and pleasure. I remember hearing of a little "city sparrow" of a boy who was taken with a great many town children to spend a long summer's day by the seaside. When he first came in sight of the bay, with its bright, dancing waters, and saw the tide rolling in, wave after wave, upon the yellow sands, he gave one long, satisfied look, and then said, "How nice it is to see plenty of anything!"

Poor child, these words of his told their own touching tale; he had never, in his parents' home, known what plenty was, and so his first thought about the "great and wide sea" which G.o.d had made, was that there was enough of it and to spare--no stint there, at any rate. To another little boy, the first sight of the sea brought this thought, "How great G.o.d, who made it, must be!"

It is delightful to live, as I did when a child, within sight and sound of the sea; but I suppose it is only those who really live upon the world of waters, sailing away in a swift ship, day after day, for thousands of watery miles, and seeing nothing but the two oceans, "the blue above and the blue below," as that same sailor-song says, who can really know anything of its vastness. How strange it must seem, to be neither a fish nor a bird, and yet to live as it were between sea and sky; each morning finding yourself farther away from land, each night lying down to be "rocked in the cradle of the deep," and to hear the wash of the waves as the boat cuts her way through them, and the sighing of the wind, not through the trees on the lawn, but among the sails and ropes of your floating home!

I have sometimes thought that the sight of "water, water everywhere,"

during a voyage of three months, must make one more ready to believe what we are told by those who have done what they can in the way of weighing and measuring--that upon our globe "water is the rule, and dry land the exception"; and also that, although we read in geography books about the five great oceans, yet the ocean is really one, for it "embraces the whole earth with an uninterrupted wave." As we think of this wonderful wave which thus girdles the earth about, constantly breaking against the sh.o.r.e, yet always flowing back again, at its appointed time, into its own place, we may well remember that THIRD DAY of Creation, when "G.o.d spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast"; when "He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pa.s.s His commandment."

In a Psalm which has been called the "Psalm of Creation," because it speaks of the greatness and glory of G.o.d, and of how the Lord shall rejoice in His works, we find a description of what happened at this time. There is a beautiful verse which speaks of G.o.d covering the earth "with the deep as with a garment"; and of a time when it was so covered and hidden that "the waters stood above the mountains."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WHEN SPRING-TIDES ARE LOW"]