)
Instantly the sun glowed in the firmament of the heavens, and the
moon and the stars also, each in its own appointed orbit; and the
creation (I should gather from the verses I have quoted) not only
embraced what is called the solar system, i.
Instantly the sun glowed in the firmament of the heavens, and the
moon and the stars also, each in its own appointed orbit; and the
creation (I should gather from the verses I have quoted) not only
embraced what is called the solar system, i.
Childrens - The Creation
xcvi.
and xcviii.
, and xcvii.
and xcix.
, seem to go together; the
two previous ones being the exhortation to the church to sing the
hymn of triumph; and the two latter, the song itself. The scene is
explained by Rom. viii. 22, 23: " For we know that the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only
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LETTER VI.
103
they, but ourselves also which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even
we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit,
the redemption of our body. " But when the Second Adam, the Lord
from heaven, shall be manifested, and all his saints with him, he will
take unto himself his great power and reign, (Rev. xi. 15,) and then will
all creation rejoice. Nothing can exceed the triumph of the Psalms
I have alluded to:--" Let the heavens rejoice, and the earth be glad ;
let the sea roar and the fulness thereof; let the field be joyful and all
that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the
Lord; for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth; he shall judge
the world with righteousness, and his people with truth. " (Ps. xcvi.
11--13; see also Ps. xcvii. 6--9. ) You remember, my dear children,
how beautifully our favourite poet Cowper speaks of this glorious
period--the times of restitution. (Acts iii. 21. )--
" O scenes surpassing fable ; and yet true!
Scenes of accomplished bliss ! which who can see,
Though but in distant prospect, and not feel
His soul refreshed with foretaste of the joy?
Rivers of gladness water all the earth,
And clothe all climes with beauty: the reproach
Of barrenness is past: the fruitful field
Laughs with abundance; and the land, once lean,
Or fertile only in its own disgrace,
Exults to see the thistly curse removed;--
The various seasons woven into one,
And that one season an eternal Spring. "--Winter Walk at Noon.
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? 104
THE CREATION.
But not only do the Psalms, under these sublime similitudes, thus
speak of the glories of the latter day; they also set forth the more re-
tired walk of the individual believer. How sweet is that description in
Ps. i. of the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord:--" He shall
be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit
in his season: his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth
shall prosper. " (Ver. 3. ) In winter, as in summer, the Christian bears
his leaf; and the Lord ever watches over him, and prospers him in his
ways. One more Psalm I cannot but refer to, as it is among the
earliest in my remembrance:--" The righteous shall flourish like the
palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be
planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our
God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat
and flourishing; to shew that the Lord is upright: he is my rock,
and there is no unrighteousness in him. " (Ps. xcii. 12--15. )
The &ew Testament does not so abound in figurative language as
the prophetical parts of the Old, though indeed the instruction of our
blessed Lord was greatly after this order. The parable of the sower,
and all the parables of Matt. xiii. --the scenes of every-day life--are
used in spiritual instruction. And in that solemn word spoken on the
Mount of Olives, but a few hours before the crucifixion, how forcible
is the instruction from the similitude of the vine ! Christ is the true
Vine; the Father the Husbandman; his people the branches. There
is no fruitfulness but by continually abiding in him. Fruitfulness is
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? LETTER VI.
105
the effect of union, not the cause of it. The barren, fruitless branches
are cut away; and men gather them, and they are burned: but he
that abideth in Jesus bears much fruit. The true Christian delights
to do his Father's will; he delights to abound in good works; but he
does not do them to be saved; but being saved he does them ;--it is
his meat and drink to do his heavenly Father's will. There is no
true morality but by union with Jesus, and then it abounds; and the
Christian's standard is found in the Lord's exhortation, " Be ye there-
fore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. "
(Matt. v. 48; John xv. )
But ere I close this letter I must call your attention to one most
beautiful figurative passage in the prophecy of Ezekiel, chap. xvii. ,
as it so vividly sets forth the glory of the Lord Jesus in the latter
days:--under the parable of two great eagles, long winged and full of
feathers, the one cropping a sprig of the loftiest cedar of Lebanon,
and transplanting it to a city of merchants, and then sowing the seed
of the kingdom in a fruitful field, and it springing up a vine of low
stature; and the other strengthening this vine, which shot forth her
branches towards him: the Lord sets forth the vain* attempts of the
king of Babylon to raise up, and the king of Egypt to succour
another branch of the house of Judah, when the Lord had, in Jehoia-
kim, (who had filled up the cup of his iniquity, by burning the word
* The temporary reign of Jeboiakim, for three months, (who was then led captive
to Babylon, according to the fourth verse,) was Satan's subtle but vain attempt
to thwart the purposes of God.
F3
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? 106
TIIE CREATION.
of God, Jer. xxxvi. 22 -- 32,) closed up the kingdom until the Shiloh,
the true Son of David, should come with Jehoiakim. The first
parable of the two great eagles, having been thus explained by the
Lord in ver. 12--15, and the destruction of Zedekiah (the vine of low
stature) plainly prophesied in ver. 19--21, the Lord again resumes
the language of similitude, and introduces the dominion of the true
Son of David, the rod out of the stem of Jesse. (Isa. xi. 1. ) " Thus
saith the Lord God; I will also take of the highest branch of the
young cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young
twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon a high mountain and eminent:
in the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall
bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar; and under
it shall dwell all fowl of every wing: in the shadow of the branches
thereof shall they dwell. " (Ezek. xvii. 22, 23. *) This was the glo-
rious One, who should be God's salvation to the end of the earth,
whose dignity the angel Gabriel thus announced, -- " He shall be
great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God
shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign
over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be
no end. " (Luke i. 32. )
? " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a
Righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judg-
ment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall
dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our
Righteousness. " (Jer. xxiii. 5, 6. )
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LETTER VI.
107
I might, my beloved children, mention numberless other passages
from the Prophets and the Psalms; but, as I told you in my second
letter, it was not so much as a concordance, but as a little help to your
memory, that I purposed these letters on the illustrative language of
scripture. Therefore I will now conclude with an earnest prayer that
the Father of mercies may, by the power of the Holy Ghost, give you
a part and lot in that heavenly country; and that, gathered either in
the great harvest, when the Son of Man shall be revealed with the
golden crown and the sharp sickle, (Rev. xiv. 15,) or as a shock of
corn, ripe in its season, (Job v. 26,) you may shine forth as the sun
in the kingdom of the Father. (Matt. xiii. 43. )
Believe me,
Ever your affectionate Father.
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108
THE CREATION.
LETTER VII.
PRAISE YE THE LORD. PRAISE YE THE LORD FROM THE HEAVENS : PRAISE HIM IN
THE HEIGHTS. PRAISE YE HIM, SUN AND MOON : PRAISE HIM, ALL YE STARS OF
light. --Ptalm cxlviii. 1, 3.
Dear Children,
Three days the earth had revolved on its axis, and now the fourth
morning opens with exceeding glory. The trees and herbs and flowers
had indeed covered the earth with beauty, but yet without the gracious
Creation of the sun they could not continue: for just as the second
day provided them beforehand air to breathe, so did the fourth send
forth the bright and fervent rays of the sun, to open every flower, and
to give the state of absolute perfectness to the trees, bearing fruit and
seed after their kind.
The ordering of the fourth day is thus described in Gen. i. :--" And
God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide
the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and
for days and for years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of
the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God
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-itTM DAY.
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? 1
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? LETTER VII.
109
made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God
set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the
earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the
light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the
evening and the morning were the fourth day. " (Ver. 14--19.
)
Instantly the sun glowed in the firmament of the heavens, and the
moon and the stars also, each in its own appointed orbit; and the
creation (I should gather from the verses I have quoted) not only
embraced what is called the solar system, i. e. , the sun, moon, and
planets, but the whole of the celestial luminaries--" the starry host"
--whether fixed or planetary.
The light of the first day was indeed glorious; but it had no glory,
by reason of this glory that excelled; for the sun, the future source
of light, was all glorious, and came forth on this, the first day of
its creation, as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiced as a
strong man to run his race. (Ps. xix. ) And when, by the daily
rotation of the earth, the sun had sunk in the western sky (the first
sun-set in the new world) to light up in its course the other parts
of the globe; then as the light faded away, that vast concave above
us, which had been from the second day as the deep and heavy
azure, now became illumined with innumerable bright and beautiful
stars, some of one magnitude, some of another;--some comparatively
so near to the earth, that the agitated atmosphere did not ruffle the
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? 110
THE CREATION.
rays of light passing from them; others so remote, that though of
amazing magnitude, they twinkled as their rays reached us. And
then the moon, nearly at its full, rising in the opposite sky, where
the sun had set, seemed to come forth the queen of the night, to rule
over it as the sun had over the day; and so the evening and the
morning were the fourth day. I remember, when very young, being
struck with those sublime lines, I think of Dr. Young:--
" Behold this midnight glory! worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp! --redouble this amaze;
Ten thousand add; add twice ten thousand more;
One soul outweighs them all. "
The glory and the mercy of this fourth day's creation are so vast,
that, like as it was on the third day, I hardly know where to begin,
in describing them to you; for the sun is not only the source of light
and heat to us, and the principal cause, under God, of all vegetation,
but it also gives light to the moon and planets, which, in its absence,
shine upon us. But in a lesser point of view, all our astronomical
calculations depend entirely on the known distance, position, and motion
of the heavenly bodies, which to all countries, and especially a com-
mercial island, like our own, is of immense importance; and, excepting
to those who have witnessed it, the accuracy with which the pathway
of a ship is marked through the great ocean seems almost incredible;
so that it not unfrequently happens that a vessel will come from
Sydney to the English Channel, and not be ten miles out of her
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? LETTER VII. Ill
reckoning; and if I remember right, your uncle T. made the Scilly
lights within four or five miles; that is, he found himself, after
traversing some thousands of leagues, just where he expected to be,
within four or five miles; and though his chronometer (which, as you
know, is a watch, or larger time-piece, constructed with extreme accu-
racy, whose balance-wheel is so formed as to be uninfluenced by
changes of temperature) was of the first importance to him, it would
have been of little use without the sun.
A summer without sunshine, and we should have a famine;--a winter
without the sun's occasionally cheering the earth, and most of the
seeds would perish: but the Lord has given the ordinances of heaven
for man's blessing; and summer and winter, seed-time and harvest,
day and night, all come round according to their Creator's will and
promise. (Gen. viii. 22. )
I have been oftentimes struck with that graphic narration of Paul's
voyage, in Acts xxvii. ; but the climax of the storm seems wrought
up to the highest pitch in that description of ver. 20: " And when
neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest
lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. "
But there was One with Paul who had him in his care,* and he could
either rebuke the storm or protect him in it: the latter was his will, and
tlius it was " that some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the
ship; and so it came to pass, they all came safe to land. " (Ver. 44. )
? " Lo, I am with you ahvay, even unto the end of the world. " Matt, xxviii. 20.
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? 112
THE CREATION.
Relative to the heavenly bodies, it is the opinion of some of the
best and most learned of men, that they are inhabited; but this, as
they themselves would readily allow, is all conjecture--they may, or
they may not be; for the Scripture, which is the only book which
could give us information on the subject (because it was written by
Him who made them) is entirely silent concerning it. I am not aware
that from Genesis to Revelation there is the slightest or most remote
hint that such is the case. But it has,been said that it so enlarges our
thoughts of the majesty and greatness of God to imagine all this
glory:--systems on systems, and the glorious throne of the Lord the
sun of all--the source of light to all! But, my beloved children, we
need not go abroad into the region of conjecture to get ideas about
God's greatness; there is one subject connected with our earth so full
of glory, that if our souls were rightly directed, they would never
be taken from it; and this object is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ--
the wisdom of God ; for there mercy and truth meet together,
righteousness and peace kiss each other, (Ps. lxxxv. 10;) there
Justice sheathes her glittering sword, and is the advocate of all
who flee to the cross for refuge, (1 John i. 9;) there Mercy
rejoices; for from the cross go forth blessings that never fail
while there is an empty vessel to fill, (Luke xv. ;) there righteous-
ness gets its full answer, for that blessed sufferer who by that cross
expiated sin, did in his own person magnify the law and make it
honourable, (Isa. xlii. 21;) indeed, had there been one blemish, one
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? LETTER VII.
113
personal blot on him, he could not have been a sacrifice; but God's
Lamb, the only begotten of the Father, was holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens: there peace gets
authority for its blessed message of goodwill to man; for Jesus made
peace by the blood of his cross, Col. i. 20;) he was the One that was
pre-eminently the Peace-Maker, and had by nature and by right that
Beatitude :--" blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called
the children of God. " (Matt. v. 9. ) O my beloved children, if a man's
soul be once steadily fixed on the cross of that blessed One who was
with the Father over all, God blessed for ever, (Rom. ix. 5,) all other
glories will fade. Supposing to-day that there were some astronomer,
who had delighted in the thought that all the fixed stars were, like our
sun, the centres of other systems, and that worlds on worlds were
spread out illimitably on every side, but yet whose thoughts con-
cerning his own future existence were all in vague uncertainty. If
tidings came to him for the first time that the Son of the ever blessed
God had become a man, and had bled and died upon this very planet,
this earth, this speck in creation, and moreover that he had died for
him, to bring him to peace here and happiness hereafter; and if the
Spirit of God blessed these tidings to him, so that he believed them,
and realized the blessed truth, and knew in his own soul that he was
forgiven, (Luke vii. 48;) that his sins were put away, (John v. 24 ;)
that he was adopted into the family of Him who made him, (Gal.
iv. 6,7;) taken from the wretchedness of nature and set among princes,
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THE CUEATION.
to inherit the throne of glory, (compare Eph. ii. 1--6, with 1 Sam.
ii. 8;) beloved children, the eye of that astronomer would be fixed on
that cross of Calvary; he would go to Jesus without the camp, bearing
his reproach; and there he would offer ceaseless songs of praise, (Heb.
xiii. 12--15,)--one object, one vast object, would fill his soul, and
the language of his heart would be, " God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is
crucified unto me, and I unto the world," (Gal. vi. 14;) and this cross
of Christ would supply him with infinitely more enlarged views of the
glories of God than all his former speculations.
The word astronomy is taken from two Greek words, meaning
" the law of the stars. " Astronomy was the earliest of the sciences,
and this seems most natural; indeed, God says that his invisible glory
is manifested by that which is seen, so that the idolater is left without
excuse. (Rom. i. 20. )
When we consider the great disadvantages the ancients laboured
under, in the want of telescopes,* &c. , the extent of knowledge they
acquired concerning the heavenly bodies is wonderful.
The heads of the two great schools of ancient astronomy were
Pythagoras and Ptolemy. The former was a native of Greece, and
flourished five centuries before the Christian era, and the latter two
hundred and twenty years after. Ptolemy held that the earth was
the great centre round which the sun and all the heavenly bodies
* See Appendix.
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LETTER VII.
115
revolved. Pythagoras held the sun to be the centre, round which the
earth and planets all revolved; and thus he accounted for the appa-
rent movement of the heavenly bodies. The system of Ptolemy,
though now nearly exploded, prevailed for ages; but in the fifteenth
century, Copernicus, a native of Thorne, in Polish Prussia, revived
the principles of Pythagoras, and from him the Solar system is called
the Copernican system. Galileo,* a native of Florence, in the next
century, followed in the same line; and to him we are indebted for
the knowledge of the telescope and pendulum; he also determined
from observation that the sun revolved on its axis. Then came
Kepler, born at Wirtemberg, a man of great genius; and, finally, the
system was established by the means of our illustrious countryman,
Sir Isaac Newton; so that now a follower of Ptolemy is rarely met
with. It was by the swinging of a lamp that Galileo was led to inves-
tigate the laws of the oscillation of the pendulum, which he was the
first to apply as a measure of time, but he left the subject incomplete.
His son, Vincenzo, improved upon his father's labours, and Huygens
perfected it, who thus may be considered the true inventor of the
pendulum clock. The telescope was not, strictly speaking, invented
by Galileo, but he so improved it, that the heavens became opened
to him by its powers to an astonishing degree. f
? So strenuous was the opposition to the views of Galileo, that he was obliged,
at the command of the church of Rome, to retract his opinions,
t Popular Encyclopaedia, vol. iii. p. 346.
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? 116
THE CREATION.
Having thus introduced the subject of astronomy by this brief
reference to its history, I will now call your attention, first, to the
Solar system, and then to the heaven of the fixed stars.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
The Sun is the centre of the Solar system, and never moves from its
place. It revolves on its axis in twenty-five days ten hours. The
sun is the source of light, heat, and vegetation. The diameter of the
sun is 880,000 miles, so that its magnitude is more than a million
times greater than the bulk of our earth; and if you could imagine
our globe to swell out and reach the moon, it would still have to go
200,000 miles beyond it, ere it occupied a space equal to the sun.
The distance of the sun from the earth is upwards of 94,000,000 of
miles; and yet so fervent are its rays, that, on a summer's day, when
yet it is four hours from the meridian, or noon, we are glad to shelter
ourselves from its burning heat.
It seems impossible to ascertain what the character of the body of
the sun may be. Sir Isaac Newton, and the great French astronomer
La Place, imagined it to be a body of fire; but the opinion that now
obtains is, that it is an opaque body, surrounded with a fiery atmo-
sphere. Thus they account for the dark specks on its disk.
THE PLANETS.
Immediately dependent on the sun are the planets, all deriving their
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? LETTER VII.
117
light from him. These all revolve round the sun in unequal periods:
those within the orbit of the earth, make their annual revolution in
less than our year, and those beyond our orbit, in an increased period,
according to the extent of their respective orbits. But, to prevent
confusion in your minds, I have drawn out a table of the planets,*
with their names, distances from the sun, the duration of their annual
circuit, and their size as compared with the earth.
Some of the planets have moons or satellites, which are called
secondary planets; the Earth has one, Jupiter four, Saturn seven,
Georgium Sidus six; the motion of these moons is from west to east,
excepting those of the last named planet, which are from east to west.
The planets whose orbits are within the earth's orbit are called
Inferior, aud those without Superior.
The planets are preserved in their orbits by the two-fold operation
of the centripetal and centrifugal force; the former, as the word
implies, ever attracting them to their centre, the sun; the other, ever
impelling them from the centre; but let us now view them for a little
in their order.
Mercury. --The heat of this planet, from its nearness to the sun, is
very great, above boiling quicksilver; water would boil at its poles; of
course, if inhabited, it must be by beings totally dissimilar to man.
Venus is by far the most brilliant of all the stars of light, and has
been seen in the full day by the naked eye. The heat of Venus,
* See Appendix.
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? 118
TH E C REATION.
except at the poles, would be too great for the animal or vegetable
life with which we are acquainted.
THE EARTH.
I have preferred waiting until we reached the orbit of the earth, to
explain to you a few particulars concerning it. Here, indeed, we can
speak with more certainty, as from the most accurate observations,
its size, &c. , have been all ascertained.
The earth is a dark opaque body, and has no light of its own. It is
composed of sea and land, in the proportion of three-fourths water to
one-fourth dry land. The earth is about twenty-five thousand miles
round; its shape, however, is not a perfect globe, as it is rather flat, like
an orange, at the poles; so that if a line were run from the equator
through the centre to the other side, it would extend twenty-five miles
further than if run through the earth from pole to pole.
The earth has two motions, one diurnal, or daily, the other annual,
or yearly; by its diurnal motion it revolves on its axis once in twenty-
four hours, and this gives the changes of day and night; by its annual
motion it performs its circuit in the heavens round the sun, in three
hundred and sixty-five days six hours, and this gives the changes of
the seasons; and thus it is that the Lord's gracious purposes are ful-
filled--" seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter,
day and night," fulfil their course. (Gen. viii. 22. )
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two previous ones being the exhortation to the church to sing the
hymn of triumph; and the two latter, the song itself. The scene is
explained by Rom. viii. 22, 23: " For we know that the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only
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LETTER VI.
103
they, but ourselves also which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even
we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit,
the redemption of our body. " But when the Second Adam, the Lord
from heaven, shall be manifested, and all his saints with him, he will
take unto himself his great power and reign, (Rev. xi. 15,) and then will
all creation rejoice. Nothing can exceed the triumph of the Psalms
I have alluded to:--" Let the heavens rejoice, and the earth be glad ;
let the sea roar and the fulness thereof; let the field be joyful and all
that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the
Lord; for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth; he shall judge
the world with righteousness, and his people with truth. " (Ps. xcvi.
11--13; see also Ps. xcvii. 6--9. ) You remember, my dear children,
how beautifully our favourite poet Cowper speaks of this glorious
period--the times of restitution. (Acts iii. 21. )--
" O scenes surpassing fable ; and yet true!
Scenes of accomplished bliss ! which who can see,
Though but in distant prospect, and not feel
His soul refreshed with foretaste of the joy?
Rivers of gladness water all the earth,
And clothe all climes with beauty: the reproach
Of barrenness is past: the fruitful field
Laughs with abundance; and the land, once lean,
Or fertile only in its own disgrace,
Exults to see the thistly curse removed;--
The various seasons woven into one,
And that one season an eternal Spring. "--Winter Walk at Noon.
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THE CREATION.
But not only do the Psalms, under these sublime similitudes, thus
speak of the glories of the latter day; they also set forth the more re-
tired walk of the individual believer. How sweet is that description in
Ps. i. of the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord:--" He shall
be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit
in his season: his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth
shall prosper. " (Ver. 3. ) In winter, as in summer, the Christian bears
his leaf; and the Lord ever watches over him, and prospers him in his
ways. One more Psalm I cannot but refer to, as it is among the
earliest in my remembrance:--" The righteous shall flourish like the
palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be
planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our
God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat
and flourishing; to shew that the Lord is upright: he is my rock,
and there is no unrighteousness in him. " (Ps. xcii. 12--15. )
The &ew Testament does not so abound in figurative language as
the prophetical parts of the Old, though indeed the instruction of our
blessed Lord was greatly after this order. The parable of the sower,
and all the parables of Matt. xiii. --the scenes of every-day life--are
used in spiritual instruction. And in that solemn word spoken on the
Mount of Olives, but a few hours before the crucifixion, how forcible
is the instruction from the similitude of the vine ! Christ is the true
Vine; the Father the Husbandman; his people the branches. There
is no fruitfulness but by continually abiding in him. Fruitfulness is
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? LETTER VI.
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the effect of union, not the cause of it. The barren, fruitless branches
are cut away; and men gather them, and they are burned: but he
that abideth in Jesus bears much fruit. The true Christian delights
to do his Father's will; he delights to abound in good works; but he
does not do them to be saved; but being saved he does them ;--it is
his meat and drink to do his heavenly Father's will. There is no
true morality but by union with Jesus, and then it abounds; and the
Christian's standard is found in the Lord's exhortation, " Be ye there-
fore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. "
(Matt. v. 48; John xv. )
But ere I close this letter I must call your attention to one most
beautiful figurative passage in the prophecy of Ezekiel, chap. xvii. ,
as it so vividly sets forth the glory of the Lord Jesus in the latter
days:--under the parable of two great eagles, long winged and full of
feathers, the one cropping a sprig of the loftiest cedar of Lebanon,
and transplanting it to a city of merchants, and then sowing the seed
of the kingdom in a fruitful field, and it springing up a vine of low
stature; and the other strengthening this vine, which shot forth her
branches towards him: the Lord sets forth the vain* attempts of the
king of Babylon to raise up, and the king of Egypt to succour
another branch of the house of Judah, when the Lord had, in Jehoia-
kim, (who had filled up the cup of his iniquity, by burning the word
* The temporary reign of Jeboiakim, for three months, (who was then led captive
to Babylon, according to the fourth verse,) was Satan's subtle but vain attempt
to thwart the purposes of God.
F3
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TIIE CREATION.
of God, Jer. xxxvi. 22 -- 32,) closed up the kingdom until the Shiloh,
the true Son of David, should come with Jehoiakim. The first
parable of the two great eagles, having been thus explained by the
Lord in ver. 12--15, and the destruction of Zedekiah (the vine of low
stature) plainly prophesied in ver. 19--21, the Lord again resumes
the language of similitude, and introduces the dominion of the true
Son of David, the rod out of the stem of Jesse. (Isa. xi. 1. ) " Thus
saith the Lord God; I will also take of the highest branch of the
young cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young
twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon a high mountain and eminent:
in the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall
bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar; and under
it shall dwell all fowl of every wing: in the shadow of the branches
thereof shall they dwell. " (Ezek. xvii. 22, 23. *) This was the glo-
rious One, who should be God's salvation to the end of the earth,
whose dignity the angel Gabriel thus announced, -- " He shall be
great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God
shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign
over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be
no end. " (Luke i. 32. )
? " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a
Righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judg-
ment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall
dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our
Righteousness. " (Jer. xxiii. 5, 6. )
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LETTER VI.
107
I might, my beloved children, mention numberless other passages
from the Prophets and the Psalms; but, as I told you in my second
letter, it was not so much as a concordance, but as a little help to your
memory, that I purposed these letters on the illustrative language of
scripture. Therefore I will now conclude with an earnest prayer that
the Father of mercies may, by the power of the Holy Ghost, give you
a part and lot in that heavenly country; and that, gathered either in
the great harvest, when the Son of Man shall be revealed with the
golden crown and the sharp sickle, (Rev. xiv. 15,) or as a shock of
corn, ripe in its season, (Job v. 26,) you may shine forth as the sun
in the kingdom of the Father. (Matt. xiii. 43. )
Believe me,
Ever your affectionate Father.
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108
THE CREATION.
LETTER VII.
PRAISE YE THE LORD. PRAISE YE THE LORD FROM THE HEAVENS : PRAISE HIM IN
THE HEIGHTS. PRAISE YE HIM, SUN AND MOON : PRAISE HIM, ALL YE STARS OF
light. --Ptalm cxlviii. 1, 3.
Dear Children,
Three days the earth had revolved on its axis, and now the fourth
morning opens with exceeding glory. The trees and herbs and flowers
had indeed covered the earth with beauty, but yet without the gracious
Creation of the sun they could not continue: for just as the second
day provided them beforehand air to breathe, so did the fourth send
forth the bright and fervent rays of the sun, to open every flower, and
to give the state of absolute perfectness to the trees, bearing fruit and
seed after their kind.
The ordering of the fourth day is thus described in Gen. i. :--" And
God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide
the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and
for days and for years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of
the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God
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-itTM DAY.
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? LETTER VII.
109
made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God
set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the
earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the
light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the
evening and the morning were the fourth day. " (Ver. 14--19.
)
Instantly the sun glowed in the firmament of the heavens, and the
moon and the stars also, each in its own appointed orbit; and the
creation (I should gather from the verses I have quoted) not only
embraced what is called the solar system, i. e. , the sun, moon, and
planets, but the whole of the celestial luminaries--" the starry host"
--whether fixed or planetary.
The light of the first day was indeed glorious; but it had no glory,
by reason of this glory that excelled; for the sun, the future source
of light, was all glorious, and came forth on this, the first day of
its creation, as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiced as a
strong man to run his race. (Ps. xix. ) And when, by the daily
rotation of the earth, the sun had sunk in the western sky (the first
sun-set in the new world) to light up in its course the other parts
of the globe; then as the light faded away, that vast concave above
us, which had been from the second day as the deep and heavy
azure, now became illumined with innumerable bright and beautiful
stars, some of one magnitude, some of another;--some comparatively
so near to the earth, that the agitated atmosphere did not ruffle the
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? 110
THE CREATION.
rays of light passing from them; others so remote, that though of
amazing magnitude, they twinkled as their rays reached us. And
then the moon, nearly at its full, rising in the opposite sky, where
the sun had set, seemed to come forth the queen of the night, to rule
over it as the sun had over the day; and so the evening and the
morning were the fourth day. I remember, when very young, being
struck with those sublime lines, I think of Dr. Young:--
" Behold this midnight glory! worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp! --redouble this amaze;
Ten thousand add; add twice ten thousand more;
One soul outweighs them all. "
The glory and the mercy of this fourth day's creation are so vast,
that, like as it was on the third day, I hardly know where to begin,
in describing them to you; for the sun is not only the source of light
and heat to us, and the principal cause, under God, of all vegetation,
but it also gives light to the moon and planets, which, in its absence,
shine upon us. But in a lesser point of view, all our astronomical
calculations depend entirely on the known distance, position, and motion
of the heavenly bodies, which to all countries, and especially a com-
mercial island, like our own, is of immense importance; and, excepting
to those who have witnessed it, the accuracy with which the pathway
of a ship is marked through the great ocean seems almost incredible;
so that it not unfrequently happens that a vessel will come from
Sydney to the English Channel, and not be ten miles out of her
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? LETTER VII. Ill
reckoning; and if I remember right, your uncle T. made the Scilly
lights within four or five miles; that is, he found himself, after
traversing some thousands of leagues, just where he expected to be,
within four or five miles; and though his chronometer (which, as you
know, is a watch, or larger time-piece, constructed with extreme accu-
racy, whose balance-wheel is so formed as to be uninfluenced by
changes of temperature) was of the first importance to him, it would
have been of little use without the sun.
A summer without sunshine, and we should have a famine;--a winter
without the sun's occasionally cheering the earth, and most of the
seeds would perish: but the Lord has given the ordinances of heaven
for man's blessing; and summer and winter, seed-time and harvest,
day and night, all come round according to their Creator's will and
promise. (Gen. viii. 22. )
I have been oftentimes struck with that graphic narration of Paul's
voyage, in Acts xxvii. ; but the climax of the storm seems wrought
up to the highest pitch in that description of ver. 20: " And when
neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest
lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. "
But there was One with Paul who had him in his care,* and he could
either rebuke the storm or protect him in it: the latter was his will, and
tlius it was " that some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the
ship; and so it came to pass, they all came safe to land. " (Ver. 44. )
? " Lo, I am with you ahvay, even unto the end of the world. " Matt, xxviii. 20.
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? 112
THE CREATION.
Relative to the heavenly bodies, it is the opinion of some of the
best and most learned of men, that they are inhabited; but this, as
they themselves would readily allow, is all conjecture--they may, or
they may not be; for the Scripture, which is the only book which
could give us information on the subject (because it was written by
Him who made them) is entirely silent concerning it. I am not aware
that from Genesis to Revelation there is the slightest or most remote
hint that such is the case. But it has,been said that it so enlarges our
thoughts of the majesty and greatness of God to imagine all this
glory:--systems on systems, and the glorious throne of the Lord the
sun of all--the source of light to all! But, my beloved children, we
need not go abroad into the region of conjecture to get ideas about
God's greatness; there is one subject connected with our earth so full
of glory, that if our souls were rightly directed, they would never
be taken from it; and this object is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ--
the wisdom of God ; for there mercy and truth meet together,
righteousness and peace kiss each other, (Ps. lxxxv. 10;) there
Justice sheathes her glittering sword, and is the advocate of all
who flee to the cross for refuge, (1 John i. 9;) there Mercy
rejoices; for from the cross go forth blessings that never fail
while there is an empty vessel to fill, (Luke xv. ;) there righteous-
ness gets its full answer, for that blessed sufferer who by that cross
expiated sin, did in his own person magnify the law and make it
honourable, (Isa. xlii. 21;) indeed, had there been one blemish, one
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? LETTER VII.
113
personal blot on him, he could not have been a sacrifice; but God's
Lamb, the only begotten of the Father, was holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens: there peace gets
authority for its blessed message of goodwill to man; for Jesus made
peace by the blood of his cross, Col. i. 20;) he was the One that was
pre-eminently the Peace-Maker, and had by nature and by right that
Beatitude :--" blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called
the children of God. " (Matt. v. 9. ) O my beloved children, if a man's
soul be once steadily fixed on the cross of that blessed One who was
with the Father over all, God blessed for ever, (Rom. ix. 5,) all other
glories will fade. Supposing to-day that there were some astronomer,
who had delighted in the thought that all the fixed stars were, like our
sun, the centres of other systems, and that worlds on worlds were
spread out illimitably on every side, but yet whose thoughts con-
cerning his own future existence were all in vague uncertainty. If
tidings came to him for the first time that the Son of the ever blessed
God had become a man, and had bled and died upon this very planet,
this earth, this speck in creation, and moreover that he had died for
him, to bring him to peace here and happiness hereafter; and if the
Spirit of God blessed these tidings to him, so that he believed them,
and realized the blessed truth, and knew in his own soul that he was
forgiven, (Luke vii. 48;) that his sins were put away, (John v. 24 ;)
that he was adopted into the family of Him who made him, (Gal.
iv. 6,7;) taken from the wretchedness of nature and set among princes,
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THE CUEATION.
to inherit the throne of glory, (compare Eph. ii. 1--6, with 1 Sam.
ii. 8;) beloved children, the eye of that astronomer would be fixed on
that cross of Calvary; he would go to Jesus without the camp, bearing
his reproach; and there he would offer ceaseless songs of praise, (Heb.
xiii. 12--15,)--one object, one vast object, would fill his soul, and
the language of his heart would be, " God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is
crucified unto me, and I unto the world," (Gal. vi. 14;) and this cross
of Christ would supply him with infinitely more enlarged views of the
glories of God than all his former speculations.
The word astronomy is taken from two Greek words, meaning
" the law of the stars. " Astronomy was the earliest of the sciences,
and this seems most natural; indeed, God says that his invisible glory
is manifested by that which is seen, so that the idolater is left without
excuse. (Rom. i. 20. )
When we consider the great disadvantages the ancients laboured
under, in the want of telescopes,* &c. , the extent of knowledge they
acquired concerning the heavenly bodies is wonderful.
The heads of the two great schools of ancient astronomy were
Pythagoras and Ptolemy. The former was a native of Greece, and
flourished five centuries before the Christian era, and the latter two
hundred and twenty years after. Ptolemy held that the earth was
the great centre round which the sun and all the heavenly bodies
* See Appendix.
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LETTER VII.
115
revolved. Pythagoras held the sun to be the centre, round which the
earth and planets all revolved; and thus he accounted for the appa-
rent movement of the heavenly bodies. The system of Ptolemy,
though now nearly exploded, prevailed for ages; but in the fifteenth
century, Copernicus, a native of Thorne, in Polish Prussia, revived
the principles of Pythagoras, and from him the Solar system is called
the Copernican system. Galileo,* a native of Florence, in the next
century, followed in the same line; and to him we are indebted for
the knowledge of the telescope and pendulum; he also determined
from observation that the sun revolved on its axis. Then came
Kepler, born at Wirtemberg, a man of great genius; and, finally, the
system was established by the means of our illustrious countryman,
Sir Isaac Newton; so that now a follower of Ptolemy is rarely met
with. It was by the swinging of a lamp that Galileo was led to inves-
tigate the laws of the oscillation of the pendulum, which he was the
first to apply as a measure of time, but he left the subject incomplete.
His son, Vincenzo, improved upon his father's labours, and Huygens
perfected it, who thus may be considered the true inventor of the
pendulum clock. The telescope was not, strictly speaking, invented
by Galileo, but he so improved it, that the heavens became opened
to him by its powers to an astonishing degree. f
? So strenuous was the opposition to the views of Galileo, that he was obliged,
at the command of the church of Rome, to retract his opinions,
t Popular Encyclopaedia, vol. iii. p. 346.
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? 116
THE CREATION.
Having thus introduced the subject of astronomy by this brief
reference to its history, I will now call your attention, first, to the
Solar system, and then to the heaven of the fixed stars.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
The Sun is the centre of the Solar system, and never moves from its
place. It revolves on its axis in twenty-five days ten hours. The
sun is the source of light, heat, and vegetation. The diameter of the
sun is 880,000 miles, so that its magnitude is more than a million
times greater than the bulk of our earth; and if you could imagine
our globe to swell out and reach the moon, it would still have to go
200,000 miles beyond it, ere it occupied a space equal to the sun.
The distance of the sun from the earth is upwards of 94,000,000 of
miles; and yet so fervent are its rays, that, on a summer's day, when
yet it is four hours from the meridian, or noon, we are glad to shelter
ourselves from its burning heat.
It seems impossible to ascertain what the character of the body of
the sun may be. Sir Isaac Newton, and the great French astronomer
La Place, imagined it to be a body of fire; but the opinion that now
obtains is, that it is an opaque body, surrounded with a fiery atmo-
sphere. Thus they account for the dark specks on its disk.
THE PLANETS.
Immediately dependent on the sun are the planets, all deriving their
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? LETTER VII.
117
light from him. These all revolve round the sun in unequal periods:
those within the orbit of the earth, make their annual revolution in
less than our year, and those beyond our orbit, in an increased period,
according to the extent of their respective orbits. But, to prevent
confusion in your minds, I have drawn out a table of the planets,*
with their names, distances from the sun, the duration of their annual
circuit, and their size as compared with the earth.
Some of the planets have moons or satellites, which are called
secondary planets; the Earth has one, Jupiter four, Saturn seven,
Georgium Sidus six; the motion of these moons is from west to east,
excepting those of the last named planet, which are from east to west.
The planets whose orbits are within the earth's orbit are called
Inferior, aud those without Superior.
The planets are preserved in their orbits by the two-fold operation
of the centripetal and centrifugal force; the former, as the word
implies, ever attracting them to their centre, the sun; the other, ever
impelling them from the centre; but let us now view them for a little
in their order.
Mercury. --The heat of this planet, from its nearness to the sun, is
very great, above boiling quicksilver; water would boil at its poles; of
course, if inhabited, it must be by beings totally dissimilar to man.
Venus is by far the most brilliant of all the stars of light, and has
been seen in the full day by the naked eye. The heat of Venus,
* See Appendix.
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? 118
TH E C REATION.
except at the poles, would be too great for the animal or vegetable
life with which we are acquainted.
THE EARTH.
I have preferred waiting until we reached the orbit of the earth, to
explain to you a few particulars concerning it. Here, indeed, we can
speak with more certainty, as from the most accurate observations,
its size, &c. , have been all ascertained.
The earth is a dark opaque body, and has no light of its own. It is
composed of sea and land, in the proportion of three-fourths water to
one-fourth dry land. The earth is about twenty-five thousand miles
round; its shape, however, is not a perfect globe, as it is rather flat, like
an orange, at the poles; so that if a line were run from the equator
through the centre to the other side, it would extend twenty-five miles
further than if run through the earth from pole to pole.
The earth has two motions, one diurnal, or daily, the other annual,
or yearly; by its diurnal motion it revolves on its axis once in twenty-
four hours, and this gives the changes of day and night; by its annual
motion it performs its circuit in the heavens round the sun, in three
hundred and sixty-five days six hours, and this gives the changes of
the seasons; and thus it is that the Lord's gracious purposes are ful-
filled--" seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter,
day and night," fulfil their course. (Gen. viii. 22. )
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