Twilight And Dawn | Page 6

we have read these verses; I must tell you that Ernest and Chris and Charlotte and May used each to learn a verse for me every day, and say them in turn; indeed, they usually said two verses, for I liked them always to repeat along with the new verse the one they had said the day before, in order that they might not forget it. I am glad to tell you that the verses were generally learned so perfectly, and repeated so distinctly, that it was quite a pleasure to hear them; for even little May knew that if we repeat anything from God's Book we must be careful not to put in any words of our own. If we did, we should be like Willie, giving the message in our own way, should we not? Then, every one of God's words must be remembered, and none left out; not even a little word like "and" or "the," which perhaps would not very much matter if we were repeating merely what men had said.
Perhaps you may think this chapter about Wisdom was a difficult chapter for my boys and girls to learn, and not so interesting as some of those which you know. I will tell you the reason why I especially wished them to learn it; but I will first ask you to find in the New Testament three verses which also tell us of "the beginning"--
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
"The same was in the beginning with God.
"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John i. 1-3).
The "Word" is one of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful and wonderful name. Suppose you have been playing with something that has made your hands very dirty, and mother says, "Come to me, dear, and I will make them clean." Through mother's words you know what is in her heart; you know that she loves you, and wants you to be with her, and fit to be with her. So it is through the Word, the One who was with God in the beginning, the One by whom everything was made, that God has spoken to us so that we may know His thoughts about sin, which made us unfit to be with Him, and His feelings towards the men and women in the world, who are His creatures, and yet have tried to find happiness away from Him. But it was because the chapter, which my elder scholars were learning, speaks of the Lord Jesus by another wonderful and beautiful name that I wished them to learn it. He is called "Wisdom" not only in the Old Testament, where we are told in other verses of the same chapter (Prov. viii.) that He was "from the beginning" with God (vv. 22-31), but also in a letter which the apostle Paul wrote to some clever people who lived in Greece long ago he speaks of Him as "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. i. 24).
I can remember that we had a good deal of talk after we had read the verse, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"--those few words, so quickly read, in which God has told us what the wisest man of all the wise men who ever lived could not have found out for us; for God alone can speak about what He did so very long ago, before the sun shone, or the grass and the trees grew, or the birds sang in the branches, or lambs played in the fields.
Did you ever think, as you watched the great sun going down behind the crimson clouds, that there was a day, long, long ago, when that sun, in all its glory, set for the first time?
I daresay you never thought of the beginning of the sun, or of the first time that it set, but were just pleased to see the sky so red and glowing, and sorry when the beautiful sunset colours faded and the clouds became cold and grey.
Or perhaps, as you have shaded your eyes from his noonday splendour, you may have remembered that it was God in heaven who made that wonderful sun to light up the sky, and that he has been shining down upon this earth ever since; but did you ever stop to ask such a question as this--
How long has that great sun, which is now above my head, been shining in the sky? Or, again, as he passed in glory out of sight, How many beautiful sunsets have there been since he first began to "rule the day" and to rise in the east