Twilight And Dawn | Page 6

of truth, And given
her human heart to God In its beautiful hour of youth."
J. G. WHITTIER

"IN THE BEGINNING": CREATION
"_Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth;
and the heavens are the works of Thine hands: they shall perish; but
Thou remainest._"--HEBREWS i. 10.
To-day let us talk a little about the very first words which God has
spoken to us in His Book. You would like to find them in your own
Bible, I daresay.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
And we will find one other verse, because it is the first verse of a
chapter which also speaks of "the beginning."

"Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?" (Prov.
viii. 1).
Now that 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,