Chapter 12

You know that the moon is always changing; you can never see it for two or three nights quite the same, but it seems each night a little smaller or a little larger than when you last saw it. When you looked out of the windows the other night, just before you went to bed, it was a very young moon indeed that you saw--not more than two days old, as we say in reckoning the moon's age. How small and thin it was--just like a curving rim of pale light upon the dark sky; but as you watch this crescent--or growing--moon, you will see it constantly getting larger and brighter, until from being half-moon it has become full-moon, for it faces the sun, and is bright all over that part which is turned towards you. When we speak of the "face of the moon," we mean that side which is always turned towards us. But why does "the gentle moon" always turn the same face to us? Astronomers tell us that it is because she also turns slowly round on her own axis while she is travelling round the earth. _How_ this is, I don't think I can explain to you: but it is true that we can see only one side of the moon, that side which catches the sunlight, and that hardly anything is known about the other side.

Next time the beautiful moonlight nights come, remember, as you watch all these changes, that this "waxing" and "waning" of the moon comes to pass, not because she really changes her shape, but because, as she goes round the earth, we see sometimes more, sometimes less of the bright part which is lit up by the sun. The moon is dark in herself, like our earth; not like the sun, and those stars which shine by their own glorious light; if she had light of her own, it would be full moon every night; but all that soft brightness which makes everything look so beautiful in the quiet moonlight, really comes from the sun. When the sun has gone down, as it were, into the sea, or has disappeared behind some distant mountain, how do you know that there _is_ any sun? Look at the moon "walking in brightness," and remember that it is only as the light of the absent sun falls upon her and is reflected from her face (just as Chrissie said he had often seen the light of the setting sun thrown back from the windows) that she can shine at all.

Little children love the moon. I have seen a baby who could hardly speak, clasp her tiny hands and call out, "Have it! have it!" as she saw it glow like a lamp behind the trees; and we do not lose this love as we grow older.

When we remember that the sun is four hundred times farther away from us than the moon, it makes our earth's silent companion seem very near by comparison; but still you will not think the journey to the moon a short one, when I tell you that if you could travel through the fields of air, rushing along in a fast train, never stopping day or night, it would be eight months before you got to your journey's end. And when you did get there you would have arrived at a more desolate country than you ever dreamed of--a place much like what we might imagine our earth would have become if there were no water, no air (for if there is air, it is so thin that no creature like any we know could breathe it), no greenness or beauty, though there might be scenery grand in its awfulness.

Have you ever looked through a telescope at the moon? I have. Last summer I was staying at a seaside town, and one evening I noticed a crowd gathered on the sands. As I came nearer, I found that a man was showing the moon and planets through his telescope to any who wished to see what they could see. He was selling peeps through the telescope, which was a pretty good-sized one, at a penny a peep. Now, though I had read a great deal about the moon, and had seen in books photographs of what are called lunar landscapes, I had never once had a chance of looking at her face through anything but a bit of smoked glass, at the time of an eclipse.

So I paid my penny, and when my turn came I stood upon the stool and had my peep. I can only tell you that the moon did not look nearly so beautiful to me through the showman's little telescope as she did when my peep was over, and I saw her once more sailing through the deep blue of the sky, the queen of night indeed.

I had read that astronomers had found that the nearer their great telescopes brought them to the moon, the more like a barren rock she became, and when I had this nearer view of her than ever before, she looked to me just as she had been described, like "a burnt-out cinder."

You know the shadowy figure which you can see, sometimes more distinctly than at others, on the face of the moon (when I was a child I was told that it was "the man in the moon"!), this appearance is caused by deep valleys, or by the shadows of terrible mountain peaks, which were once volcanoes, throwing out smoke and lava. While I was looking through his telescope, the showman pointed out to me two of the highest of these peaks, and told me their names, that is the names which the astronomers had given them; for these rocky heights have been marked upon maps of the moon, just as the Welsh mountains are marked upon the map of England and Wales. Upon these maps we can find Mount Tycho, Mount Gassendi, Mount Copernicus--all of them extinct volcanoes--and the name of Apennines has been given to a vast mountain-chain; and the heights of all these mountain peaks have been ascertained by measuring the shadows cast by them. There are oceans and seas also marked upon these moon-maps, but they were named at a time when it was not yet known that they were great plains; for, as I told you, no trace of water, cloud, or even mist has been discovered there.

Are you sorry to hear that the moon which looks so lovely to our sight, is found by those who can get a nearer view to be such a weird and desolate place that it seemed as if only death reigned there? I know I was, when first I read about it, and saw a picture of the moon, and wondered at its bare mountain peaks, with their rugged craters and dreadful precipices, and its "Ocean of Storms" and "Lake of Death," as two of the sea-like plains have been called. I wondered how it could have become, as it were, like a dead earth; but this is one of the things which God has not told us about. What He _has_ told us is that He made this "lesser light to rule the night," and as she moves over the sky in her calm silent beauty, she speaks to us of His goodness in giving not only the sun to rule by day, but the moon and stars to rule by night, those wonderful stars whose silent voice is ever making known His power, and telling of His glory; as the poet Addison has beautifully said--

"For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is Divine!"

This is a long chapter, but we have been speaking of a vast subject, and before I close it, I want to refer to two wonderful things about the stars, to which God draws our attention in His word. He tells us that "one star differeth from another star in glory," and astronomers have discovered that there was a deeper truth than they at first imagined underlying these words.

But what I specially want to speak of for a moment is the number of these heavenly bodies, and their distance from us.

In the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, two verses are placed close together, the one speaking of the power and greatness of God, the other of His tenderness and compassion towards His creatures.

"He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds."

"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by names."

And in the Book of Job we read--

"Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!"

There are wonderful things to learn about the colour of the stars, some yellow like our own sun, others of a dazzling whiteness, and others giving out beautiful rainbow-coloured light. But these wonders you must study by-and-by; just now we will speak first of their amazing number, as they appear to our eyes when by the help of the telescope we peer deeper and deeper into the blue depths of the sky. When alluding to the stars in a general way we include the seven planets--one of them our own earth--which move round our sun, and are as it were so near home that five of them may be seen without the telescope--though not more than three are visible at the same time--and also those myriads of "fixed stars," all of which are suns, many of them much larger than our own glorious sun, and removed from our ken by distances which our minds refuse to grasp.

I have been told that the number of stars which can be seen with the naked eye is five thousand, but that only half that number are visible at the same time.

If you ask me how many can be seen with the help of the telescope, I cannot tell you, because more powerful glasses are constantly being made, only to discover worlds beyond worlds, ever new and more distant, strewn in space like golden dust, while stars hitherto invisible through the most powerful telescope can now be made to leave the impress of their rays upon the photographic plate--so that a great astronomer of our time can show us pictures of "invisible stars."

God who made them, God who has appointed to each its own path through the heavens, and also guides and controls each world and system of worlds in its course, so that in all His universe there is no jar, no clash, no being before or after time--He alone can tell their number.

And when we consider their height, their amazing distance from us and from, each other, the wonder only grows.

If we think of the worlds hung in space like our own, our nearest neighbour among them, the "red planet Mars," is thirty-five millions of miles away, while the grand planet Saturn--the "ringed world"--though lighted up by our sun, is so distant, so "_high_," that the ever-hasting traveller whom we imagined some time ago rushing through space at the speed of an express train, would take two thousand years on his endless journey. Yet Saturn's rays actually come to our eyes from this vast infinity of distance--while the light of the nearest star--and you know we say "quick as light"--takes more than four years to reach us.

These things, so far beyond our scanty thoughts to conceive, are indeed too great for us, but how simply the Bible speaks of them--

"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth."

"By His spirit HE hath garnished the heavens."

"It is HE that buildeth His storeys in the heavens."

In the next chapter you will read a true story which I told my scholars as a reward for their attention while we had been speaking on a very difficult subject. I hope you will be as much interested in John Britt as they were.

Here are some beautiful verses, speaking of the way in which "the heavens declare the glory of God," and my story shows how they may "utter forth a glorious voice" to ears closed to every earthly sound.

"The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, The spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great original proclaim. Th' unwearied sun, from day to day, Doth his Creator's power display. And publishes to every land The work of an Almighty Hand.

"Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the list'ning earth, Repeats the story of her birth: While all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.

"What though, in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice nor sound Amidst their radient orbs be found; In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice; For ever singing as they shine-- The hand that made us is Divine."

ADDISON

STORY OF A DEAF BOY WHO HEARD THE SUN PROCLAIM THE GLORY OF GOD.

This story is about an Irish boy who was deaf and dumb. Do you know what that means? Thank God, you who cannot know. I have been in a school where every scholar was deaf and dumb. These children had been patiently taught the finger language, and they had also learnt to express themselves by the quicker language of signs, so that they could understand a great deal, and could do many clever things; but it made me very sad to see so many of them at once, for I knew that this world was to them a silent world. They could see people speak and smile, but never hear one sound; they might watch the fingers of anyone who was playing the piano move quickly over the keys, but not one note of music could reach them. Think how sad it must be never to have heard your mother's voice, never to be able to speak to those you love except by signs, which can tell so little of what you want to say, even if they are understood. Ah, you cannot tell _how_ sad it is! Ernest and Sharley and May were with me when we went to the school; and when some of the elder boys acted little plays, just as you might act "dumb charades," to amuse the visitors, they were delighted with their cleverness, and laughed heartily; and I daresay the boys were pleased to see them laugh, though they could not hear them. These boys spoke very quickly on their fingers, and wrote beautifully on the black board, in answer to questions which they were asked. I do not remember what these questions and answers were; but I know we all thought some of the questions too difficult, and wondered at the good and thoughtful answers which were given. They reminded me of the reply to a difficult question I once saw a deaf and dumb boy write.

The teacher of his school asked the visitors who had come to see it, to put any questions they liked to the boys. Some questions in history and geography and arithmetic were asked and answered; and then a lady said, "Ask them to tell what is the amount of the Christian's riches."

There was a pause; but presently a boy of fourteen stepped forward, took the chalk, and wrote this text as the answer: "Having nothing, and yet possessing all things." I think he must have known what it is to be "rich unto God."

It is sad to think that when the ear, that "gateway of knowledge," is shut, a poor child may, for want of teaching, and often for want of love and sympathy, grow up almost like an animal; his friends thinking him stupid, because he cannot ask questions or tell anything that is in his mind, until at last he really becomes stupid, and his mind grows dull from want of use.

I am glad to tell you that a way has lately been found, by which children who have never heard a sound may be taught, not only to understand the speech of others, but to speak themselves. It is true that their talk sounds strange and unnatural, and is not easy to understand, but where this method is known it makes a wonderful difference in the lives of the poor children who have been so cut off from intercourse with others. By carefully watching the lips of their teachers, those who learn this "lip-reading" can tell what is said, and I have seen them write it down, just as you would write a dictation lesson; and quite as correct, though they only see the words, and you hear them. But before they have learned to understand in this way, and still more before they have learned to speak, great patience is needed, both in teachers and children. I have heard that in the schools where lip-reading is taught, the children are forbidden to make signs to each other or talk on their fingers, and so some of them learn this much better plan wonderfully quickly.

Sometimes children become deaf after a fever, sometimes from a fall or a heavy blow, or from a fright; some are born so. I do not know how it happened in the case of this boy whose story I want to tell you, because the lady who has written an account of him never knew him till he was eleven years old; but I think he must either have been born deaf, or have lost his hearing when he was a baby, for he had never spoken a word, and up to the time when his story begins he had never been taught anything. His name was John Britt, but everybody called him Jack; not that it mattered to him what, he was called, for he had never heard his own name, nor the shouts of the boys with whom he played, nor the crowing of the cocks, as they flapped their wings in his mother's yard; all the world was dumb and silent to poor Jack.

When he first came to the house of the lady who was to be such a kind friend to him, Jack looked a very stupid boy. I am sure he was shy too, for he had never before been in any house but the poor little cottage where he was born, or the cottages of the neighbour folk; and when this lady from England tried to make him understand that she wanted to be friends with him, he kept looking round at all the fine things in her drawing-room. Some people would have thought him a very rude boy, but she only watched him with pitying eyes, and longed to teach him about God. But how could she begin to teach him, since he could not hear a word she said?

This was what May was most anxious to know; and I could not tell her how the very beginning was made, nor how Jack liked his first lesson. It must have been a very difficult task, but you know what you have often heard, "Where there's a will there's a way." Jack's lady greatly longed to do something for the poor boy; she was deaf herself, and was obliged to use an ear trumpet, by which the voices of those who spoke to her were brought nearer to her ear, and perhaps this made her pity one who had never heard at all, more than she might otherwise have done. But God had given her a feeling of love and tenderness towards him, and a great longing and earnest purpose to help him, and He showed her the way to put His truth within the reach of this poor boy, whose life had been almost as lonely as if he had been, shut up in prison, and gave her faith and patience, and courage to undertake what seemed a hopeless task. One of the things she did was to get a box of letters, and she held Jack's hand while he copied them on a slate--I think this must have been his first real lesson--and when he had copied the letters a great many times, without any idea of what he was doing, but just to please his kind friend, she took the three letters D-O-G and put them together. Her pet dog was lying in his basket by the fire, and she pointed to him, and then pointed to the letters, and after she had done this over and over again many times, she saw that the boy was beginning to understand that the letters, in some strange way, must have something to do with the dog. When this step was gained, she threw the D, O, and G back into the box, and Jack had to pick the three letters out, one by one, and put them together again. Then, when this word was quite learnt, she taught him the names of other things which he knew--all in three letters--and last of all showed him how to make the letters on his fingers, teaching him what is called the deaf and dumb alphabet.

All this seemed a pleasant game to poor Jack, and he little thought that he was being taught to read, and to speak on his fingers while he was playing at it. As time went on, the boy became very quick at this game; he knew how to write a great many words, and to spell them in the finger alphabet, and the more he learnt the more he wanted to know. He now began to bring all sorts of things to his teacher, spelling "W-h-a-t, what," on his fingers again and again, until she had taught him their names. She saw that his mind, which had been almost asleep, was fast waking up, and she prayed God to show her how to teach this child not only words and names, but that "fear of the Lord" which "is the beginning of knowledge."

Jack's lady well knew that though he was so clever and quick at learning, he knew nothing about the God who had made him for Himself, nor about the Lord Jesus Christ who had paid such a price--His own precious blood--to redeem poor Jack, and buy him back for God. She never forgot while teaching him, that he had within him a priceless treasure of which he knew nothing--that immortal spirit which must go on living always, somewhere--and so, more and more earnestly her cry went up to God: "Teach me how to teach this boy about Thee!"

At last the opportunity come. One day Jack pointed upwards at the sun, and showed by signs that he wished to know who had made that great light in the sky--had his lady made it?

She shook her head, as he next made signs for the names of two or three people, asking whether the sun had been made by them; and then she pointed to heaven and spelled G-O-D. She told him three things about God: He was great, He was kind, He was always looking at Jack.

Soon after this the boy came again with his eager "_What? what?_"--and explained that he could not find out how the sun was made, because it was so bright that he could not keep looking at it; but he said he knew all about the moon. It was rolled up into a ball and then sent across the sky, just as he would roll a marble along the floor. And the stars--he knew all about them too; someone had cut them out with a pair of scissors, and stuck them into the sky.

I need not tell you that the children, who had just been learning that the stars are suns, were much amused at this notion of Jack's.

And now this poor boy began to search for God. He came to his lady and told her that she was "bad Ma'am," and had told what was not true; for he said he had been everywhere to look for God, he had even got up in the night to try to find Him; but nowhere, in the streets or in the fields, had he seen anyone tall enough to reach the sky, so that he could put up his hand and stick the bright stars there. And so he repeated many times, "God, _no_; God, _no_," until she could not bear to hear him; for she knew that Satan was trying to take away from him the thought of God, and make this poor boy like the fool of whom the fourteenth Psalm speaks, who "said in his heart, No God." Jack's lady was silent, for she knew not what to say; but again she prayed to God to teach her how to teach him; and then she did what the boy thought a very strange thing, and I am sure you will think it so too.

A pair of bellows was hanging beside the fire; she took them and began to blow the hot coals into a ruddy flame. Then suddenly she turned to Jack and blew puff, puff, at his hand. He did not like the cold air, and shrank back. When she blew again, saying, "What? what?" just as he had done, he got angry and said she was bad, and it made him cold. She still pretended to be very much surprised that he should feel anything uncomfortable, and looked all over the bellows as if in search of something; then she blew again, and explained that she could not see anything, repeating just as he had done, "Wind, _no_: wind, _no_."

With joy and wonder she saw that her lesson had been understood. Putting two fingers side by side--the only way which he could think of to express likeness--Jack repeated over and over, "God like wind; God like wind."

After this he often spoke of God; once when he had been trying to look at the sun, he shut his dazzled eyes and spelt on his fingers, "God like sun." The lightning was to him "God's eye"; the rainbow, "God's smile"; and of living creatures he would say, patting them kindly, "God made, God made."