A BRIGHT, clear, starry evening; so which of my friends will join me in another journey amongst the shining inhabitants of the blue vault that rises over our heads—so blue, so vast, so calm, that it seems to dwarf everything else in its own grand, mysterious immensity. Tonight I want you to look closely at the constellation known by the name of "Orion, that we may learn a little of the glories hidden there. Hidden in part to us as we look at it with the naked eye, but revealed to those who are able to study the wonders of the heavens through the great telescopes that are now of such use to astronomers, and which have taught us how very, very little we know of the worlds that He who is the mighty God has created.
Now let us turn our backs upon the Great Bear, and so face the South, and just before us, a little to our left, gleams our glorious friend Orion. You recognize it do you? the long square formed by the four very bright stars, and the three across, not so luminous, that are called the belt. I want you especially to notice the star at the north-east corner of the square, that is, the highest on the left; and also the lowest at your right hand.
These are stars of the first magnitude; that does not mean that they are necessarily larger than the others, but they are brighter, more luminous, than those around them; the stars that form the other two angles of the square are of the second magnitude.
Now look more closely at the lower one on your right, it looks like one brilliant star, does it not? What will you say when I tell you that it is really two suns, at so immense a distance from us that the light from them blends into one before it reaches our eyes, and to us it appears as one single orb, and we know it by the name of Rigel.
It is a double or binary star, and, looking through a powerful telescope, it is found that its two suns are not of the same color: one is a clear white orb, the other a blue one. And when looked at closely, even by the naked eye, some think it has a blue tinge in the golden lustrous light that it has in company with the twinkling points that surround it. But there it shines! in very truth two blazing suns, that may be at an enormous distance really the one from the other, although against the background of blue they appear to us as one. When I was a tiny child I used to sing a little nursery rhyme about the stars, and often wondered what they really were; but I did not know for a long time, though I think I always had a love for them. And I hope our talks about them will help some of my young friends to be more interested in them, for if God has chosen to form them, and speak of them so often as He does in His word, it seems to me that they must teach us something of the greatness and glory of that One who has even called Himself as we have seen, by the name of "the bright and morning star.”
But now let us look at the stars in Orion's belt. They do not appear so lustrous to us, but for many years astronomers have been finding new wonders there. Look at the middle star; more than two hundred years ago a man who gave a great deal of his time to studying the stars, found, as he looked through his telescope, that there was a space below this star so very bright that it puzzled him greatly, he could not at all understand it; and at last he thought that it must be a sort of break or opening in the heavens which gave him a glimpse of the glory beyond the created universe.
So this very learned and clever man came to much the same conclusion as a little girl that I once heard of, who asked if the stars were holes in heaven to let the glory shine through. Was not hers a very beautiful thought? and I do not think she was very far wrong either, for "the heavens declare the glory of God." But this wonderful light under the second star of Orion's belt is now found to be a real cluster of stars—suns—at so enormous a distance from our earth that through a moderate telescope they seem only a shimmering mass of radiant vapor; but through a very powerful telescope, such as Lord Rosse first caused to be made, this vapor is seen to be the light from at least twelve visible stars.
Now are you tired of hearing all this, or shall we go on and look at the stars forming the ends of the belt? On the left, three suns blend their light; one is slightly yellow, another blue, and the third white. And on the right, a purple sun joins with a clear white orb to form what, to our eyes, is the one little twinkling star. When we think what one sun is to our world, how vast the influence of its light and heat upon the whole earth, and then remember that here we see star after star formed, not of one sun, but of two or three-can we not get a glimpse of what “Almighty " means. Could anything less than an almighty hand have formed and sustained such marvels?
But I think we have had enough of wonders for to-night, though we have not seen nearly all those that are to be found here. Still, we have learned quite sufficient to make us exclaim as David did, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" So now we will turn to our fireside and finish our chat there; and, first of all, I want to look at those words of David that we have just been reminded of. Do you not notice that the “sweet singer of Israel” does not speak of the sun, he only notices the moon and stars; so from that I gather he must have been looking up at the sky at night. And he was not giving just a passing glance and then off to something else. No! he was considering them: that means to think about them, study them; and it led him to exclaim, What am I, that the mighty God who created all these glories should think of me?
Cannot we say the same, and in a far deeper sense than David did, for he could not look back to Calvary as we can, and see a little of what that name means? Some time ago, I was traveling through a large city by rail. We passed through a dark tunnel, and as we emerged from it into the sunshine, almost the first thing I saw was that word "Calvary," printed in huge letters on a background of white; just that one single word on an enormous board, nothing else. I do not know if my fellow-travelers saw it or not; I only know that one minute I had been sitting there in the train, sad and lonely; for the people with me in the carriage all seemed to be absorbed in the pleasures of which they were speaking, or the business they were going to, and I was sorry to hear no mention of my Master. But that one word made me forget the strangers near me, and in a second I had left the gloomy rail far behind, and in spirit I was standing on that "green hill far away, outside a city wall;" where my Master had once taken upon Himself all my guilt and sin, and set me free forever; putting me, too, into all the blessedness of His own place. And all the sadness and loneliness passed from my heart, and I knew that God Himself would see to it, that that work on Calvary, that made the name so precious to me, should have its own full and glorious answer in the eternal salvation of every one of those who trust in the divine Person who accomplished it perfectly there.
And as we consider the heavens, and think not only of the stars—that are the special objects of our attention in our pleasant talks now—but also of the moon, I am reminded of a person I once knew, whose first ray of hope, as to her eternal salvation, came as she was standing looking up at the clear, peaceful shining of the moon, which first led to her thinking that there might be, even for her, something above and beyond the misery she had in this world. She was one of those who knew nothing of the love of God. She had heard others speak of it, and in her heart she really envied them, for she knew that they had a peace and joy all unknown to her. But she loved the world and its pleasures, and she chose them instead of Christ. She had a friend to whom she was greatly attached, and her spare time was devoted to their going together to the different places in which they tried to find their happiness. A vain attempt she found it even then. What can the places of amusement do to fill an immortal soul?
She had friends who were Christians, and when one day one of them spoke very earnestly to her, reminding her of her wasted life, of death and judgment, and also of God's pardoning love if she would accept it, his earnestness aroused her to an idea, that she must choose whether she would become a Christian now or go on as she was. But after a long struggle with her convictions, she deliberately settled that she could not give up her friend and all her daily pursuits, and so she chose to give up the hope of being the Lord's, and tried to stifle the thoughts of eternity that haunted her by going more than ever into all the worldliness around her.
That was her side of it. But when God begins to work, nothing sinners can do will alter His purpose; only, if they will not let go the things that hinder them, these must be torn from their grasp, causing, it may be, wounds that leave their scars for all time. And so it was with the one of whom I am speaking. Three months of sin and folly and living without God, after her decision, the very friend whom she would not give up was taken away in such an awful and sudden manner, that every gleam of brightness seemed dashed at one blow out of her life, and for weeks she gave way to hopeless misery and despair.
But at last God spoke and it was by means of the calm, clear light of the moon. She was listlessly looking up at it one night, her heart surging over with wild and rebellious regrets, when little by little the quiet far-off radiance, so calm and peaceful above her, seemed to tell her that up above this gloomy world there was a region of rest even for such as she was. Ah, she little knew that God's infinite love would give not only rest but joy. But that night was the occasion when the first ray of divine hope stole into her weary heart—but not the last. He who began the good work in His own matchless pity and tenderness, carried it on day after day until the wandering one was brought consciously to His own loving arms, to hear the precious words, “Thy sins which are many are all forgiven;" and to find in a new life a happiness and joy never imagined possible before. So that now she thanks Him more for the greatest grief of her life, than for anything else in it; because it made way for Christ to be everything to her.
But she need not have been so crushed, she might have yielded herself to Him long before; but if we will not do that, well, then we must be broken. And so, dear young friends, let me beg you not to do as this one did; do not reject the love of God, lest you meet His judgment.
And I do hope, too, that our chats about the stars, and what they lead us to think of from God's word, may not pass away from your minds as only a pleasant way of spending spare half-hours. I want you to learn more of God from them—more of what we all are in ourselves—away from God and utterly unable to get to Him by any trying of our own.
But what we cannot do has been done for us by another. And that reminds me of something which I feel inclined to call a star of the first magnitude, in the celestial chart that has been sent down here for our guidance. You know, as we stood looking up into the dark blue sky above us, some stars seemed to shine out so brightly and clearly from amongst all the others, that we seemed to take them in by our sight before the rest. Well, in God's word sometimes one text, sometimes another, shines out with such luster that it fixes itself in our hearts in a very special way, just according to our need at the time. And the one that I want you to look at now has a distinct glory of its own.
I can point it out to you, but I cannot make you see how very lovely it is, unless you stand in the same place. You know in looking at ordinary things everything depends upon your standpoint. So here; unless you, too, stand where I do, you may not see the glory of this verse: "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18).) Now in this lustrous star from God's words, there are such rays of glory that every time we think over it we may see fresh beauties there. We see, for one thing, that the forgiveness of our sins is not nearly all we get when we belong to Christ. He has once suffered—borne the punishment—for those sins, He, the just One, for us the unjust ones; and so the great and holy God can forgive us. There! is not that a bright ray? but the next we are going to notice is so very bright that I feel we only get rare glimpses of it, as it were: "That he might bring us to God.”
Just think of it, dear young friends. Do not turn away to something else, let us give a few moments to thinking what those words really mean. They are fraught with blessing. God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity." Then before we can have been brought to Him, every trace of sin's defilement has been washed away, and we are clean and pure even in His sight. “He is a great God, the almighty One whose greatness is unsearchable. Honor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary, He ruleth by his power forever." And yet we who trust in Christ are brought right home to Him in peace and love; because He is gracious and full of compassion and so loved this poor, dark world, that He gave up His own beloved Son, to come down into all our misery and darkness, to lift us up into His own joy and glory. Brought to God! I feel how tiny are the glimpses I get of it. But I see a surpassing glory in what I do get. And I hope some of you will search into it and find much more there for yourselves than ever you saw before.
I remember, as if it were but yesterday, the time when I first found this verse. I had been saved for nearly a year; and do not think I could ever make you understand what a rapturous joy it was to me to find that I had a living Savior to speak to and trust in about everything. But I was taken ill, and for six weeks I was lying in my bedroom, shut out from the world, to learn a little more what salvation meant. One evening I was lying alone, only the flickering firelight lighting up my room, the ledges of the window, and the roofs of the houses opposite glistening with the pure, white snow that covered them.
As I lay there I took up my little Testament and opened it, and my eyes fell upon our verse. I read it and re-read it. I could hardly believe it was really there; it came upon me with such power, I could read no more: for it revealed to me that for nearly twelve long months I had known I was forgiven—known Christ as my Savior—but never had known until that moment that Christ died to bring me to God. And how ashamed I felt. I had never praised Him for it. Never really known God as my Father—the One who gave Christ for me—who drew me to that Christ. How I had neglected Him! and tears filled my eyes, and self-reproach filled my heart as I thought over it in the stillness of that winter evening. And though years have rolled by since then, I feel to-night that I know very, very little of it now. But, dear friends, I do long for each one of us to enter into it more. Each of us here who are saved by His precious grace, let us earnestly seek to know more of what it means to be brought to God.