Part 1.
LET US see if we can learn a lesson today from the clock. I remember when I was a boy that the clock was a great wonder to me. One night when left alone in the room, I went over to the mantle-piece and stood a long time staring at the clock, and for the first time saw the large hand move. How delighted I was! The clocks generally used in this our day are much smaller than were used in olden times and also more delicate, and there was a time when there were no clocks such as we are speaking about.
I suppose we might truly say the sun was the very first clock. Perhaps my boys and girls will say: “I did not know that the sun was a clock.” Yes, when God lighted up the sun, He not only intended it for light, but also that we, by it, might reckon time; that we might learn its value and regulate our employment by it. And so God placed in the heavens a most magnificent and perfect clock, which tells the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the seasons and the years; a clock which no one ever wind s up, but never stops and never goes wrong. By the apparent daily rotations of the sun in the heavens over our heads, it measures for us the days and the hours and this so correctly, that the watchmakers in Geneva regulate all their watches by its place at noon, and from the most ancient times, men have measured upon sun-dials the regular movement of the shadow.
The first mention of the sun-dial you will find in your Bible in 2 King 20:11, also Isa. 38:88Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down. (Isaiah 38:8), about 700 years before the time of our Lord Jesus Christ. But nothing is known of the character or construction of this instrument.
The earliest of all sun-dials of which we have any certain knowledge was the hemicycle or hemisphere of the Chaldean astronomer Berosus, who lived about 340 B. C. The dial of Berosus remained in use for centuries. In the 18th century, clocks and watches began to take the place of the sundial.
No doubt, if we could compare one of the early clocks with our clocks of today they would look rather clumsy: in fact the clocks used to stand on the floor, as they were so large, and who hasn’t heard of “Grandfather’s Clock”! Now I want to speak of the different parts of the clock or at least some of the parts of which there are very many as anyone, who has taken out the parts and tried to put them together again, can tell you. We will choose a clock such as we might see anywhere today in the schoolroom or in the railway station. Some of the parts can be seen and many cannot be seen, but we are going to speak first of the parts that are seen, which are, the face and hands. The case also can be seen, but we will talk about that last of all.
If we speak of the face, it makes us think of the faces of the little boys and girls, and how we like to see them nice and clean, and sometimes when we look into the faces of children we can tell whether they are good or bad, and whether they are happy or sad, and also can tell when they are angry. God said to Cain who killed his brother Abel in anger: “Why art thou wroth, (angry) and why is thy countenance (appearance of the face) fallen?” (Gen. 4:66And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? (Genesis 4:6).) He thought no one saw him kill his brother, and no one should find it out, but God saw it, as He sees everything, but he could not hide the effect of anger on his face. How nice to see a happy face. And do you know how to have a happy face? Those who love the Lord Jesus and know He has washed all their sins away in His own precious blood, have happy faces, and can sing, “O, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away.” When we think of how much He loved us, and that He died for us, and is coming for us, and we are going to see His face, how can we have sad or cross faces? We shall see His face, that face that men once spit upon when He was here upon earth, when He was called the “Man of Sorrows”, but now that He has risen from the dead, having finished redemption’s glorious work, and we can see by faith the “glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.”
ML 11/10/1912