Children's nature story-sermons

Front matter

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CHILDREN’S

NATURE

Foreword

P ASSING north through the Canadian vaca¬ tion country, one comes to a sort of height of land where the waters that flow east into the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario cease to flow, and one sees the western current begin and later enjoys those fine rivers that empty into the Geor¬ gian Bay. For a while the traveller pauses to think of the strangeness of the situation, but as he travels on he remembers that the waters of the Bay, the River, and the Lake very soon min¬ gle and become one in their outward and onward flow to the great sea.

And so all truth finds its way out into life and not the least of the pleasures of the ministry is to discover that truth embodied in a tale to please the children overflows to the refreshment and en¬ richment of the children’s friends. The imagina¬ tion is the highest faculty we have and in that magic world heaven comes down our souls to meet.

Jesus never failed to appeal to the imagination, and the best of all nature story-sermons are the story-sermons of the Gospels. He understood children and He knew nature like a book. The wild flowers and the birds, the sunrise and the sunset, the winds and the waves, the green grass, 7

FOREWORD and the golden grain were all his familiar friends, and nearly all his parables are nature story-ser¬ mons.

If there is any virtue and if there is any praise in this attempt at nature story-sermon telling, the credit must be given to the children themselves, and their generous appreciation. I must also, in all honesty say that I owe much to Sir J. Arthur Thomson's “The Outline of Science," and any reader of those suggestive volumes will easily detect the indebtedness.

‘Elfin Camp’

H. T. K.

t

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Lord God is a Sun

.

.

.

Dust.

.

.

A Dead World .

.

The Greatest Cradle in the

World

3 i

What the 3 ells Say

.

The Unseen Comrade .

.

9 *

The Test ....

.

IO.

Camouflage

.

ii.

Living Grain

.

The Home of the Wheat

.

Shooting Stars

.

Flowers and Prayers

.

The Greatest Mill in the

World

Habits.

.

Try—Keep Trying .

•

The Worst Parasite

•

•

Making Black White .

•

A Friendly World .

.

IO

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

23*

For Sale ....

The Worst Thing in the

World

The Easiest Thing in the World

Dead Spots ....

Cats and Clover

The Tide ....

The Water Wheel .

Finding the Way .

no

The Hidden Spring

An Easter Story-Sermon

11 7

The Ravens

A Child Goes to Church

Pharaoh’s Perfume

The Bramble King .

A Book in a Tree .

The Song the Sea Sings

The Most Beautiful Thing in the

World ....

Lost !.

Say It with Flowers

Sowing and Reaping

CONTENTS ii

CHAPTER PAGE

52. The Sweetest Thing in the World . 184

I

THE LORD GOD IS A SUN

“The Lord God is a sun. ’ —Ps. 84: n

T HE Bible tells us that God is like the sun. “The Lord God is a sun.” If you take the Hymnal, and look among the hymns you love you will find the thought repeated, again and again, “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,” “As the sun doth daily rise,” “Sun of our life, thy quickening ray,” “Great sun of righteousness, arise.” The sun is so full of light, so bright, so warm, so beautiful, it is little wonder the sun re¬ minds us of God.

How far away the sun is! Once I saw an au¬ tomobile travel 100 miles an hour. It was out at Indianapolis on the great speedway. No! I was not at the races. I was at the General Assembly. Now, if you can imagine that automobile, not go¬ ing around in a circle but travelling straight on and on, going day and night, every day, Satur¬ day afternoons and Sundays, going on and on, 100 miles an hour for more than 100 years, it would arrive at last at the sun.

How great is the sun! It would take more than a hundred worlds as* big as ours to make one sun. And how great is God. He made the sun and all the stars. There is nothing in the world so great 13

THE LORD GOD IS A SUN as God. “To whom then will ye liken me, that I should be equal to him? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath cre¬ ated these, that bringeth out their host by num¬ ber ; he calleth them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not one is lacking.’’

How bright the sun is! It scatters the night and chases away the darkness. How bright and beautiful God is! In him is light. The sun sends out great flames of light reaching 500,000 miles high, and the light of the sun warms this cold world of ours. They tell us there are “spots” in the sun, great dark spots, thousands of miles across, but there is no shadow of darkness about God.

“Our midnight is Thy smile withdrawn;

Our noontide is Thy gracious dawn;

Our rainbow arch, Thy mercy’s sign;

All, save the clouds of sin, are Thine.”

How near the sun is! We think it is far away, millions of miles away, and yet the sun is here, at our side, shining, among the flowers, in our homes, in the faces of little children, in the eyes of those we love. The sun is so near you can almost hold it in your hand and look at it. We know the sun. We know what it is. We know what is in it. We know there is iron and copper and zinc and soda and magnesia in the sun. How do we know that ? Because the sun comes right down and kisses the flowers and the faces of little children, and wise men take a

THE LORD GOD IS A SUN 15

sunbeam and make it tell them its wonderful se¬ crets. How near God is and how good He is. He comes to us in Jesus, the light of the world, and Jesus tells us all we know about God.

There is an old, old story in an old, old book called the Koran, that tells how away back in the beginning of history Abraham found the true God. And this is the story. One night in his far away heathen home Abraham was sitting watching the darkness drift down from the hills. As he watched he saw a star away behind the hills. He said, “This is my Lord. He is so bright, so beautiful.” Then he watched and waited, and the moon came up, and he said, “This is my Lord.” Through the long, dark night he watched and as the moon grew brighter and brighter he said, “Verily, I will follow my Lord in the right way.” But as he watched the East was filled with glory and the great sun came up, and he said, “This is my Lord. How great and wonderful he is! The sun is greater than earth, or star, or moon. Through the long day he watched and in the eve¬ ning the great sun went down behind a dark cloud, and he said, “Oh, my soul, I am done with these things. I turn my face from star and moon and sun to Him who hath made them all, to God who made heaven and earth.” Let us, too, turn our faces towards God and say:

“Great Sun of Righteousness, arise;

Bless the dark world with heavenly light:

Thy gospel makes the simple wise,

Thy laws are pure, Thy judgments right.”

II

“He telleth the number of the stars” —Ps. I47 : 4

D O you think you could do that? Did you ever try to count the stars ? I have. When I was a boy in Canada, where the stars twinkle and shine so clearly, we used to watch for the first star, and the first one who saw it would say:

“Star light, star bright,

First star I've seen to-night?’

Then we would see who could count the stars as they appeared. One, two, four, five, seven, eight, ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, and in a little while we all would be lost, both in arithmetic and in wonder.

They call a man who watches and studies the stars an astronomer, and the astronomers have tried to count the stars, and partly by counting, and partly by guessing they tell us there must be between 2,000 and 3,000 millions of stars and each one is different, for “one star differeth from another star in glory.”

We cannot count the stars, but God can. He counts them all and names them, for He made them and the stars are not little tiny sparks of 16

1 7 fire, but great wonderful worlds. The great sun that lights and warms our world is just a star, and a little star. Every star we see in the sky is a sun, hundreds of times bigger than our sun. It is because they are so far away that they look so tiny and so small. Some of the stars in the Milky Way are a hundred thousand trillion miles away. Think of a hundred thousand trillion miles. Try and write out a hundred thousand trillion. You put down the figure I, then you write ioo, then 100,000, then 100,000,000, then you write 100,- 000,000,000, then you write a hundred thou¬ sand trillion like this, 100,000,000,000,000,000; and that is the distance some of the stars in the Milky Way are from our sun.

The light that travels from some of these far¬ away stars takes millions of years to travel to our earth, and light travels fast, 186,000 miles a sec¬ ond. No wonder we like to look up into the sky on a clear cool night and say :

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high.

Like a diamond in the sky.

“When the blazing sun is set, And the grass with dew is wet, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.”

Stars, just like boys and girls, are different. Each has its own way, and its own light. There are white stars, and yellow stars, and red stars. You have seen a white hot iron, and you know i8 that when it begins to cool it gets yellow and then it gets red, and then it gets black. That is the way with stars, and perhaps the hottest stars are white. I do not know, but I like to think that just as God counts the stars and names them so he calls every boy and girl by name and cares for each one. We live in a big world but God is greater than sun and moon and stars.

The Bible calls Jesus a star. It gives Him a star’s name. It calls him “the bright and morn¬ ing star.” The morning star leads the world into the light of the new day and so Jesus leads us. The sailor is guided over the trackless sea by the stars. The traveller over the desert picks his path by the help of some star, so we too find our way to God by keeping our eyes on Jesus.

There is a story of a young girl who had lost her way. She was lost not in the forest, or on the sea, but right in her own home. She had lost the way to peace, to happiness, and to a quiet heart. One night she had a dream. She was in a deep, deep pit, and there were no steps, no rope, nor ladder. She gave herself up for lost and then falling on her knees and looking up she saw a piece of blue sky and one star. When she saw the star she began to rise. It seemed so strange that she said, “Who is lifting me?” and looking down she found herself at the bottom. Again .•she saw the star and began to rise, but looked .again to see who was lifting her and found her¬ self at the bottom. A third time she fixed her eyes on the shining star, and kept looking until she found herself lifted out of the deep pit, and she was safe. Then she awoke and said, “I see it all now. I am not to look at myself, but at Jesus, ‘the bright and morning star.’ ”

When Sir Harry Lauder was in America he was walking with a father and a little boy down one of the streets of New York. It was in the days of the great war, when service flags with a star were hung in the windows. The little lad loved to point them out. “Look, father,” he would say, “there’s a home that has given a son to the war.” “Look, father, there’s another star.” “Look, father, there are two stars.” Then the lad, looking up at the Evening Star that had ap¬ peared in the sky, said, “And look, father, God too must have given a son, for there is a star in His window.” Yes, God so loved the world that He gave—Jesus.

Ill

DUST

“Dust thou art ” —Gen. 3:19 HE Bible tells us very plainly that our bodies are made of dust. God made man

A of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life. We do not like to think we are made out of dust. We like to think we are made out of sunshine and rainbows, and if there is any dust about us, it must be golden star dust.

I heard once of a dear old Scotchwoman who had always refused to have her picture taken. Many old ladies, you know, are queer, especially Scotch old ladies. Her family, however, urged her to have her photograph taken so they could send it to one of her sons who lived in America, and she consented. When the first proof was received she looked at it long and silently and then without a word set out for the studio. “Is that me?” she said to the photographer. “Yes, madam,” he said. “And is it like me ?” she added. “Yes, madam, it is a speaking likeness.” Then said the old Scotch woman, “Well, if that's so, it’s a humbling sight.”

We laugh at the dear old lady, for we know she was wrong, for there is nothing lovelier in

DUST the world than just a fine, sweet, thought-ennobled face of a mother or a grandmother.

And what a wonderful thing dust is! It is alive with mystery before which wise men dream and wonder. To a wise man who knows, “the very dust is dear.” It is a living thing, and out of it the world has been made, and scientists tell us that we owe our beautiful sunsets and our re¬ freshing rain to the dust that floats in the upper air.

We are apt to think the only value dust has is to make work, but it is not so. Dust is useful. A great scientist once wrote a book which he called “The Wonderful Century.” The Wonder¬ ful Century was of course the nineteenth century which includes all the years between 1800 and 1900. In this book he wrote about some of the marvellous things discovered during those years and one of the chapters is about Dust, and among other things he said, “It is doubtful whether we could even live without dust. To the presence of dust we owe the clouds, the mists, the rains.” If it were not for the dust instead of soft showers and refreshing rains we would have water spouts and terrible torrents. It all seems strange, but true things are often strange, and sometimes little things are really big things.

A great man by the name of John Ruskin once took a handful of mud from the road of a great city. It was just a handful of dirty dust mois¬ tened with water. This wise man then divided the mud into four parts, clay, soot, sand, and

DUST water. Then he told the people who were listen¬ ing to him that if the clay were left alone for thousands or millions of years it would, under certain conditions, become a beautiful sapphire. The sand, he said, in the same strange way would be changed into a precious opal. The soot, the blackest of things, would in time become a brilliant diamond and the water could easily be changed into a pearly dewdrop or a snow crystal.

God can change the meanest thing into a price¬ less gem, and He can so transform us that we can become like Him. We are made of the dust of the field but we are also made in the image of God.

“Life is real; life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal!

‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest*

Was not spoken of the soul.”

The Apostle John said: “Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.”

IV “I am the light of the world .”— John 8 :12

J ESUS is the Light of the World. There is nothing better than light. Think for a min¬ ute about the things that are connected with light. Light and heat go together. The great sun that lights the world and turns darkness into day also warms the earth and makes it bring forth its harvests of golden grain and precious fruit.

Light and power go together. Did you know that Niagara Falls is one of the greatest power plants in the world? Well, if you go there to see that great wonder of nature you must see also the wonderful power houses along the shore where the water turns the wheels and the power gen¬ erated by the wheels goes to light the cities of Niagara Falls and Buffalo and Toronto and drives the trolley lines in a hundred cities and towns. Yes, power and light go together.

Light and health go together. The sun is a great physician. It heals. It drives away disease. It purifies air and water. Dr. S. Hall Young, the veteran missionary to Alaska, told me once that for twenty years in Alaska he had never had the funeral of a little child. The clear air, the pure light, kept disease away. Men who study such 23 things tell us there is not a single disease germ, not one microbe, on the top of Mount Blanc in Switzerland.

When Jesus came into the world He came to be the Light of the World. The Wise Men were guided to Him by the light of the star. He is the living Light that heals and saves.

It was away back in 1353, six hundred years ago, and a terrible plague known as the Black Death had carried off men, women, and children by the thousands. People fled in terror from towns and cities and lived alone in strange places. Friends separated from each other and families shut themselves in their own homes and refused entrance to all who came. Fear made people more like animals of the night than like the children of the day. They called the disease the Black Death and it certainly drove all the light out of the land.

The Black Death had driven all light and life from the streets of the little village of Goldberg in Germany. The town looked as if it had been struck with death. Christmas Eve came, and the city was silent as the grave. A man who had been in hiding, believing that he alone was left alive, unbarred his door as Christmas Eve sped on to Christmas morning, and came out into the silent street. The stars were shining bright as if all were well, and knowing it was Christmas morn, and forgetting the dread months that had passed away, he began to sing the old familiar Christmas song:

“To us this day is born a child.

God with us;

His mother is a Virgin mild;

God with us;

God with us; against us who dare be?”

He sang the first verse and then a door was opened, and a man joined him, and together they sang the second verse. Together they walked through the silent street and were joined by oth¬ ers who came out of their hiding places, until there were twenty-five—some of them women and children—and they sang the Christmas song until they had new hope and courage and the Christmas light came into the sky. That was the end of the Black Death. Either it had spent itself,* or God’s goodness had brought forth new courage in the hearts of those twenty five, for not one of them died of the Plague and for hundreds of years after, the people of the village always met together on Christmas Eve at midnight and at two o’clock Christmas morning marched through the streets singing the same old Christmas hymn:

“To us this day is born a child God with us;

His mother is a Virgin mild;

God with us;

God with us; against us who dare be?”

Yes, light and health belong together. When the Christmas child was born they called His name Jesus, which means Saviour. He is the light that saves. He is the light that drives away dark¬ ness and doubt and death. When Christmas came the world began to sing and it has been singing ever since:

“Joy to the world; the Lord is come.”

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” He also said, “Ye are the light of the world.” The Christmas light shines because of Jesus, but it shines also because of those who walk in the Gospel light. At Port Maitland a great pier runs out into Lake Erie and on this pier at night there burn two lights, one near the end and one near the shore. The one at the end is called the Light¬ house light and the one near the shore is called the Range light, for by means of it the ships know not only where the harbor is but the way into the harbor. Before the Range light was placed on the pier a great ship missed the harbor and ran upon the reef. Jesus is the Great light, but we too are the range lights giving direction to those who wish to find the heavenly harbor and the Christmas spirit with its joy and good cheer; its glad gifts and helpful service is the way in which we obey the Master’s command, “Let your light so shine.”

V

“Fair as the moon.” — Song of Songs 6: io

T HE other day I was visiting a little friend who had been ill for fourteen long months, through two winters and one summer. He had gone to bed near Christmas and had been a little invalid all that year, and through the next Christmas. His name is Frederick. He has a sister just his own age to the very day, and her name is Florence. Florence went to school and learned to write and add and subtract and do other queer things. Frederick stayed in bed, kept very quiet and read. He was only seven, but he read all sorts of books, and when he could not read others read to him, his nurse, his father, or his mother, or Billy or Betty, and he came to know a lot of history and science and fairy tales.

One day when I was telling him about the big world outside, and the coming of spring with its buds and leaves and flowers he chuckled and said, “Some day this world will be just like the moon. ,, What do you think of that? What did he mean? I thought perhaps he had been reading Robert Louis Stevenson who said that

“The moon has a face like the clock in the hall It shines on thieves on the garden wall.”

Then I thought perhaps it was Mother Goose he was thinking of:

“The man in the moon Came tumbling down And asked the way to Norwich.

He went by the south And burnt his mouth With supping cold pease-porridge.”

I soon knew, however, that he was not thinking about fancies and fairies, but about facts, and I said, “Why do you think so ?” “Well,” said he in a wise sort of way, “don’t you know the moon is dead and some day this world will be dead just like the moon.” Of course I knew that. Everybody knows that. The moon is dead. Nothing lives in the moon. Nothing ever happens there. No storms, no lightning, no noise, no dust, no twi¬ light, no blue sky, no twinkling stars, nothing hap¬ pens in the moon. There is no life, no air there, and the sky is as black as ink. It has no weather. It is a dead world.

No wonder “the man in the moon has a crick in his back. Whee! Whim! Ain’t you sorry for him?” Perhaps this is why people have al¬ ways thought the moon harmed people and made them go out of their heads, as we say. Do you remember the Psalm that says, “The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night?” You can have a moonstroke, as well as a sun¬ stroke. All dead things are bad, and a dead world like the moon may have a bad influence on people, especially on young people who stay out late at night.

I said, “Yes, the moon is dead, a dead, dead world, but how beautiful it is and how wonder¬ ful it is at night. How is that? If it is dead how is it so full of light?” And I repeated the verse:

“Moon, so round and yellow,

Looking from on high,

How I love to see you Shining in the sky.

Oft and oft I wonder,

When I see you there,

How they get to light you,

Hanging in the air.”

Then Frederick turned over and said with a laugh, “Don’t you know ? Why, it’s the sun that makes the moon beautiful. The moon is dead, but the sun shines on it, and makes it shine.” And then I thought that we, too, are something like the moon, sort of dead and dull and useless, until Jesus, the great sun of our life, shines upon us and lights up our lives. The only way for us to be bright and useful is to have Jesus shine upon us. If we stay near Him we will be like Him.

Frederick is well now and lives out in a real live world and some day when I see him I am going to preach this story-sermon to him and then read and explain to him this sermon-story in rhyme:

“A Persian fable says: One day A wanderer found a lump of clay So redolent of sweet perfume,

Its odours scented all the room.

‘What art thou?’ was his quick demand;

‘Art thou some gem from the Samarkand,

Or Spikenard in this rude disguise,

Or other costly merchandise?’

‘Nay! I am but a lump of clay/

‘Then whence this wondrous sweetness—say?’ ‘Friend, if the secret I disclose,

I have been dwelling with the rose!”

Perhaps that verse of poetry is rather hard for little children to understand, but its meaning is very simple. It means that just as a piece of clay which has no sweetness in itself may become fragrant by being in the same place with a rose, so we too may become sweet and lovely by living in the presence of Jesus. The sweet¬ ness of the rose sweetens the clay, and the love and beauty of our Lord make us kind and sweet also. I am sure Frederick will understand both the story and the sermon.

VI The Greatest Cradle In The World

“The sea is his.” —Ps. 95: 5

C RADLES are out of fashion in these days. Babies are no longer in need of cradles. They need, not cradles, but cold dark silent rooms, perfectly good old fashioned beds, and to be left entirely alone to think and to meditate and not to cry.

Somehow I like the old way. I know it's not the best way, but still it is best for song and story and when you come to think of it, nature too, likes a cradle and has no idea of giving up to our new-fangled modern notions.

What is a beautiful valley lying between hills and mountains but a cradle, soft and green, in which sleep fields of golden grain and pretty vil¬ lages, and what are the trees of the forests and the streets but cradles, rocked by the wind. You remember the lullaby song:

“Rock-a-bye baby In the tree top,

When the bough bends The cradle will rock.”

But the greatest cradle in the whole wide world is the sea. The deep, dark, boundless sea is the 31

32 GREATEST CRADLE IN THE WORLD

greatest cradle in the world. The very first bed God ever made was the sea and there the first life was cradled. What a cradle it is! How great it is! It rocks from East to West, from shore to shore, and ships and islands and continents sleep in it. You know what the old song says:

“Rocked in the cradle of the deep I lay me down in peace to sleep;