Knocking, knocking! What, still knocking! He still there? What's the hour? The night is waning, In my heart a drear complaining, And a chilly, sad unrest. Ah! His knocking! It disturbs me, Scares my sleep with dreams unblest! Rest, ah rest! Rest, dear soul, He longs to give thee; Did she open? Doth she? Will she? So, as wondering we behold, Grows the picture to a sign, Prest upon your soul and mine; There the piercéd hand still knocketh, THE CREATION OF LIGHT "And the Lord said, let there be light; and there was light."-Genesis 1:3. M ILTON, in his immortal poem, "Paradise Lost," represents Adam as asking Raphael to relate to him why and how the world was created. And Raphael goes on to tell him, in the poem, how God, after the expulsion of Satan and his angels from heaven, because of their pride and rebellion, declared his purpose to create another world, peopled with other creatures, and sent His Son with a great retinue of angels to perform the work of creation. When they visited the world of chaos the divine voice exclaimed: "Silence, ye troubled waves! and thou deep, peace! Far into Chaos, and the world unborn; For Chaos heard his voice: him all his train Creation, and the wonders of his might. They stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand He took the golden compasses, prepared "Let there be light," said God, and forthwith light I Scientific research in our own day is bringing science into far greater harmony with the Bible account of creation than was true in earlier times. It used to be asked in all seriousness by science, "How could light exist before the sun?" All such perplexity has disappeared. Modern science has discovered that light is not conditioned by perfected luminous bodies, but that light bodies are conditions of a preceding luminous element; that is, that light could exist before the sun was created. A century ago materialism was both fashionable and scientific. Men were boasting, "Give me the least bit of bioplasm and I will construct a universe. Everything is spontaneously generated from some other thing. Mind and matter come from the same primordial cell." In those days men were making tremendous attempts to get something out of nothing. Science was trying to get effects without causes. No reputable scientist talks that way to-day. Prof. John Fiske, one of the greatest of the modern scientists, tells us that "The impetus of modern scientific thought tends with overwhelming force toward the conception of a single First Cause, or Prime Mover, perpetually manifested from moment to moment in the changes that make up the universe." God is no longer thought of as far off, but immanent, revealing Himself in all the phenomena of the universe which He has created. The presence of God encompasses us about and illuminates all our existence. So it is true that David, writing his Psalm on the skin of some wild animal, perhaps, |