by at eleven o'clock at night. The crimson flush has faded from the
bosom of the river; if you are alone, its murmur begins to turn to
a moan; the white stones of the churchyard look spectral through the
trees. I think of poor Doctor Adam, the great Scotch schoolmaster
of the last century, the teacher of Sir Walter Scott, and his last
words, when the shadow of death was falling deeper--'It grows dark,
hoys; you may go.' Then, with the professional bias, I go to a
certain beautiful promise which the deepening twilight seldom fails
to suggest to me; a promise which tells us how the Christian's
day shall end, how the day of life might be somewhat overcast and
dreary, but light should come on the darkened way at last. 'It
shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear
nor dark. But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord,
not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass that at evening time
it shall be light.' I think of various senses in which it might be
shown that these words speak truly; in which its great principle
holds good, that signal blessing shall come when it is needed most
and expected least; but I think mainly how, sometimes, at the close
of the chequered and sober day, the Better Sun has broken through
the clouds, and made the naming west all purple and gold. I think
how always the purer light comes, if not in this world, then in a
better. Bowing his head to pass under the dark portal, the Christian
lifts it on the other side, in the presence and the light of God.
J think how you and I, my reader, may perhaps have stood in the
chamber of death, and seen in the horizon the summer sun in glory
going down. But it is only to us who remain that the evening
darkness is growing--only for us that the sun is going down. Look
on the sleeping features, and think, 'Thy sun shall no more go
down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself; for the Lord shall
be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be