CHAPTER LVII.
Old Mrs. Bond had taken her station on the sunny side of her piazza. Mrs. Bond was no sentimentalist, as I have said before. She had never read a line of poetry in her life; but she had read her Bible, and she loved to watch the glorious sun go down, and think of the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, with its gates of pearl, and walls of jasper. Many a blessed vision from that sunset-seat had she seen with her spiritual eyes; and many a sealed passage in the Holy Book which lay upon her lap, had then, and there, and thus, been solved; and many a prayer had gone from thence swift-winged to heaven.
The Bible contains great and mighty truths which none of us may safely reject; but apart from this, no mind, how uncultivated soever, can be familiar with its glowing beauty and sublimity, without being unconsciously refined.
Oh! how many times, even to the God-forgetting, has the beauty of its imagery come home with a force and aptness which no uninspired pen, how gifted soever, could rival!
How vital and immovably lodged, though buried for years under the dust of worldliness, its wise and indisputable precepts!
How like a sun-flash they sometimes illume what else were forever mystery-shrouded!
And now the last tint of gold and crimson had faded out, and one bright star sparkled like a gem on the brow of the gray old mountain, behind which the sun had sank—bright as the Star of Bethlehem to Judea's gazing shepherds, and like them, Mrs. Bond knelt and worshiped.
Broad as the world was her Bible-creed: it embraced all nations, all colors, all sects. Whosoever did the will of God the same was her father, sister, and mother; and like the face of Moses when he came down from the mount, hers shone that evening with the reflected glory of heaven.