Its smiles and its tears are worth evening’s best light.”
For sometimes the light comes at evening-time that has never come before.
Cellini opens his autobiography with a placid record of the enjoyment of his present lot, in life’s decline, in contrast with the storms and turmoil of his previous course. We read of James Watt, that not until he had reached what is termed the grand climacteric of man’s life did he know real freedom from bodily infirmities; and that his spirits became more equable as the principal causes of his anxiety and occasional depression were removed; so that although he was destined to be one of those “who are so strong that they come to fourscore years,” his strength even then, while it could scarcely be termed “labour,” was certainly very far from “sorrow.” The cloud which had so long hung over him was gently lifted up, and the curtain parted, to disclose a happier scene. “It is curious that even physical ease and enjoyment should come so late; but so it was. The term which commenced with his release from the evils of active business was a serene and golden time, in which he found repose”—with the softening retrospect of a struggle past and a victory won. John Galt, in “The Entail,” exemplifies a kindred experience in the widow Walkinshaw, whose deliverance from an all but lifelong thraldom, late in the day as it came, yet came in time enough to “allow the original brightness of her mind to shine out in the evening with a serene and pleasing lustre.”
Dr. Boyd quotes the dying speech of a poor English day labourer, than which, he affirms, few sentences ever touched him more with their hopeless pathos: “Wut wi’ faeth, and wut wi’ the earth goin’ round the sun, and wut wi’ the railways all a-whuzzing and a-buzzing, I’m clean muddled, confoozled, and bet!” It is Stephen Blackpool again in spirit, and to the letter. With that sentence the dying man is said to have feebly turned to the wall, and spoken no more. “Well, let us hope that light came at the evening-time upon that blind, benighted way.”
Among the dying words of Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, honourably known by her “Memoirs of Port Royal,” and other works, the remark is preserved that she had often in her life been inclined to occupy herself with the prospect close at hand, from finding the bleak, hard outline of the eternal hills cold and barren to her sight; but that, as she drew nearer, God’s mercy made His light to shine full upon them, so that she could now perceive they were covered with magnificent trees of the forest, and were rich in fruit and flowers far more pleasant than those close at hand, and yet a continuation of them.
A commentator on the text of “promised light at evening-time,” explains that by evening is understood the gradual withdrawal of the light; it is the lessening light that makes the evening-time: because of that the daisies close, and the birds fly to their nests, and a hush comes over nature. And it is just because evening is the time when, in the ordinary course of things, the light is going and the darkness is coming, that there is found to be anything remarkable in the text of um den Abend wird es licht seyn, as Luther’s version runs. The promise, or prophecy, is that “light shall come at a time when it is not natural, when in the common course of things it is not looked for.” It would be no surprise, as this divine proceeds to remark, that light should come at noonday: we expect it then, it is just what we are accustomed to see. “But if, when the twilight shadows were falling deeper and deeper, ... with a sudden burst the noonday light were to spread around,—that would be a surprise.” One of his personal illustrations of its import is the instance of the Christian poet who passed away almost in despair,—the gloom that overshadowed his spirit enduring almost to the end: “but even in the last moment there came a wonderful change”—and they tell us how even on his dead face there remained, till it was hidden for ever, a look of bright and beautiful and sudden surprise; the reflection of that light at evening that had been long in coming, but had come at last. At eventide light may break forth as the morning; light rising in obscurity, and darkness becoming as the noonday.
Light in darkness—light springing up out of darkness—the blessedness of this is emphatically recognised both by signal example and in special promise, in Holy Writ. When the hand of Moses was stretched out toward heaven, and darkness fell over the land of Egypt, even darkness which might be felt—a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days—the Egyptians saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days. But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. “When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.” “For thou wilt light my candle; the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.” In the same Psalm that tells how clouds and darkness are round about Him, the Father of lights, is contained the exulting assurance, that “light is sown for the righteous.” The light of the righteous rejoiceth, when the lamp of the wicked hath been put out. Well may spiritual aspirations be fervent for light to be sent forth, to lead and to guide to His holy hill and tabernacle, lest the feet of the wayfarer slip in a way that he knows not; and, above all, when they stumble on the dark mountains, or lose their footing in the swelling of Jordan.
Lux è tenebris—who will not prize it? who does not need it? For—
“What am I?
An infant crying in the night,