Like human life from darkness;”
and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,—shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, “thoughts that wander through eternity,” greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! “the long unlovely street,” pleasant villages and farms, “the placid ocean-plains,” waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, nemorumque noctem, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called—
“Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow;”
now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came,—
“That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God which ever lives and loves;
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,