We stayed till the men ceased working, and till we had seen the shearers and all their assistants sitting down to a comfortable supper, with abundance of cider; we then left them, and came home by a long winding path. We were quite in the dark for some of the last part of the walk, which gave me an opportunity of seeing the English glow-worm on the dry banks at the edge of the forest.
When evening closes Nature’s eye,
The glow-worm lights her little spark
To captivate her favourite fly,
And tempt the rover through the dark.
Conducted by a sweeter star,
Than all that decks the skies above,
He fondly hastens from afar,
To soothe her solitude with love.
My uncle told me that Dr. Macartney, who has investigated the subject of luminous insects with great ability, has ascertained, that in the glow-worm, part of the light proceeds from a yellow substance lying underneath a transparent part of the skin. Besides this, he observed in the last segment of the body, two minute oval sacks, formed of an elastic fibre, wound spirally, and containing a yellow substance also, but of a closer texture, and giving a more permanent light. This light seemed less under the control of the insect than the other, which it has the power of voluntarily extinguishing, and which ceases to shine when extracted from living glow-worms; but the two sacks, when taken out, continue to give light for some hours.
11th, Sunday.—“I think, father,” said Mary, “that in reflecting on the three dispensations, it appears, that neither the Jews, nor the religious people of the patriarchal ages had that clear and distinct knowledge of the doctrine of future rewards and punishments which we Christians possess; nor that full conviction of the immortality of the soul which now cheers mankind.”
“True,” said my uncle, “those awful truths had indeed been early opened to them, and they were gradually unfolded with increasing clearness by the later prophets; but at the best they were obscurely understood, or, in the language of St. Paul, they were seen as ‘through a glass, darkly.’ It was reserved for our Saviour to throw such a clear and steady light upon the doctrine of immortality, that ‘we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast[9].’
“This beautiful simile,” continued my uncle, “which compares hope to an anchor, was first used by St. Paul. The ancient poets described Hope as a nymph, decorated with smiles and flowers, and soothing the labours of man with the idea of distant pleasures; but St. Paul represents hope as the stay and anchor of the soul; and so striking is the figure, that it has been since adopted into every language. He does not allude to the vain wishes arising from a heated imagination, but to the stedfast hope which springs from faith: as the vessel is kept firm at her anchor, in defiance of storms and currents, so the Christian is ‘not moved away from the hope of the Gospel,’ by adversities and temptations.
“You are all acquainted with the ancient fable of Pandora’s box; at the bottom of which it is said that, as the only means of supporting the human race under the multiplied evils that were about to issue from it, Jupiter placed the last and best blessing of Hope. It is not improbable that this fable was founded on a tradition of the original promise of the future seed; the hope of which could alone have sustained the virtuous part of mankind amidst the general corruption that followed the transgression of Adam.
“But an unsettled kind of hope will be of little avail; to be useful it must be grounded on faith; on that entire faith which not only believes in the authenticity of our Saviour’s sacrifice, and in the importance of the doctrines he taught, but which fully and gratefully confides in the sufficiency of his atonement. Then hope indeed helps us to anticipate the glorious future; we view him as risen triumphantly to heaven; and we feel that we shall partake in the happiness of the hereafter, which He has promised.
“That the hopes of a future state are natural to the mind may be inferred from the craving and dissatisfied feeling which accompanies our very enjoyments, and which always more or less clouds them with fresh wishes and indefinite hopes. These hopes, it is true, in the worldly man, are set upon pleasures, business, or ambition; or on some of those bustling objects of life, which, from their vicinity to the human eye, assume a false magnitude. But the true Christian learns that heavenly objects, which from their distance appear comparatively faint, swell upon the sight of those who earnestly study them; while the others fade away, and elude the grasp. Religion assists him in correcting those illusions of vision; faith helps him in assigning the proper direction to his hopes; and he makes it his continual care to preserve the enlightened views, which, through the divine mercy, he has obtained. This awful truth has sunk deeply into his mind, ‘The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal;’ and a just impression of their relative value enables him to maintain a happy composure in all the vicissitudes of life.”