“THE MORNING COMETH.”
By Finlay Mackinnon.
I well remember on one occasion discussing the question of the future world with a Highland keeper, and the emphatic way in which he said, “One thing is certain, and that is, that no one could be an atheist if he spent his life on the mountains.” I also remember that, curiously enough, the same observation was made by one Cambridge undergraduate to another, the speaker having been in the habit of spending days and nights camping out on the mountains in his father’s Highland property.
It is not inappropriate that in the Gaelic language the words used to signify “death” and “died” are not the same when used in reference to a human being as the words which are used in reference to an animal, the former words, caochladh (substantive), chaochail (verb), signifying a change or passing from one state of life into another, the latter bas (substantive), bhasaich (verb), extinction or annihilation.
On the sea coast, at the mouth of one of the sea lochs on the west coast of Ross-shire, I have often waited for the dawn, looking up the loch towards the high hills in the distance, and, whilst I waited, there would come into my mind those impressive words of the prophet Isaiah, “Watchman, what of the night?” The watchman said, “The morning cometh.” No one who has had this experience and seen the sun rise in its splendour over the high hills, flooding the surface of the sea with brilliant crimson light, will ever forget the scene, or the uplifting of spirit and sense of abiding peace which it imparted.