Does the age seem to
you dark? Do you, too, feel as I do at times, the awful sadness of
that text,--"The time shall come when ye shall desire to see one of
the days of the Lord, and shall not see it"? Then remember that
"The night is never so long
But at last it ringeth for matin song."
And even as it is around us here, so it is in the world of men. The
night is peopled not merely with phantoms and wizards, superstitions
and spirits of evil, but under its shadow all sciences, methods,
social energies, are taking rest, and growing, and feeding, unknown
to themselves, that they may awake into a new life, and intermarry,
and beget children nobler than themselves, when "the day-spring from
on high comes down." Even now, see! the dawn is gilding the highest
souls, as it is those Exmoor peaks afar; and we are in the night only
because we crawl below. What if we be unconscious of all the living
energies which are fermenting round us now? Have you not shown me in
this last week every moorland pool, every drop of the summer sea,
alive with beautiful organizations, multiplying as fast as the
thoughts of man? Is not every leaf breathing still, every sap vein
drinking still, though we may not see them? "Even so is the kingdom
of God; like seed sown in the ground; and men rise, and lie down and
sleep; and it groweth up they know not how.
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