Even to
the poorest laborer's family comes now something like peace and rest
forerunning the intermission of the night.
Everybody who has any artistic sense recognizes this instinctively when
they see through the open doors of humble houses the father and mother and
children gathered around their simple supper. Its mention has already
passed into triteness in verse, so inevitably have poets felt the sacred
charm of the hour.
Perhaps there is something deeper than on first thoughts would appear in
the instant sense of pleasure one has in this sight; also, in the
universal feeling that the evening gathering of the family is the most
sacred one. Perhaps there is unconscious recognition that dangers are near
at hand when night falls, and that in this hour lies, or should lie, the
spell to drive them all away.
There is something almost terrible in the mingling of danger and
protection, of harm and help, of good and bad, in that one thing,
darkness. God "giveth his beloved sleep" in it; and in it the devil sets
his worst lures, by help of it gaining many a soul which he could never
get possession of in sunlight.
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