"The sky," says Ruskin, "is the part of Nature in which God has done
more for the sake of pleasing man, more from the sole and evident
purpose of touching him, than in any other of His works." It looks like
the truth. For there is no scene of earth so fair or majestic that man
cannot spoil it. Where the "cataract exults among the hills, and wears
its crown of rainbows all alone," he will build him a power-house to
supply current to some distant town. But he cannot touch the heavens.
In the heart of some fairy glen he will placard the virtues of
somebody's pills, and plaster the gate-posts in a sweet country lane
with the specious claims of some quack doctor, but above it all, it is
God, and God alone, who spreadeth out the heavens like a curtain and in
them has set a tabernacle for the sun. Even in places where the face of
earth wears no suggestion of natural beauty the face of the sky redeems
it from evil. For, above the squalor of the city's meanest slum, burn
the great fires of the setting sun, and overhead the fleecy white clouds
sail silently all night long.
But, of it all, the glory of the sunset is chief. The dawn has its cold
splendours too, but not many of us are there to see it when it is at its
best. It is at eventide, when the work of the day is done, and the
spell of its restfulness lays the senses open, it is then chiefly that
God unfolds these splendid harmonies of colour in the western heavens.
And, by consent, on this Ayrshire coast, on which I look out as I write,
these glories can be seen to great advantage. It is into no flat
expanse of water that the dying sun sinks here. The peaks and crags of
Arran invest its passage with an indescribable pomp and majesty,
standing out against it like the massive pillars of some giant gateway
of the West. It is never twice the same. Sometimes lurid and blazing,
with masses of thunder-cloud piled high, all their outer edges rimmed
with fire; and, next night, peaceful and level, a study in straight
lines, as if the great Artist, with even brush, had washed the sky with
bands of grey and blue and gold. Each evening God has His own picture
for us, His own handiwork, unspoiled by man. How many of us ever pause
to recognise its beauty? What does it mean that such a prodigality of
harmonious colours should be the most ordinary feature of our evening
hour? Is it that God Himself takes delight in the beauty of it all, for
its own sake, rejoicing, like all good workmen, in the work of His
hands? Or has He some purpose with regard to His children of mankind?
Is it, as Ruskin says, for the sake of pleasing man? How unthankful and
unmindful we are, if that be so!
The sunset teaches us to put together these two ideas--beauty, beyond
the wit of man to portray, and God. There is plenty of ugliness and sin
in the world, and the life of men. Man himself recognises how much of
the beauty that might have been has been marred and disfigured by him.
Yet in his heart he worships it, and feels after it afar off. And in the
evening sky it is written that Beauty belongeth supremely unto God.
Whatever that far-off divine event be, to which the whole creation
moves, one of its features shall be, must be, a beauty which shall fully
satisfy. For beauty and God cannot be divorced. And when, of an
evening, God for His own good pleasure, working with those material
elements which have no power to disobey His behests, unfolds His will in
such dazzling visions of splendour, is He not declaring that the end and
goal of life itself, when His purpose therewith is completed, and Man,
too, has fallen into harmony with His will, shall be fair, and
satisfying, and beautiful?
Let us not be afraid to say and believe that God speaks to us in the
sunset. If I pick up the receiver of a telephone and hear my friend
announce some good news that fills my heart with gladness, it does not
disturb me to remember that the wire itself has no power to speak. For
I feel that somewhere at the end of the wire is a mind and a heart like
my own who is using the dead, soulless wire as a medium of speech with
me. When the glories of the sun's setting fall upon your heart like a
benediction, stirring you to devout and grateful thought, breathing
peace upon you, cleansing your desires of all that is mean and sordid,
do not be afraid to believe that, behind and beyond all that is material
and visible, there is the Mind and Heart in whose image yours was made,
whose gift peace is, whose whisper, though it come along dead
ether-waves to reach you, is His whisper nevertheless.
It is perhaps natural that the prevailing quality of the thoughts that
arise within us when we watch the setting sun should be pensive, tender,
and, not seldom, a little sad. For it speaks of the end of the day and
the coming night. Its charm and spell are like that of autumn, the
remembrance of what has gone, the tender grace of a day that is dead.
For all the beauty and wonder of this world, there is a tear at the
heart of things. Beneath all our laughter and happiness there lies that
deeper note. The night cometh. There is an end to it all--friendship,
love, happiness, work, life itself.
"For be the long day never so long,
At last it ringeth to evensong."
And yet, and yet, my brothers, the end is beautiful, more beautiful even
than the beginning. God has made the day's death to be exceeding fair.
The sun passes gloriously to its rest. Hopefully too, for, passing
thus, it promises a new and fairer morning. So do God's children die.