“The sunflower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disc of seed,”
and some tall hollyhocks, still keeping up a brave cheer of
rose-coloured and primrose and black blossoms upon their highest spike.
The grass is glistening with heavy dew, sapphire, rose-diamond, pure
brilliant, and yellow-diamond;--move a little, and one drop changes
from one to the other of these. Walking across the lawn towards
that rose-bed, you leave distinct green foot-prints upon the hoary
grass. Perhaps the feeling that at last almost weighs upon you, and
depresses you, is the intense, _waiting_ stillness of everything. That
apple-tree, bending down to the lawn with rosy apples, it seems so
perfectly still and resting, that it quite makes you start to hear one
of its red apples drop upon the path. The hurry and bustle and eager
growth of the year has all gone by: these roses, that used to send out
crowding bud after bud;--for some weeks a pause, a waiting, has come
over them. This one purely white blossom, you watched it developing,
unfolding so slowly, that it never seemed to change, taking a week for
what would have taken no more than half a summer day, until at last it
had opened fully, and hung down its head towards the brown damp mould.
And there it seemed to stop. It seems not to have changed now for a
week or two--why should it hurry to fade?--there were no more to come
after it should go. Now half of it has detached itself, and lies in
a little unbroken snowy heap on the ground. How quietly it must have
fallen there! And the other half still stays on the tree, and leans
down, and watches with a strange calm over the fallen white heaped
petals,
“Innumerably frost impearled.”
Something of depression comes over you, I say, and there happens to be
no cheery robin just now to put in a word, nor sedate rook sailing with
still wings overhead across the pale sky, to give you even the poorer
encouragement of his mere stoic _caw_. Why are you depressed? What is
this strange sadness that seems to you to lurk under the exquisite calm
and beautiful stillness of the Autumn morning?
Do you hardly know? I will tell you. That quiet is the quiet of Death
coming on; that calm waiting and expectancy is the herald of its
approach, the beauty is the hectic flush of the consumptive cheek.
Death is sad for Life to contemplate; and we are so much akin to all
this decay, that this quiet tells us of it almost more than the heavy
bell that now and then stirs the air of the Summer morning. The coming
death of the Summer leaves and the Summer flowers preaches to us a
solemn sermon of our own death drawing near. Watch that leaf circling
down from that silent tree, and listen to the echo in your own heart:
“We all do fade as a leaf.”
Yes, death, the sense of advancing death, is at the root of
your sadness and depression. Death in its beauty, in a tender
loveliness--death, the angel, not the skeleton, yet still DEATH. And,
“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
“’Tis LIFE, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life, not death, for which we pant,
More life, and fuller, that I want.”
And a great warrior, of long ago, one who had less cause than most to
fear death, yet said:
“We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not
for that we would be _unclothed_, but _clothed upon_, that
_mortality_ might be swallowed up of _life_.”
Well, this sadness must remain in some measure; the flowers must die,
and the leaves must fall, and the robin’s attempts to cheer us bring
the tears very near our eyes. “_Sin entered into the world, and death
by sin_”: and the child of such a parent cannot bring joy as his
attendant. Still, let us go on with our garden walk, and see whether,
even in the face of nature, there be nothing else but only this
peaceful waiting sadness.
Take these branches of the Lilac bushes, that we remember bending under
their scented masses in the warm early Summer days. Bare and damp,
bare of flowers, and only clad with sickly yellow leaves; but what
else can we see in them? There is not one (examine them well) which
has not already a full green bud of promise, developed even before the
leaves, the old leaves, have fallen away. Look on the ground in the
shrubberies. What are these little green points that begin just to
break the mould? Ah, they are indeed the myriad white constellations of
snowdrops already beginning to dawn, and the frail flower will sleep
warm and safe in the bulb, under the patchwork counterpane of gold
beech leaves, and bronze-purple pear-leaves, and silver-white poplar,
and come out among the first to tell you that nature is not dead, but
sleepeth. Look farther, on to the flower borders, at the base of the
tall gaunt stalks of the once stately Queen of flowers. Lo, there
already
“Green above the ground appear
The lilies of another year.”
Not all sad, then; no, not all sad! Memory droops indeed with
dewy eyes, but the baby, Hope, is laughing on her lap. There is a
resurrection for the flowers and the trees; true, this of itself could
not assure us that there is one for man. But God has told us in the
Book of His Word, the meaning of what we read in the Book of His Works.
And we know now what the robin meant, in his small song without words,
and we know what the promise of Spring means, hidden in each Autumn
twig; and indeed, the garden and the field, and every hedgerow, and
every grass, gather now into a great chorus that take up an Apostle’s
words,
“This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must
put on immortality. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where
is thy victory?”
But it is now nearly half-past eight o’clock, and the family will
be assembling for prayer. Let us pass round this walk, with hearts
cheerful, or only tinged with a shade rather of quiet than of gloom--
“And then return, by walls of peach,
And pear-trees bending to our reach,
And rose-beds with the roses gone,
To bright-laid breakfast.”
Autumn days. Such thoughts as these may interpret to us the strange
oppressive sadness that comes over us, as we watch them stealing on;
also, why it is that this is such a tender, sweet sadness, and not a
dark, deadly gloom--the shade of a solemn grove, not the blackness of
a vault. Death is indeed a valley of shadow still. But the rays of
the Sun of Righteousness have penetrated even there--and the hideous
darkness is softened to a tender twilight hush. Oh,
“Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ.”
And now the Autumn days are very calm and restful to think upon, and
there is a deep peace in the Autumn of life, for which we are well
content to exchange the flush and glee of Spring, and the glory and
glow of Summer. Our snowdrops and our primroses are all over, our lilac
and laburnum, roses and lilies, all died long ago; even the fruit is
plucked, except for the gleam of a stray red apple that burns upon
the nearly leafless bough; and the corn is all carried, and we are
wandering over life’s once waving fields, collecting just the last
gleanings for our Master. Our larks are silent in the fallows, our
thrushes and blackbirds voiceless in the groves; the rich flood of the
nightingale’s thrilling song has long been lost to our hearts. The
withered leaves sail down about us, the mists sleep on the hills, the
dew lies thick in the valleys. But we are very happy and peaceful;
even here there is a stray flower or two, and the Autumn crocus
droops on the garden beds; and the berries are bright in the hedges,
under the feathery tufts of the “traveller’s joy.” And our heart is
well satisfied with the robin’s song of trust and content, that has
taken the place of--if richer and fuller--yet less spiritual and more
distracting strains. There is an intense waiting calm; but, oh, such
thoughts of Life!--life everlasting, life indeed--push their way
through the yet unfallen leaves of this frail existence, and that small
cheery melody is, we well know, the prelude to the full symphonies that
shall burst from Angel choirs.
How beautiful a time, thus thought of, is life’s Autumn time! I love
to read of such a calm season in the life of a good man--a calm only
broken by flashes of exultation, that come, like the aurora borealis,
into the twilight sky. There is a sadness, no doubt--there _must_
be--in the coming shade of death which deepens on the path. But the
bud of life in the very heart of death; of this we are more and more
conscious, the closer we draw near to the withered branches. And, like
the fabled scent of the Spice Islands, even over the darkening seas are
wafted to us sweet odours from the Promised Land.
* * * * *
Autumn days--when the flowers are over, and the harvest well-nigh
gathered in, and the flush and the eagerness very far behind, and the
strength and the vigour things also of the past:--I think they are
sweet days to which to look forward amid life’s hurry and bustle, its
excitement of laughter and tears. A very peaceful land, a land of
Beulah, where repose seems to reign, and all seems “only waiting.” No
more wild dreams, it is true, of what life is going to be, but then no
sad wakings, and, lo, it was a dream! No more quick blood coursing in
the veins, no more excess of animal life making stillness impossible
and silence torture; no more young devotion and quick enthusiasm,
warming the heart even to tinder, ready to flare at the first spark of
friendship or love. No more glow of poetry cast about every face, and
every daisy, and every sky, and every scene of every act of the coming
years. No more expectation of becoming a great poet, a mighty warrior,
an evangeliser of the world. And then no vigour to act, as when life
went on; no leading the front of the battle, striking strong strokes
for the right; no rejoicing in the strength that has now come, and that
is still, still in its prime.
[Illustration]
All that, and more, has passed away from life’s Autumn days. It was,
perhaps, rather sad to feel these things departing; to notice growth
first come to a standstill--and then, here and there the streak of
Autumn, and the first yellow leaves stealing down. To find the years
so short, instead of so long; to lose the wonder and the thrill at the
first snowdrop, the first cowslip; the first nest low in the bushes
with five blue eggs; the first excursion round the park wall for
violets, or into the wood for nuts. To lose the glow of early love,
the despair of early disappointment, the vigour of early intention and
action; and to mellow down into a half-light, undisturbed by any of
those violent lights and shadows. It was, I say, perhaps rather sad to
feel these things departing.
But now they have gone, and the Autumn days have come, and the heart
has settled down to this state of things, and is content that it should
be so. It is better, far better, the old man sees, to be in the Autumn
of life, though he yet thinks tenderly, lovingly, of those young days
in the impetuous, over-blossomed Spring. The “visionary gleam” has
left his sky. But a truer, if a quieter lustre has arisen in it and
abides. “_There hath passed a glory from the earth._” But the glory has
been transferred to Heaven. It was sad, at first, when the glamour,
and the magic, and the glow, passed away from this world, which, to
youth’s heart seemed so exceedingly, inexpressibly glorious and fair.
But it is better so. A mirage gave, indeed, a certain sweet mysterious
light to life’s horizon, and he could not but feel dashed at first to
find little but bare sand where the unreal brightness had been. But
he journeyed on, learning, somewhat sadly, in manhood, God’s loving
lesson, that we are strangers and pilgrims upon earth, that we have
_no continuing city here_, not love, nor fame, nor wealth, nor power;
none of these could, even had we attained it, prove a City of Rest: we
must still journey on before we can sit down satisfied. And God’s true
servant, in his Autumn days, has learned not to miss nor to mourn over
youth’s mirage. Nay, his future has “no need of the sun, neither of the
moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God doth lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof.”
He looks at the sky, which is certainly darkening, because life’s
one-day sun is going down. But, the lower it sinks, the less he laments
it, for he finds that it did indeed hide from him the vast tracts of
Infinity, and close him in, by its light, in a small low-ceiled room.
Oh quiet days of peace and reverence and mild serenity; the rocking
waves of the passions asleep about the tossed heart, and the glittering
thoughts of heaven reflected instead from the calm soul; and its
speechless infinite depths gradually mirroring themselves in the being!
Happy days, when life’s feverish, exciting novel is closed, and we are
just reading quietly for an hour in the Book of peace, before the time
comes for us to go off to bed! Happy days; when God Himself is striking
off one by one the fetters and manacles of earth, and will soon send
His Angel to open for us the last iron gate of earth’s prison!
How thankful we should be, as we grow into the Autumn, for those kind
words which assure us that life’s beginning, not life’s end, is then
really near; that it is but the bud of immortal youth that is pushing
off those withered leaves of mortality; for those who have given the
year of their life to God; or, at least (such is His mercy in Christ
Jesus), the earnest gleaning of its late months. For else, how sad to
watch the sun setting, the only sun we know of, and to hope for no long
day beyond. Think of what a wise heathen said of old age. Cicero wrote
a treatise, a wonderfully beautiful treatise, in praise of it. But all
this was but playing with his own sadness, in his old age; pleading the
cause of a client, in whose cause he did not believe. For, after all,
he writes his real thought to his friend Atticus. “_Old age_,” he says,
“_has embittered me--my life is spent_.” Sad, yet true from his point
of view. Sad--all spent; and no good hope of a “treasure in the heavens
_that faileth not_.” How even one of the little ones in our village
schools could have cheered up sad Cicero!
Now see what Christianity can do, and has done. Think of waiting Simeon:
“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,
According to Thy word:
For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”
Hear aged Paul, the great champion Apostle, leaning now on his sword,
and exhorting the younger warriors who are leading on that war, that he
soon must leave. What peace, nay, what exultation, flashes through his
waiting!
And a picture arises before us of another aged, very aged man, ending
the Bible and his life with the solemn rapturous words of glowing
expectation--
“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.
Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”
There is another aspect of Autumn days, dreary and sad as they apply
to the worldling. But to the obedient faithful child of God, their
sadness, we have seen, is gentle, peaceful sadness, a tender hush
more than counterbalanced by the promise of we know not yet, _what_
exceeding ecstasy and glow of life, while we speak of it as _the life
everlasting_. Aye,
“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth,”
and there must be a hush over Autumn days, because death must be sad,
even when it is beautiful. But how sweet and glorious, amid the fall
and decay of the loveliness and beauty around us, to be able to rest
our heart quietly upon a land beyond earth’s horizon; and to look
forward brightly and happily across these changes, “to an inheritance
incorruptible and undefiled, and _that fadeth not away_.”
[Illustration]