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But now the quiet days of September are come. September, which is
the Twilight of the year--rather, I would call it the first hint of
twilight, when the flush and glow are sobering down, and a cast of
thoughtfulness is deepening day by day upon the months. “Autumn has
o’erbrimmed the clammy cells” of the bees; the fields, where the long
rows of many sheaves stand, gradually grow bare; the intensely dark
summer green of the elms and of the hedgerows out of which they rise,
is interrupted here and there by a tenderer tinge; the spruce firs in
the copses begin to appear more dark, distinct, and particular; the
larches begin to show faint hearts, and to look more delicate beside
their sombre brothers. There is rather the augury, the prescience,
than the perceived presence of a change. I have fancied sometimes that
the trees have plotted together and banded themselves by an agreement
not to give in, this time, but to defy the utmost power of stripping,
desolating Winter. And it is curious, with this idea, to watch them.
Throughout September, they at least keep up appearances well, and from
one to another the watchword is whispered,--
“Keep a good heart, O trees, and hold
The Winter stern at bay!”
and for a time they moult no feather, drop no leaf; or, if one circles
down here and there, it is huddled by in a corner, and they flatter
themselves that none has noticed. But you watch with pitying love,
knowing what the end must be. And you perceive how great the effort,
the strain, becomes, to keep up appearances. Here and there, at last,
despite of their utmost endeavour, the hidden fire bursts out; and
finally, with a wild Autumnal wail, some weaker tree, in despair, gives
up the unnatural and too excessive strain, and casts down a great
profusion of yellow sickly foliage. There is a murmur among the stouter
trees; but, in good truth, they are not sorry for the excuse, while,
muttering that all is rendered useless now, like avowed bankrupts, they
give up the effort to sustain appearances, and, as it were, with a sigh
of relief and rest, resign them to the fate they vainly strove against
and could not long avert. So the elm flames out into bars and patches,
very yellow in the dark; and the chesnut is all tinged and burnt with
brown; and the mulberry has slipped off all her leaves in a single
night; and the ash and the sycamore blacken; and the white poplar
leaves change to pale gold; and the pear to bronze; and the wild cherry
to scarlet; and the maple to orange; and the bramble at their feet to
bright crimson.
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Not so yet, in the Twilight of the year. It is the month of
tranquillity, of peaceful hush. If there be a hint of decay, it is
but what has been called “calm decay”; it is but evening with the
landscape, the Evening of the year. You might forget, as you looked
at the resting stationary aspect of things, that the further change,
the Night of Winter, was indeed drawing near. There seems no prophecy
of those wild tossing October arms, with the stream of leaves hurrying
away in the wind; no presage of the dull November days, when, from the
scanty foliage of the trees, great drops plash down upon the decaying
leaves beneath, and the whole wood looms out of the fog. Far less, in
the full-bosomed, sober, rather air- than mist-mellowed woodlands, do
you detect any foretelling of the time when all will stand, a bare
thicket of gaunt boughs and naked twigs, dully shadowed in the ice, or
made darker and more dreary by the great white fields of snow.
Of all this there is no hint given yet, nor need we yet awake to the
knowledge that we have indeed bid the Summer farewell till next year.
The evenings are still warm, warm with that cool warmth which is so
delicious: it will be some time yet before we can see our breath as
we talk: we can stay out well until eight or later, and hear through
the open window the clatter of arranging tea-cups, and watch the lamp,
still faint in the twilight, warm the room with a dim orange glow.
Therefore I shall sit here awhile on this garden seat, and muse in
and upon the twilight. The scene and place are favourable for quiet
thought. The lawn is smooth and shaven; at my feet lie beds of profuse
geranium, verbena, calceolaria, petunia, in their rich Autumn prime,
before any hint of frost has visited them. The air is quite heavy with
the scent of the massed heliotrope. The colours, if sobered, are not
yet lost in the fading light; the scarlets and purples are hushing
and blending; the cherry colour, yellow, and white, have grown more
distinct, and stand out more apparent upon the grass. Overhead, the
sky is deepening to that dusk steel blue which soon discloses the
very faint yet eye-catching glimmer of one white star. Across the
quiet dome, and between the still, outstretched, motionless branches,
the silent bats flit to and fro; there is a rustle of chafers in the
lime. One sweet melancholy monotonous sound gives a background to the
silence, an undertone that enhances, not in the least disturbs, the
quiet. For the great charm of this garden, which lies on the slope
of a hill, is, that near the foot of that hill swells and fails the
ever-moving Sea. And looking from my garden seat through the near
rose-bushes and above the taller growth lower down the slope, I see the
broad silver shield, rising, as it seems to me on my hill-seat, up the
circle of its horizon. An hour ago I was admiring the brilliancy and
intensity of its colour, green shoaling into blue, and sparkling in
the sun; now the faint light of the broad moon shares the sway of the
decaying sunlight; and I see above and through the branches a space of
pale bright grey. The jewel blue of afternoon has died out from it, but
the more neutral tint accords better, I feel, with the sober hour and
hushed sounds of twilight. How complete is the harmony and the balance
of colour in all God’s pictures!
And I love these twilight studies, that are much like the paintings, so
Robert Browning tells us, of Andrea del Sarto, the faultless painter.
Pictures in which--
“A common greyness silvers everything,
All in a twilight.”
This is essentially a twilight poem I always think; silver-grey; a
quiet calmed heart that has settled down into a deep still sadness and
disappointment. He longs for those higher aspirations which can here be
but imperfectly expressed, knowing that it is not well unless we hold
an ideal far above our fulfilment here; and that, if we have attained
all we sought in our pursuit of the beautiful and the good, we have not
intended nobly enough:--
“There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
That length of convent wall across the way
Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease
And Autumn grows, Autumn in everything.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self,
And all that I was born to be and do,
A twilight piece.”
Is not the tone of thought here expressed one natural to us all at
certain times, when for us life’s vivid lights and deep shadows have
all toned into a uniform half tint? We all have such twilight hours:
times when the sun has sunk, and our heart has gone down with it,
and a grey depression settles gradually upon the soul. Times when we
feel that our life is little, and low, and mean: when we yearn for a
sympathy that earth has not to give; when we turn away disheartened and
disgusted from our life and from ourselves, and turn the faces of what
seemed our most faultless works to the wall, and care not if we never
saw them again. Times when we go about to cause our heart to despair of
all the labour which we took under the sun. Times when the failures of
others seem better than our successes; times when we lament over the
lowness of our aim, the meanness of our intention, the winglessness
of our soul; and yet times when our very discontent with all that we
are and have accomplished, our very disgust at our grovelling minds,
prove our affinity with higher things than any of these that we have
grasped here. Those anguished yearnings to be nobler prove that we are
something nobler than we hold ourselves to be. The depression of the
twilight marks our kindred with the golden glory of the sun. Thus may
we cheer our hearts, that in their dull hours are wont to judge our
aims by our attainments, and from the inadequacy of the performance, to
conclude the lowness of the intention. The workman’s dissatisfaction
with his own life’s work is the clear proof that his inmost self
is nobler, not only than his attainments, but often even than his
endeavours.
I awake from my abstraction, however, and look around. The twilight has
deepened, the flowers are losing their colour, the surrounding objects
their distinctness. One peculiar property, sometimes a charm, sometimes
a dread, of this light neither clear nor dark, begins to be developed.
I mean the uncertainty, the indefiniteness, the illusions of twilight.
And how many analogies occur to my mind as I sit here musing on the
twilight, and comparing with it the indistinctness and the ænigma in
which we are living here.
And first I think of God’s ancient people: how many of God’s promises
to them were misconceived because of the twilight in which they were
seen. And we might, thinking shallowly, wonder that the light of
prophecy was such twilight, so dim, and the objects seen in it so
undefined and uncertain. For instance, how obscure and almost confusing
seems to us the light given to the Jews as to the spiritual nature of
the Messiah’s kingdom. Through the twilight of prophecy we may very
well fancy that a grand earthly kingdom of power and conquest loomed
upon the hope and imagination of the people of Israel. Because of the
hardness of their hearts, indeed, and the lowness of their spiritual
standard, spiritual revelations had to be clothed for them in a body
of flesh. The people that could worship the golden calf under the
very cloud that rested upon Sinai, would have ill-received, we may be
sure, a clear revelation of the manner of the Messiah’s kingdom. A
kingdom not of this world, with no outward show of pomp and glory; a
King despised and rejected of men, and nailed upon the accursed tree:
how would those carnal hearts have received such a programme? Nay,
how _did_ this people, even in the Messiah’s time, receive it? Behold
the shouting crowds, one preceding, one following the King of the
Jews! Behold the waving palms, the strewn cloaks! Hear the “Hosannas”
ring out as the concourse arrives in sight of the royal city; and the
enthusiastic burst, “Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the
name of the Lord!” What visions, we perceive, were seething and working
in their minds--visions of restored freedom, and rule, and power, and
the sway of Israel restored, as in those old glorious days, from the
river even unto the sea. Grand, and splendid, and indistinct, that
promised kingdom towered before them in the twilight; they threw loose
reins on their imagination, and let it carry them whither it would.
But when the truth which they had so misconceived and misinterpreted
stood close to them, and they perceived its entire difference from
their excited dreams, mark the change--the revulsion. The King is
crowned; His kingdom is proclaimed as being not of this world: the
crowd are shouting still; but the cry is now, “_Crucify Him! Crucify
Him!_” Nay further yet. The discovery of the real proportions and
character of that fabric which had appeared so majestic and superb
through the twilight: this discovery had proved too much even for their
faith who had formed the chosen court of the King Messiah. “We trusted
that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel”; but, lo! the
Shepherd is smitten, and the sheep are scattered.
Now, as it has been pointed out before this, an illusion of the
twilight was converted by the impatience and the carnal hearts of the
Jews, into a delusion. It was true that a mighty King was coming, that
He should set up a kingdom great and glorious, one which should crumble
widest kingdoms into the dust. It was true that the enemies of God’s
people should fall before this kingdom which should have no end; true
that this King was He which should redeem Israel. All this which was
prophesied was no delusion: all was true: all came to pass.
But now let us search out the fault of the Jews, who were deluded by
revelation, and blinded by partial light. They were told that these
great things would be: they were bidden to prepare to receive them.
Forthwith they decided in their own minds _how_ and _in what way_ God
would bring them about; they gave form and shape to those indistinct
half-seen masses after the pattern and desire of their own vain hearts;
they decided that God would give them the exact reality of their own
carnal dreams; they prepared their heart therefore to receive its
own interpretation, and shut it close against any other. And so when
the course of time brought them close to that which their fancy in
the twilight had thus disguised, they could not recognise it, they
refused to believe it: they passed on beyond it, still searching
after the unreal fabric of their own imagination; and even now, while
the twilight seems deepening to darkness about them, they go on and
on across the blank desert, seeking those gigantic hopes which have
already, could they but believe it, been much more than fulfilled.
“Oh, say, in all the bleak expanse,
Is there a spot to win your glance,
So bright, so dark as this?
A hopeless faith, a homeless race,
Yet seeking the most holy place,
And owning the true bliss!”
That this was not God’s doing, but the result of their own impatience,
and of the earthliness of their own hearts, we have abundant proof. In
that light, neither clear nor dark, there were those who were content
to wait until God Himself should reveal the manner of those great
things that He had foreshadowed; many died thus implicitly waiting;
some, with Elizabeth, and Simeon, and holy Anna, departed in peace,
their eyes having just seen His salvation. They had by diligent use
of the light they had, attained to a more spiritual understanding of
prophecy; and so to them was fulfilled that saying, “Unto you that have
shall more be given.”
But have we not passed out of the twilight even now that Christ’s
fuller revelation has come? No: for, I take it, still, while we live
here, do we walk in the dusk; it is with us _waiting_ still for the
grand indistinct objects of prophecy to assume a definite outline
as we draw near to them; it is the passing on in a twilight march,
contemplating the attained reality of one dim foreshadowing, and
straightway looking up to see before us the gigantic distant form of
another, awful in its dimness and uncertainty.
Is not this what the Great Teacher would have us learn when He declares
that the spirit of a little child is the right and necessary spirit for
those who would receive the kingdom of God? In these mighty mysteries
we are to be content to be children now, not yet men: it is to be
twilight here; noon hereafter. How it saddens me, then, sitting in the
twilight and waiting for the wonderful panorama of morning; how it
saddens me to hear the loud talk nowadays of our attained manhood--of
our possessed noon. Nowadays, forsooth, we are so full grown, have such
clear light, that we are to handle doubts familiarly, and to decide at
once concerning that which God has but half revealed; and to reject
what we cannot understand, and to deny that which we cannot define.
Man’s reason--methought that, at present, it had to work in the sphere
of the twilight; but this idea is by some rejected with scorn, and they
would fain persuade us that it is already placed in the full blaze of
day. The “province of reason,” we hear great talk of this; and yet now
let me ask what really _is_ the true province of reason? Is it, can it
be, to determine and decide, to fathom and understand concerning the
deep and mysterious ways of God, and His counsel secret to us and _past
finding out_? One would think so, to see men casting overboard this and
that revealed truth because they cannot understand it in the twilight,
or because it will not piece in with that creation of their own fancy,
which they would substitute for our revealed God. Yet to me it seems
that we have not the material, the data, for such an exercise of
reason; we have not _revelation_ enough for this; the light is too dim.
No, as we sit here in the twilight it seems to me that the province of
reason is not to be straining its eyes to map out the huge mysteries
which still lie in the dim distance; and to declare that those masses
are shapeless, whose shape it cannot trace. Is it not rather to
consider and to decide concerning those things which are placed within
its scope? To satisfy itself as to our Guide, as to the reliability of
the proofs of His being really what He claims to be; to search whether
these things be so, and then implicitly to follow that Guide through
uncertainty into certainty, out of the twilight into the clear day?
This is not to fetter reason, to cramp thought. It is merely to confine
it to its legitimate sphere. It is to acknowledge ourselves now in the
dusk, but expecting the full morning; to own ourselves children now,
but children who will one day be men.
Are we not little children here; our very reason doubtless in its
twilight; probably as unable--even were they explained to us--to take
in God’s counsels, as a child just capable of an addition-sum would be
unable to master and understand the science of astronomy? Would anyone
who considered wisely of these things, even wish that this present
state should be our manhood? Oh, low view to take of man’s magnificent
destiny! What? This all? To-day’s blunders food for to-morrow’s
corrections; schemes of science changing every year; nothing certain,
nothing known? Are we to grow no bigger in knowledge, are we to grow
no bigger in capacity, than this? Is such dim twilight really our full
day? Ah, dreary prospect then, mournful lot! But away with so mean a
view of man’s future; with such a cramping of man’s reason!
Little children are we, must we be, with regard to the stupendous plans
and counsels of God, so long as we have no more than our present amount
of Revelation. We may advance in the world’s knowledge, but we must be
content to sit down in the twilight before God’s ways and counsels,
still as listeners, still as learners, reverent, teachable, humble;
little children still. How can it be otherwise? We hear of the boasted
advance of education and knowledge; we hear of reason more cultivated,
and thought more free to soar. All very well; but does this, can this
touch the subject of which I speak? In acquiring any further knowledge
of God’s hidden things, have we advanced at all? Is there in our
possession any more material on which to set reason to work, than since
the last Apostle wrote the last epistle? Have we advanced? can we
advance? Must we not still be children, must we not still make the most
of twilight, until, having grown to manhood, the full light bursts upon
us in another world, and we see no more in an ænigma darkly, but face
to face; know no more in part only, but even as we are known?
Oh, brother, doubting brother--if any such should hear this my talking
out loud with myself--who waverest where thou shouldest stand firm, and
art ready to let that slip, which thou shouldest keep in thy heart’s
heart--wilt thou not take these words of the Wisest and Best of all, of
a Teacher most mighty in intellect, most vast in knowledge; yea, who
spake as never did man: wilt thou not say them to thy tossing soul,
until there fall on it a great calm? A little child, a little child;
that is the model for us here. Noon, one day; but now, twilight: men,
hereafter; but here, children: called upon here not to explain and to
fathom, but to listen and to believe. First, of course, let reason
determine whether our Teacher be trustworthy; but, this decided, cannot
we be content to be taught by Him? Toil on in the half-light, and the
full light shall break on thee! Do the works, and thou shalt know of
the doctrine, whether it be of God. Yea, but you say, this is none
other than a leap in the dark. Before I _feel_ the divinity of the
doctrine, why should I do the works? What is my warrant, that I should
do, before I know? This, O man, _satisfy thyself as to thy Guide_.
Examine whether He be what He pretends to be. And then commit thyself
to His guidance. Implicitly, entirely, like a child that likes to put
his hand into his Father’s, _because_ of the uncertain light.
Do, then, the works, on this warrant. Believe me, the doing them will
make thy faith rock-firm. Is there not, I would ask the sceptic--is
there not something in a simple child-like faith, leading to a holy
angelic life, that brings the protest of a great reality against all
your doubts and waverings? Watching such a quiet unearthly life, you
feel, through all your shadows and questionings, that here, at least,
is something _real_. While you have been making religion a series
of puzzles, he has been making it a series of deeds. You studied
Revelation in order to find out its difficulties; he studied it in
order to learn its precepts, to learn how to live. And, depend upon it,
he has thus gained a far deeper insight even into those unfathomable
mysteries by _his_ study than you can ever do by yours. Do: then thou
shalt know much more even of the doctrine.
Oh, my brother, be content; ’tis only waiting! Receive the kingdom of
God as a little child. “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this
world?” If we enter the lists with Him as equals, He will mock us,
and let us be puzzled, and bring to nothing the understanding of even
the prudent and intellectual. Thus did our Lord with the cavilling
Pharisees, perplexing them with the question how Messiah could be
David’s son, and yet his Lord. But if we sit at His feet as learners,
He will teach us much that the humble alone may know. Granted that
in this dim light some of His ways puzzle us, and seem inexplicable.
Granted that His own words are true, “_What I do thou knowest not
now_.” But there is no need to understand His counsels, for the
attaining salvation. And let us take it on trust, as well we may, that
what may seem God’s harshness, is kinder than man’s kindness; that what
may seem God’s foolishness, is wiser than man’s wisdom; that what seems
God’s weakness, is stronger than man’s strength.
[Illustration]
I have mused in the twilight, near the boundless, restless,
ever-tumbling sea, and under the vast canopy of heaven; I have mused
in the twilight, until the darkness has fallen, and the heaven is
eloquent with its sign-speech of stars. Sitting in a speck of one of
those myriad worlds that, flying along with inconceivable velocity,
yet appear to me intensely still in the dark, I catch a glimpse of the
immensity of the plans and designs of God. Star whirls by star, system
fits into system, all in an astounding complex order; none clashing,
each kept in its due place and its right proportion by the Infinite
Mind. And I gather a hint of a reply to many questions that perplex
us, many problems that weary us here; questions that are often best
answered by the confession that here we cannot answer them; questions
worst answered by an inadequate attempt resulting in an inadequate
explanation; questions that we may perhaps quiet with such thoughts
as these:--Who knows into what other schemes and systems this life of
our globe and of ourselves may be fitted; who knows, seated in this
isolated planet, in this narrow twilight of time, how the vast day of
Eternity before, and the vast day of Eternity behind, may make at once
evident things that here were deepest, seemingly shapeless, mysteries
to our mind? The moon rolls round the earth, and the earth round the
sun, and this again, with all its planets, round some greater centre;
and so on, perhaps, who shall guess how far? For space, as well as
time, is infinite, boundless, with the eternal God. And thus, too, I
divine, with that vastness and complexity of scheme which we shall not
begin to understand until we gain the standing-point of Eternity; thus
too, I seem entitled to prophesy, with the infinite designs of God, and
with the interwoven system of His counsels. How can we, how _should_
we, understand the different bearings, the linked relations, of His
eternal plans? A fly perched on one nut in the enormous machinery of
some manufactory, and deciding upon the plan and purpose and working
of the whole, from the twistings of the point on which he stood; nay,
this is not even a poor analogy with the position of man standing on
this speck of Time, and complacently deciding concerning the tremendous
counsels of Him who inhabiteth Eternity.
Heaven is revealed to us as night deepens. Thus, as the Twilight of the
good man’s life dusks towards night, stars, unperceived before, stars
of certainty, of knowledge, of hope, of trust, steal out one by one
into his sky, until the heaven is one glitter above him. Earth dies
out, and becomes indistinct; its colours are toned down, its scenery
becomes less absorbing and obtrusive; it begins to take its proper
place in that eternal glittering dust of worlds. And so amid that
speaking silence he falls asleep. I suppose that then, in Paradise, a
clear morning breaks, which afterwards, in Heaven, becomes the full
light of noon.
But the Twilight has gone: night has come down upon the sea: the
earnest silence of those infinitely multiplied stars becomes
oppressive: I am getting chilly also, and want my tea. Therefore I go
indoors, close the shutters, and rest my strained thoughts with the
sight of the cheery lamp-lit room; and, asking and obtaining of my wife
some half-dozen of my favourite “Songs without Words,” call back my
musings from those exhausting mysteries of our twilight state, and lull
them with the gentler and more peaceful mystery of music.
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