But the sunset wanes from
glory and majesty into the stillness of the star-hung night, when
tired eyes may close in sleep, and rehearse the mystery of death;
and so the dying down of light, with the suspension of daily
activities, is of the nature of a benediction. Dawn brings the
consecration of beauty to a new episode of life, bidding the soul
to remember throughout the toil and eagerness of the day that the
beginning was made in the innocent onrush of dewy light; but when
the evening comes, the deeds and words of the daylight are
irrevocable facts, and the mood is not one of forward-looking hope
and adventure, but of unalterable memory, and of things dealt with
so and not otherwise, which nothing can henceforward change or
modify. If in the morning we feel that we have power over life, in
the evening we know that, whether we have done ill or well, life's
power over ourselves has been asserted, and that thus and thus the
record must stand.
And so the mood of evening is the larger and the wiser mood,
because we must think less of ourselves and more of God. In the
dawn it seems to us that we have our part to play, and that
nothing, not even God, can prevent us from exercising our will upon
the life about us; but in the evening we begin to wonder how much,
after all, we have the strength to effect; we see that even our
desires and impulses have their roots far back in a past which no
restlessness of design or energy can touch; till we end by
thankfulness that we have been allowed to feel and to experience
the current of life at all.
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