THE MYSTERY OF NIGHT. 37 



silence that reigns in all their branching aisles. 

 Beyond the far-spreading waters lie white and 

 dreamlike, and tempt the thought to the fairylands 

 that sleep just beyond the line of the horizon. A 

 sweet and restful mystery, like a bridal veil, hides 

 the face of Nature, and he only can venture to lift it 

 who has won the privilege by long and faithful de 

 votion. 



If the night be starlit the shadows are denser, the 

 outlook narrower, the mystery deeper ; but what a 

 vision overhangs the world and makes the night 

 sublime with the poetry of God s thought visible to 

 all eyes ! Who does not feel the passage of divine 

 dreams over his troubled life when the infinite 

 meadows of heaven are suddenly abloom with light? 

 On such a night immortality is written on earth and 

 sky; in the silence and darkness there is no hint of 

 death ; a sweet and fragrant life seems to breathe 

 its subtle, inaudible music through all things. In 

 the depths of the woods one feels no loneliness; no 

 liquid note of hermit thrush is needed to make 

 that silence music. The harmony of universal 

 movement, rounded by one thought, carried for 

 ward by one power, guided to one end, is there for 

 those who will listen ; the mighty activities which 

 feed the century-girded oak from the invisible 

 chambers of air and the secret places of the earth 

 are so divinely adjusted to their work that one 

 shall never detect their toil by any sound of 

 struggle or by any sight of effort. Noiselessly, in- 



