follow us as we enter into Heaven, as the most precious blessing which even the Omnipotence of God can bestow ;-for it is the rest of the unalterable Love of Jesus, our Crucified Saviour.

"Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God."

291

DARKNESS.

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 44, 45.

"And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst."

THE short narrative of our blessed Lord's death, contained in the Gospels, is, without doubt, an evidence of Divine inspiration. Though condensed into such few words, it has been, and will continue to be, the text of years of study and comment; and every one, reading it for himself, must feel how much there is in the details which he has never fully considered, or even attempted to consider.

No doubt the effect of the manner in which this part of the Bible, especially, is written, is to induce a much more careful study than would be attempted if the account was given in the style and language of a human composition. Hundreds of intellectual minds, who, if all had been described in full and consecutive detail, would have read the history, and then put it aside as requiring no study, and, therefore, exciting but little interest, have, we may believe, been led by the very brevity of the

Scripture narrative to search more deeply into its meaning, and thus more earnestly to appreciate its purport.

A connection, which does not at first strike the mind, may, perhaps, by such a search, be found in the horror of the three hours of darkness, and the effect which such an interruption of the ordinary laws of nature appears to have produced on the minds of the people.

We may not, perhaps, have ever thought whether it was likely to create any such impression; yet when we read afterwards that the people smote their breasts, and returned to their own homes, we can scarcely help imagining that something more than the sight of physical agony must have produced so deep a remorse; and it can scarcely be a forced connection of cause and effect which bids us look upon that terrible darkness as an instrument used by God's Providence to bring before them the greatness of their guilt. There is in human nature an instinctive horror of darkness, not exclusively based upon or supported by reason, although we are apt to imagine that it is. If we could be assured, without the possibility of doubt, that no danger could befall us, darkness would yet bring awe, if not terror. A person

totally blind does not, indeed, feel this awe, but it is because he is surrounded by the sense of light; that which others see, he too sees in imagination, and therefore darkness to him ceases to be darkness; but if he knew that the whole world was,

like himself, buried in darkness external to them, the same awe which they felt would probably be his likewise.

For darkness is the most perfect of all types, the most real of unrealities. Nothing in itself, it yet teaches the deepest moral truths, truths which we actually could not understand without it. If we only consider the words which we utter in our daily conversation, the common terms which are so familiar to us that we use them without thinking of their derivation or their meaning, we shall find that, without darkness, we should have lost the power of conveying to ourselves, and impressing upon others, the greatness of the guilt and the due horror of certain sins. A wicked deed, a guilty deed, a sinful deed- they are all terms expressive of evil actions; but a dark deed rouses a feeling which none of those epithets could reach. It does so because darkness is, as we at once feel, complete and final. Light, the most dazzling which we can now behold, is but the faint representation of a light which may be intensified till it destroys the power of sight; and that light is but the shadow of the Glory in which no man can live. But perfect darkness cannot, to our senses, be more dark. When the Bible would describe it as supernatural, it has recourse to another sense, and speaks of "a darkness which might be felt." We may be sure that there is great mercy in this fact. We are all children, requiring to be taught by the things we actually see and feel; and,

liable as we must always be to be carried away by the frivolities of the moment, and incapable, as so many are, of any real exercise of thought, any power of imagination or abstract reasoning, we could not receive the elementary truths of our probationary existence but for the external pictures,

-the types of nature-which affect our physical being, and by that means open the way for the spiritual lesson to be conveyed to the heart. The blessing of God's Presence; how far short of the real idea to be conveyed is any description but that which speaks of it as Light! loss of God's Presence; how little can we understand what it implies till we speak of it as Darkness!

The

The awe which darkness inspires is, therefore, most necessary and salutary. We may smile at it as superstitious, but we can never destroy it by reason. The instinct of the child when it dreads the dark is more true than the professed indifference of the grown-up man; and better far will it be for us to acknowledge the truth, and, dealing with ourselves as children, seek support where children seek it; than to scoff at it, until we find, too late, that the fear which we have despised has become our tyrant. For there is a darkness which must overtake us all -the darkness of death—a literal and felt darkness, as real as that which gathered around the Saviour in His last agony. And as the hour of that darkness woke the consciences of the guilty people, so will the hour of the darkness of death, as we