“A goodly number at the class.  In the evening Eliza read to Mrs. C. and myself the interesting adieu of the French Protestant Minister, Adolphe Monod, introduced into the November number of the Methodist Magazine for 1856.  We sat down to supper, and mournful to relate! she was seized with a fit of apoplexy, which lasted until nearly three in the morning, when her spirit calmly took its flight.  How needful to be ready!—­My dear daughter was carried to the cemetery, there to rest until the resurrection morn.  While passing through this painful dispensation, I have enjoyed the sweet consolations of the Spirit of God, and been able to recognize mercy mingled with judgment.  The same evening my Eliza passed into the skies, my son William was appointed to meet a few of the Lord’s people.—­The year heaves its last sigh, as I review the way in which God has led me.  Very painful events have occurred.  Scenes pleasant, and sad, have passed before me; but around, and over all, mercy has spread a cloud of light; and here will I raise my heart, and say, ‘Hitherto the Lord hath helped me.’”

XXII.

THE LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EVENING.

  “THE DAY GOETH AWAY, FOR THE SHADOWS OF EVENING ARE
  STRETCHED FORTH.”—­Jer. vi. 4.

Have you ever observed the effect produced upon the eye by the rapid decrease of light, which takes place as night draws on, during that season of the year in which the twilight is shortest?  For some minutes there appears a rapid succession of light and shade, each succeeding shadow deepening in gloom, until the night sets in.  This phenomenon arises from the necessity which the pupil of the eye finds of adapting itself to the diminution of light; and it has hardly done so, before the increasing darkness requires a still further expansion of the visual aperture.  Just so in human life, when its brightness has departed, and the night is at hand; there is often a rapid succession of painful occurrences, which fall like shadows upon the soul, and it has continually to adapt itself to its altered circumstances.  The eye of faith can scarce keep pace with the demands made upon it, and the effect is a sense of occasional depression, which even the Christian cannot altogether resist.  In the last two or three years of her life, Mrs. Lyth experienced what it was to be “in heaviness through manifold temptations;” and although she wore the same happy smile, exhibited the same unwavering, and even triumphant confidence in God, and to all around her, it was evident she was fast ripening for her glorious reward; her diary shows that she was, in some of her solitary hours, subject to momentary depression; which, as she made no allowance for altered circumstances, and increasing infirmities, she was in danger of attributing to a wrong cause.  It was not until after the death of her husband that there was any perceptible decline of her physical energies; the “snow of age” fell lightly,