And then perhaps at last, when we have peeped again and again, through loss and suffering, at the dark background of life; when we have seen the dreariest corner of the lonely road, where the path grows steep and miry, and the light is veiled by scudding cloud and dripping rain, there begins to dawn upon us the sense of a beautiful and holy patience, the thought that these grey ashes of life, in which the glowing cinders sink, which once were bright with leaping flame, are not the end—­that the flame and glow are there, although momently dispersed.  They have done their work; one is warmed and enlivened; one can sit still, feeding one’s fancy on the lapsing embers, just as one saw pictures in the fire as an eager child long ago.  That high-hearted excitement and that curiosity have faded.  Life is very different from what we expected, more wholesome, more marvellous, more brief, more inconclusive; but there is an intenser, if quieter and more patient, curiosity to wait and see what God is doing for us; and the orange stain and green glow of the sunset, though colder and less jocund, is yet a far more mysterious, tender, and beautiful thing than the steady glow of the noonday sun, when the shining flies darted hither and thither, and the roses sent out their rich fragrance.  There is fragrance still, the fragrance of the evening flowers, where the western windows look across the misty fields to the thickening shadows of the tall trees.  But there is something that speaks in the gathering gloom, in the darkening sky with its flush of crimson fire, that did not speak in the sun-warmed garden and the dancing leaves; and what speaks is the mysterious love of God, a thing sweeter and more remote than the urgent bliss of the fiery noon, full of delicate mysteries and appealing echoes.  We have learnt that the darkness is no darkness with Him; and the soul which beat her wings so passionately in the brighter light of the hot morning, now at last begins to dream of whither she is bound, and the dear shade where she will fold her weary wing.

How often has the soul in her dreariness cried out, “One effort more!” But that is done with for ever.  She is patient now; she believes at last; she labours no longer at the oar, but she is borne upon the moving tide; she is on her way to the deep Heart of God.

EPILOGUE

I have wandered far enough in my thought, it would seem, from the lonely grange in its wide pastures, and the calm expanse of fen; and I should wish once more to bring my reader back home with me to the sheltered garden, and the orchard knee-deep in grass, and the embowering elms; for there is one word more to be said, and that may be best said at home; though our experience is not limited by time or place.  It was on the lonely ridge, strewn with boulders and swept by night-winds, when the darkness closed in drearily about him, that Jacob, a homeless exile, in the hour of his utmost