Light at Evening-Time
GOD’S Word is an inexhaustible jewelbed. What a gem of the first water is this beautiful text: “At eveningtime it shall be light!” Like a many-sided diamond, it flashes out as many truths as it has polished sides. As the diamond has the quality of glistening in dim and darksome places, so this passage shines brightly in seasons of trouble and despondency. Old people may well put on their spectacles of faith and see what a rare and precious verse it is. The people of God who are under a cloud may also find in it the foretoken of better things to come.
The passage gleams out from one of the olden Jewish prophets — from the prophecies of Zechariah, of whom we know very little, except that he nourished about the time of the return from Babylon, 520 years before Christ’s advent. He is that cheerful seer who pictures the streets of Jerusalem as yet to be filled with old men leaning on their staffs and little boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. The text occurs at the close of a remarkable passage, which reads as follows in a close translation: “And it shall be in that day that’ there shall not be the light of the glittering orbs, but densely thick darkness. But there shall be one day (it is known to Jehovah) when it shall not be day and night; for at the evening-time it shall be
light.”
Many Bible scholars count this passage to be clearly prophetic of the Millennium. Our good brothers Tyng and Clark, with all the literalistic school, quote it as predicting Christ’s personal reign, when his “feet shall again stand on the Mount of Olives.” Into that controversy we shall not enter, being quite satisfied that, while of that day and hour knoweth no man, yet “it is known to Jehovah.” The beautiful text is so rich in spiritual suggestions that we are quite satisfied to catch some of the gleamings of the diamond.
I. The very essence of Hope is in this inspiring verse. Some of us may recall a weary climb from the Yale of Zermatt up the rough acclivities of the Riffelberg, amid chilling mists and swirling gusts of tempest. The icy vapors penetrated to the marrow of our bones. At the RifFel all was blinding fog. We pushed on and upward, until, as we stood upon the Gorner Grat, the mighty caravan of clouds moved off and left the “body of the heavens in its clearness.’7 Yonder rose the Weisshorn, a pyramid of silver, and the peaks of Monte Rosa flashed in crimson and gold. We had been suffocated in storm and fog all day; but at evening-time it was light.
This has been the ten thousand times repeated experience of God’s children. Gray-haired Jacob, in his loneliness, wails out: “Joseph is dead; Simeon is dead; now they take Benjamin also. All these things are against me.77 Presently the returning cavalcade arrives, to tell him that Joseph is governor of Egypt, and that he is invited to come and spend his sunset of life in the best of the land that Pharaoh can offer. A long, troubled day has the patriarch weathered through; but at evening-time it is light. It is a part of God’s discipline with us to hide his throne in clouds and darkness. The office of faith is to hold fast to the fact that behind those clouds a loving Father dwells upon that throne. It is the office of hope to look for the clearing of the clouds, by and by. If we had no storms, we should never appreciate the blue sky. The trial of the tempest is the preparation for the warm afterglow of sunshine. Blind unbelief is continually railing at God, charging him with cruelty and scouting the idea of a special providence of all-wise love. But faith whispers: “Think it not strange, or as though some strange thing happened unto thee. God seeth the end from the beginning. To the upright there ariseth light in darkness. All things work together for good to them that love him.” Hope bids us push on and upward. Only keep pressing higher and closer to Jesus, instead of wandering downward into doubt and sullen despair. Push upward, and you will
“Hear Hope singing, sweetly singing,
Softly in an undertone,
Singing as if God had taught her
It is better further on.”
The darkness is thick about thee now, my brother; but the Christian life is a walk of faith. God never deceives his children. If we but keep fast hold to the Guiding Hand, we shall find the road to be not one step longer or harder than is best for us. God has piloted every saint through this very road and up these very hills of difficulty. It will be better further on. Every chastening of a believer’s soul lies at the end of a painful ordeal. Every success worth the having lies at the end of brave, protracted toil. Twenty years of storm must be battled through by
Wilberforce and Clarkson before Negro emancipation is enacted by the British Parliament. At evening-time the sky was crimsoned with* the flush of victory.
II. This passage has a beautiful application to a Christian old age. Many people have a silly dread of growing old and look upon gray hairs as a standing libel. But, if life is well spent, its Indian Summer ought to bring a full granary and a golden leaf. Bunyan’ introduces his Pilgrim to a Land of Beulah, where flowers of rare beauty grow and where breezes from the Celestial City fan the furrowed cheek. The spiritual light at the gloaming of life becomes mellower; it is strained of mists and impurities. The aged believer seems to see deeper into God’s Word and further into God’s Heaven. Not every human life has a golden sunset Some suns go down under a cloud. At evening-time it is cold and dark. I have been looking lately at the testimonies left by two celebrated men who died during my boyhood. One of them was the king of novelists; the other was the king of philanthropists. Both had lost their fortunes and lost their health.
The novelist wrote as follows: “The old post-chaise gets more shattered at every turn of the wheel. Windows will not pull up; doors refuse to open and shut. Sicknesses come thicker and faster; friends become fewer and fewer. Death has closed the long, dark avenue upon early loves and friendships. I look at them as through the grated door of a burial-place, filled with monuments of those once dear to me. I shall never see the threescore and ten and shall be summed up at a discount.” Ah! that is not a cheerful sunset of a splendid literary career. At evening-time it looks gloomy and the air smells of the sepulchre.
Listen now to the old Christian philanthropist, whose inner life was hid with Christ in God. He writes: “I can scarce understand why my life is spared so long, except it be to show that a man can be just as happy without a fortune as with one. Sailors on a voyage drink to ’ friends astern ’ till they are half-way across; and after that it is ‘friends ahead.’ With me it has been ‘friends ahead for many a year.7’ The veteran pilgrim was getting nearer home. The Sun of Righteousness flooded his western sky. At evening-time it was light.
III. What a contrast there is between the death-bed of the impenitent and that of the adopted child of God, whose hope is anchored to Jesus. The one is dark; a fearful looking forward to a wrath to come. The other is the earnest expectation of an endless day which lies beyond the glorious sunset. I have- just come from the sick-room of a woman whose life is ebbing away amid intense bodily sufferings. It is one of the most cheerful spots in this sorrow-laden world. Jesus is watching by that’ bedside. He administers the cordials. He stays up that sinking head. “I am with you always” is to her the promise and foretoken of that other state of joy, “where I am ye shall be also.” At evening-time that chamber of death is light/