here
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 t