than his beginning."* Such was Israel's " morning " when the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, " making them like men that dream/' filling " their mouth with laughter and their tongue with sing- ing," in the day of their deliverance from exile.
Thus there are "mornings" ever and anon bursting on us now. They are in- deed little more than brief brightenings of the darkness — lulls in the long tempest that is to rage unspent till the Lord come. Still we may call them " mornings/' just as we give the name of mid-day to the dim kindlings of the sky at daily noon, in the six months' arctic night, when the sun
* Job xlii. 9 — 12. Yet even here there seems an allusion to the true morning yet to come, and an intim- ation that all this restored fulness was but an " earnest." For, as has been remarked, while Job has all his sheep, oxen, &c. exactly doubled to him, his children are not doubled. He had lost seven, and he gets back but seven ; for he must look to the resurrection-morning for the restoration of his seven lost ones, and not till then is he to get the double.
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keeps below the horizon. Or, better and truer, we may call them earnests of the morning — that morning which is to out- shine all mornings, and to swallow up alike the darkness and the light of a present evi1 world. Dim and transient as are these earnests, they are unutterably gladdening They cheer the heavy darkness and are pledges of sun-rise.
Our life on earth, " the life that we now live in the flesh," is thus made up of many nights and many mornings. It is not all one night, nor is it all one day. Every thing pertaining to it seems to re~ volve or alternate. It is a life of sinking and rising, of going and returning, of ebbing and flowing, of shade and bright- ness. The health of the soul seems in some measure to need such changes, just as the soil owes much of its fruit- fulness to the vicissitudes of the sea- sons.
As there is no even continuance of
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constant good, so there is no equal pressure of unbroken evil. As the season of calm is brief, so is the burst of the storm. The days of darkness are many — more in num- ber than the days of light, yet they do not last always. " Many are the afflictions of the righteous/' yet there are breaks in the line of evil, for it is added, " the Lord de- livereth him out of them all."
Our God has so fashioned us, and so regulated our circumstances, that each grief has its crisis, its spring-tide, after which it seems, as if by a law, to recede. Not only can the soul not bear beyond a fixed amount of pain or pressure without giving way, but it cannot be kept too long upon the stretch. If the tension is pro- tracted, the " spirit fails," the mind breaks down. Or if this is not the case, callous- ness comes on ; we grow stupid and in- sensible. Affliction loses its power by be- ing too heavy or too long.
The highest mountain has its summit ;
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the deepest mine-shaft has its lowest level. Nor, in general, are these long in being reached. So even when there *is sorrow upon sorrow, there is respite between, or gladness at the close of the dark series. The outer and the inner world have, to some extent, the same laws of alternation and relief. Tides and variations seem needful in both. Thus it was in the life of David. At one time he stood with glad- ness in the courts of his God ; at another he bemoaned himself, saying, "When shall I come and appear before God ? " At one time he went with the multitude ; at another he wandered in solitude and exile. At one time he kept holy day with the thousands of Israel, joining in the voice of joy and praise ; at another his tears were his meat day and night. At one time his soul was cast down and disquieted within him ; at another he praised Jehovah as the health of his countenance. At one time he could look with open eye upon the
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glory of Jehovah in his house ; at another he could only remember him from the land of Jordan *and of the Hermonites from the hill Mizar. At one time deep called unto deep, all God's waves went over him; at another the Lord commanded his loving- kindness and opened his mouth in song. Such were the tides of David's history — the vicissitudes of day and night in his ( varying course. True type of every saint's history, not only in the old age of shadows, but in our own ! True example of the changes and tossings marked out for the church in her course on earth from shame to glory ! What else are we to look for till the Lord come ? In the first age of the church, in the time of righteous Abel, it was so. " The evening and the morning were the first day." In the last age of the church, just ere the second Adam is brought in, it shall be no less so. " The evening and the morning were the sixth day." Then comes the world's seventh and £ 2
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brightest day — a day of cloudless splen- dour, unbroken and unending.