^ After a very hard day's work, — during which he had con- firmed candidates, preached at the re-opening of a church, spoken two or three times, and done much beside in a manner which perhaps no person but himself could have accomplished, — Bishop Wilberforce returned in the evening to Turvey, where he was staying. A small party had been invited to meet him at dinner, and there was some bright and pleasant conversation. When the time came for retiring into the drawing-room, the Bishop, who looked a little fatigued, said to me : " There is nothing which makes me more absolutely disgusted with myself than feeling tired when evening comes. What business have I to be tired ? nothing gives me any comfort at all but that verse in the Psalms, — ' Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening ' ; and so, I suppose that, when evening comes, he may rest." ^ ' J. W. Burgou, Lives of Twelve Goud Men, ii. 89.
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2. Man goes out to his work, to his labour, only with one softening clause in the agreement — " until the evening." There are limits set; there are reliefs permitted and contrived; there are moments for slackening, for recreation, for repose. Not unbroken this labour ; not monotonously blind this work. No, fixed times, ordered signals, ordained closes !
Sunset and evening star. And one clear call for me.
Man knows the signs. He is not left forgotten or unconsidered. He can calculate when the strain will be off.
Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark.
So, in kindly, successive periods, he turns to the rest that he has earned. "He goeth forth to his work "with the friendly sense in his heart that it will not last for ever. It will end in the quiet hour when the sun goes down.
^ When in the beginning God said : Let there be Light, and there was Light, Light did not spring into undivided empire, but was ordained to rule alternately with darkness. Day and night abide for ever. AVhat was the reason, so far as man is concerned, for this curbing and restriction of so free an element as Light ? The readiest reason seems to be — for our relief and rest. But that is not half the reason. Our light is broken up and shortened, not only in order to afford us intervals of rest, but also to bestow upon us intensity ; not only to relieve our faculties from the strain of life, but also to strain and stimulate them ever more keenly. According to Christ Himself the night cometh when no man can work, not merely that man may hope for release beneath its shelter, but that he may work while it is called to-day. Had there been no interval, since first upon the tones of God's word Light rippled across the face of the deep — had the Sun been created to stand still in the midst of the heavens, then indeed one might say there would have been no progress for man. Let your imagination strike Night out of the world, and you need not begin to speculate on the iron frames men should have required to bear the unrelieved strain, for it is tolerably certain that, without the urgency and discipline which a limited day brings upon our life, we should never have been stimulated to enough of toil to make us weary. Night, which has been called the Liberator of the Slave, is far more the task-mistress of the free — a task-mistress who does not scourge nor drive us in panic, but who startles our
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sluggishness, rallies our wandering thoughts, develops our instincts of order, reduces our impulsiveness to methods, incites us to our very best, and only then crowns her beneficence by rewarding our obedience with rest. In short. Night, while she is nature's mercy on our weakness, is nature's purest discipline for our strength.^
3. The daily drawing of the curtain between man and his active labours represents and continually reminds us of the need of the internal as well as the external in our lives. It brings up to us our need, by bringing up to us our opportunity, of meditation, of contemplation. For active life is always tending to become shallow. It is always forgetting its motives, forgetting its principles, forgetting what it is so busy for, and settling itself into superficial habits. So God shuts us out from our work and bids us daily think what the heart of our work is, what we are doing it for. If this is the meaning of the evening — and no man sees the daylight sink away and the shadows gather without sensitively feeling some such meaning in it — then surely we need it.
^ It is hard to see how, were it not for the continually repeated, daily stoppages of work, we could remember, as we need to remember, the great close of work which is coming to every one of us and may be very near. I picture to myself a world without an evening, a world with an unsetting daylight, and with men who never tired at their tasks ; and it seems as if death in a world like that would be so much more terrible and mysterious than it is now ; when once a day, for many years, we have learned that work was not meant to last always, and have had to drop our tools as if in practice and rehearsal for the great darkness when we are to let them go for ever.*