Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood | Page 6

facts as
they are, and dealing with things as they show themselves in the world.
One other occurrence before I went home that evening, and I shall close
the chapter. I hope I shall not write another so dull as this. I dare not
promise, though; for this is a new kind of work to me.
Before I left the bridge,--while, in fact, I was contemplating the
pollards with an eye, if not of favour, yet of diminished dismay,--the
sun, which, for anything I knew of his whereabouts, either from
knowledge of the country, aspect of the evening, or state of my own
feelings, might have been down for an hour or two, burst his cloudy
bands, and blazed out as if he had just risen from the dead, instead of
being just about to sink into the grave. Do not tell me that my figure is
untrue, for that the sun never sinks into the grave, else I will retort that
it is just as true of the sun as of a man; for that no man sinks into the
grave. He only disappears. Life IS a constant sunrise, which death
cannot interrupt, any more than the night can swallow up the sun. "God
is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him."
Well, the sun shone out gloriously. The whole sweep of the gloomy
river answered him in gladness; the wet leaves of the pollards quivered
and glanced; the meadows offered up their perfect green, fresh and
clear out of the trouble of the rain; and away in the distance, upon a
rising ground covered with trees, glittered a weathercock. What if I
found afterwards that it was only on the roof of a stable? It shone, and
that was enough. And when the sun had gone below the horizon, and
the fields and the river were dusky once more, there it glittered still

over the darkening earth, a symbol of that faith which is "the evidence
of things not seen," and it made my heart swell as at a chant from the
prophet Isaiah. What matter then whether it hung over a stable-roof or a
church-tower?
I stood up and wandered a little farther--off the bridge, and along the
road. I had not gone far before I passed a house, out of which came a
young woman leading a little boy. They came after me, the boy gazing
at the red and gold and green of the sunset sky. As they passed me, the
child said--
"Auntie, I think I should like to be a painter."
"Why?" returned his companion.
"Because, then," answered the child, "I could help God to paint the
sky."
What his aunt replied I do not know; for they were presently beyond
my hearing. But I went on answering him myself all the way home. Did
God care to paint the sky of an evening, that a few of His children
might see it, and get just a hope, just an aspiration, out of its passing
green, and gold, and purple, and red? and should I think my day's
labour lost, if it wrought no visible salvation in the earth?
But was the child's aspiration in vain? Could I tell him God did not
want his help to paint the sky? True, he could mount no scaffold
against the infinite of the glowing west. But might he not with his little
palette and brush, when the time came, show his brothers and sisters
what he had seen there, and make them see it too? Might he not thus
come, after long trying, to help God to paint this glory of vapour and
light inside the minds of His children? Ah! if any man's work is not
WITH God, its results shall be burned, ruthlessly burned, because poor
and bad.
"So, for my part," I said to myself, as I walked home, "if I can put one
touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman of my cure, I
shall feel that I have worked with God. He is in no haste; and if I do
what I may in earnest, I need not mourn if I work no great work on the
earth. Let God make His sunsets: I will mottle my little fading cloud.
To help the growth of a thought that struggles towards the light; to
brush with gentle hand the earth-stain from the white of one
snowdrop--such be my ambition! So shall I scale the rocks in front, not
leave my name carved upon those behind me."

People talk about special providences. I believe in the providences, but
not in the specialty. I do not believe that God lets the thread of my
affairs go for six days, and on