Claude—‘Is not this too like life? Our only light the sparkles that rise up round us at every step, and die behind us; and all around, and all before, the great black unfathomable eternities? A few souls brought together as it were by chance, for a short friendship and mutual dependence in this little ship of earth, so soon to land her passengers and break up the company for ever?’ He smiled. ‘There is a devil’s meaning to everything in nature, and a God’s meaning, too. Your friends, the zoologists, have surely taught you better than that. As I read Nature’s parable to-night, I find nothing in it but hope. What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow. What if there seem a chaos: the great organic world is still living, and growing, and feeding, unseen by us, all the black night through; and every phosphoric atom there below is a sign that even in the darkest night there is still the power of light, ready to flash out, wherever and however it is stirred. Does the age seem to you dark? Do you, too, feel as I do at times, the awful sadness of that text,—“The time shall come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Lord, and shall not see it”? Then remember that “The night is never so long But at last it ringeth for matin song.” And even as it is around us here, so it is in the world of men. The night is peopled not merely with phantoms and wizards, superstitions and spirits of evil, but under its shadow all sciences, methods, social energies, are taking rest, and growing, and feeding, unknown to themselves, that they may awake into a new life, and intermarry, and beget children nobler than themselves, when “the day-spring from on high comes down.” Even now, see! the dawn is gilding the highest souls, as it is those Exmoor peaks afar; and we are in the night only because we crawl below. What if we be unconscious of all the living energies which are fermenting round us now? Have you not shown me in this last week every moorland pool, every drop of the summer sea, alive with beautiful organizations, multiplying as fast as the thoughts of man? Is not every leaf breathing still, every sap vein drinking still, though we may not see them? “Even so is the kingdom of God; like seed sown in the ground; and men rise, and lie down and sleep; and it groweth up they know not how.”’