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The night grows late.  I rise to close my outer door to shut myself out from the world; I shall have no more visitors now.  The moonlight lies cold and clear on the little court; the shadow of the cloister pillars falls black on the pavement.  Outside, the town lies hushed in sleep; I see the gables and chimneys of the clustered houses standing in a quiet dream over the old ivy-covered wall.  The college is absolutely still, though one or two lights still burn in studious rooms, and peep through curtained chinks.  What a beautiful place to live one’s life in, a place which greets one with delicate associations, with venerable beauty, at every turn!  The moonlight falls through the tall oriel of the Hall, and the armorial shields burn and glow with rich points of colour.  I pace to and fro, wondering, musing.  All here seems so permanent, so still, so secure, and yet we are spinning and whirling through space to some unknown goal.  What are the thoughts of the mighty unresting Heart, to whose vastness and agelessness the whole mass of these flying and glowing suns are but as a handful of dust that a boy flings upon the air?  How has He set me here, a tiny moving atom, yet more sure of my own minute identity than I am of all the vast panorama of things which lie outside of me?  Has He indeed a tender and a patient thought of me, the frail creature whom He has moulded and made?  I do not doubt it; I look up among the star-sown spaces, and the old aspiration rises in my heart, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him! that I might come even into His presence!” How would I go, like a tired and sorrowful child to his father’s knee, to be comforted and encouraged, in perfect trust and love, to be raised in His arms, to be held to His heart!  He would but look in my face, and I should understand without a question, without a word.

Now in its mouldering turret the old clock wakes and stirs, moves its jarring wires, and the soft bell strikes midnight.  Another of my few short days gone, another step nearer to the unseen.  Slowly but not sadly I return, for I have been for a moment nearer God; the very thought that rises in my mind, and turns my heart to His, comes from Him.  He would make all plain, if He could; He gives us what we need; and when we at last awake we shall be satisfied.

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