F W Boreham is writing on the verandah of his house after a hot day. As he writes and the sun sets, he makes these reflections:It is getting darker now, and I can scarcely see to write. But as I watch the last faint tints die away from the leaden clouds about the mountain, I find it good to reflect that my sunset means some other's sunrise.
The morning is over there, and somebody is revelling in its sweetness and saying that it is good to be alive. And here am I in the dusk. And so, all unsuspecting, I stumble upon something substitutionary, something vicarious, something like a sacrament, in these fading, flickering hues about the mountain's brow. I am plunging into darkness that some one else may enjoy the day. I am feeling it chilly and cold that some one else may laugh in the glorious sunshine.
I am about to lie down and abandon myself to sleep, Death's own twin sister, that some one else over there in the land of the morning may wake up and feel the rush and riot of new life surging tumultuously through every vein.
If only I can manage to remember this, it will often cheer me in the darkness. Have I lost my beautiful morning? It is bathing some other face in sunshine. Is my day waning? Some other is waxing. The old leaves fall off only because the new buds are pushing their way through.
‘I must decrease,’ cried John the Baptist bravely, ‘but He must increase!’ And that fine philosophy, if only I can make it my own, will help me, even when my last sun sets, to greet the unseen with a cheer.
F W Boreham, ‘The Wings of the Morning’, The Golden Milestone (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 196-197.
Image: “in these fading, flickering hues about the mountain's brow.”