Night and Morning

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 24, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 20.

Night and Morning

NIGHT is the time of darkness, of sorrow, of loneliness, of despair. It is therefore used as a symbol of earth's ages of sin and sorrow. The day of earth is yet to dawn, when the night of weeping shall be succeeded by the day of rejoicing.

The British Empire is in mourning to-day over the death of one—their king. Our little sister state of Costa Rica mourns the loss of over 2,000 of her children from fearful earth convulsions. Many others mourn on account of accident, mine explosion, pestilence, and disease. They long for the voices that are forever stilled, for the eyes closed in death. Vice and crime and wickedness prevail almost unchecked, and a war-mad world spends its largest sums of money in preparations to kill, or in indulgence in the appetites and passions which are more fatal than war. Well does the Inspired Word liken conditions to the night.

But when will it break, and the darkness pass? "Watchman, what of the night?" call the weary, waiting, mourning ones of earth. And the answer is, "The morning cometh!" The darkness of the eastern horizon lightens from blackness to gray. Streamers of light, heralds of the day dawn, gild the mountain tops. The Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His beams, is about to rise. Christ is coming. The Day is at hand. The intensity of the powers of darkness, like the last hour before the day, is a sign of night's coming collapse. The crumbling of mundane forces, the war, the strife, the deepening misery in the midst of earth's plenty, are omens of the nearness of daybreak.

The reign of sin is nearly over. It has broken the earth by its burden. Righteousness must triumph or the earth perish. Even the very mockers who sneeringly ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" "where the evidence of a change in this earth?" are themselves an evidence, in that they fulfil the Word of the Lord which predicted their infidelity. 2 Peter 3: 3-7.

Now while the day lingers, God pierces the gloom with its light, and invites men to become "the children of light, and the children of the day." 1 Thess. 5:5. We may have walked in the darkness of this life, but now by faith we may be "light in the Lord;" for in all earth's sad history, "light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart."