The Night Cometh by Bonar

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 22, 1863

The Night Cometh.

By Bonar

THE night cometh! Nor does it seem far off. It never appeared so nigh! The shadows are lengthening out, and falling with ominous gloom upon the valleys of earth. The dimness of twilight is beginning to make itself felt. It is settling down densely upon our cities, and on our solitudes; upon the towers of our strength, and the palaces of our pomp; nor can the noisy rush of eager multitudes, hurrying to and fro for gain or pleasure, wholly stifle the utterance of fear and awe. Men cannot help foreboding evil, for who can tell them what may be in the womb of darkness? The night shades are already around us, and reminding us of the descending night.

"Yet it is a matter of joy, also, that the day is at hand. The night, though, is brief, and is soon succeeded by a glorious day. But still of that day, the night is the forerunner. And the world's night is surely near, else why so many indications of closing day?" But, has it not been always thus? Have not other ages as well as the present been equally crowded with signs of trouble? Have not certain men always loved to be prophets of evil, and to interpret gloomily the events of their day? Is there not among many a morbid and unhealthy love of the dark and the ominous?

Be it so. It will not, however, be denied that the time must come when the crisis will arrive; and that before its arrival, it will give notice of its approach, by casting its shadows before. If such a crisis remains yet to be realized, then some age or other must be its precursor—must lie next the precipice, and see with its own eyes the gulf below. It is right, no doubt, that we should be cautious, not mistaking events, nor miscalculating times, nor misjudging signs; but it is far safer to take swift alarm at what seem like tokens of evil, even though the alarm should prove false, than with incredulous, it may be with derisive skepticism, to reject every sign, and refuse to be forewarned. It is bad, certainly, to be taking needless alarm at all, as, if the day of the Lord would never really come, but was a mere empty name, hung over us for terror, age after age, as a check upon the world, and a stimulus to the church. If, then, that day be a certainty, a reality, who will affirm that, when about to arrive, it will not foreshow itself? Surely a dislike to give heed to the forebodings of judgment, must arise from a dislike to entertain even the thought of that crisis. We will not see in the events of the day, premonitory shocks of the last earthquake, because we would fain discredit or postpone that day of calamity and terror.

This is not wisdom, neither is it magnanimity. It is folly and littleness of soul. It is a reckless resolution to blind ourselves to the evil as long as possible, and then to brave it as best we may, when it does burst upon us.—Bonar.