In 1882 Mr. Benjamin William Leader, of England, executed a painting which at once became famous because of the poetic suggestiveness of its meaning. The old church of Whittington, with its great black yew-trees and mossed tombstones, has endured a long day of storm. The building, as well as the tombstones, seems as if it may have stood for centuries. This part of the picture cannot be otherwise than solemnly impressive. It is just such a scene as Hogarth might have painted in his last years. All is decay. To some it would seem as if death ends all.

But the picture has another view. Upon the drenched landscape at last bursts the sunshine and the long hours of gloom end in a ruddy glow which foretells a fine to-morrow. It is not difficult to interpret the meaning of the artist. Behind the gloomy church, the old sepulchres, and all the dismal surroundings, is the glow of a lovely sunset

So, often-times it happens that a human life has to endure heavy storms, weariness, and sadness until the day of its existence draws nigh to a close. Then the storm passes away, and the evening of life becomes filled with a golden peace, and like the old church and the black yew-trees, the somber past, thus illumined with that mellow light, seems to have a solemn beauty of its own. This delightful theme is taken,by Mr. Leader from a line in the seventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of Zechariah, "At evening time it shall be light."

There are discouragements of many sorts in the present life. Time and again our hopes are gone, and we become depressed by the conditions suggested by the scene in the foreground of the picture just described. Particularly is this true with elderly people. Age comes on, the strength of our former years has departed, our burdens seem to grow heavier, the clouds hang lower, and life is harder to live. Too many aged persons dwell on the things sug gested by the gloomy features of the picture, while their hearts are turned from the golden sunset which the artist borrows from the beautiful sentiment in Zechariah's prophecy. Christian faith has everything to do with our happiness in the Indian summer of life.

Talleyrand had one of the greatest intellects France ever produced. His career was remarkable. But Carlyle wrote of him: "He lived in falsehood and on falsehood." On his eighty-third birthday his feeling found expression in these doleful words:

"Eighty-three years of life are now past; filled with what anxieties, what agitations, what enmities, what troublous complexities; and all this with no other result than a great weariness, physical and moral, and a profound sentiment of discouragement with regard to the future, and of disgust for the past."

For a man so shamelessly corrupt, immoral, and selfish, there could be no light at evening time.

On the other hand, an incident in the life of Dr. James Scott, of Maine, is worth relating. By the time he was sixty he was overtaken by some business misfortune. The vicious dead line of fifty worked to his disadvantage. While the lines had not fallen unto him in pleasant places, he was not discontented, neither did his manly courage fail him. He seemed to grasp the great fact that the brightest sunshine that gladdens the earth is liable to be overhung with black clouds. And therefore in the day of his troubles his good temper and his Christian faith were not at a discount.

Mr. Scott concluded to engage in a profession in which no dead line of fifty or sixty was ever drawn. He entered a medical school, graduated with honors, and for more than twelve years he was a. successful practitioner. During all this time there flashed upon him the beautiful light at evening time.

We all know the heart-burnings which Mary Clemmer Ames (Mrs. Hudson) must have endured for some years during her first marriage. A short time before her death, in 1884, when in the prime of her intellectual powers, she wrote a friend:

"Though I am not old I have sounded the deeps and shadows of all that is called society till I feel through my heart of hearts that all that is of real value is the lowly contrite spirit, the clear mind, the loving, consecrated heart; all else is emptiness, vanity, vexation of soul. I am very happy solely because I have reached that upper ether of spiritual calm which envy, jealousy, and malice cannot reach. I do common work, plenty of it, but in a spirit of consecration which ennobles it - at least for me. At last there can be no beauty for you or me but the beauty of holiness."

Mrs. Hudson never realized so vividly the splendor of the sunset so beautifully illustrated in Leader's allegorical painting, as when she lived in fatal invalidism caused by an accident in 1878.

In a large measure life's evening takes its character from the day which has preceded it. If we stand four-square in relation to all the storms, disappointments, and hardships of life, there will be light at evening time. Goodness, love, noble aspirations, an implicit faith in immortality, alone can give Vitality to the closing years of a long life.

When I read Zechariah's prophecy there leaps into my mind the story of James Watt's career. His improvements in the steam engine were so important and fundamental that he is practically its inventor.

Watt has been called one of the most extraordinary men England has produced. Yet he was always delicate and suffered throughout his life from frequent attacks of wretched nervous headaches. His organism was full of weakness and pain, and he was hardly ever free from desperate depression of spirits. And yet how marvellously important was the work he accomplished!

His apprehension that his powers of mind had been worn out, happily remained groundless to the hour of his death in 1819. It is said of Dr. Samuel Johnson that in the latter part of his life, in order to satisfy himself that his mental faculties were not impaired, he began to learn a new language, and fixed upon the Low Dutch, and finally was able to read much of Thomas à Kempis in that unattractive tongue. And Watt, in his old age, when he fancied that his powers of mind were weakening, determined to test his ability to learn the Anglo-Saxon language, an undertaking that brought most satisfactory results.

Sir Walter Scott having met Watt when the inventor was eighty-two, describes him as the alert, kind, benevolent old man, his talent and fancy overflowing on any subject. "This gifted man of science," says Scott, "was then as obstinate a peruser of fiction as if he had been a very milliner's apprentice of eighteen."

It was light at evening time with Watt. Notwithstanding that nearly all his life had been spent amid clouds and storms, "the element of immortal freshness" seems to have found a place in his heart, and at eighty-four his earthly life closed in hope, sunlight, and calm.