“I Can Wait Till Morning”


Some years since, and friends met again in

the old parsonage. It was pleasant to meet

each other, and pleasanter still to gather once

more around the table for their evening meal.

As they did so, Mary, the youngest darling,

and pet of the family, some four years of age,

was seated in her high chair, in her customary

place at her father's side. The unusual interest

of the additional persons present, occupied

the attention of her parents, and question and

explanation, and the narration of events and

incidents since they last met, engrossed all their

thoughts, to the exclusion of the quiet child.

Just as they were rising from their seats, having

finished their meal, the father was surprised

to notice for the first time, that his patient

little daughter, doubtless as is generally the

case the hungriest one of the whole party, had

not been helped to a single morsel.

"Why, my precious child," said he, "did

you not speak sooner, and ask for some supper?"

Looking up sweetly in his face, while a tear

dropped from the edge of her cheek, where it

had been resting, she replied simply, "I can

wait till morning, father."

Said a visitor who told me the circumstance,

"I shall never forget the gentle look of patience

on this infantile face evidently more grieved

at being forgotten by those she loved, than for

her unsupplied wants, nor the unintentional

reproof it conveyed to our selfish thoughtlessness.

“It is just like my Mary, said her

father."

This incident was, I learned, an illustration

of her whole character, the fruit of faithful

parental training, with the blessing of the Spirit

of God. It was enough. It spoke volumes.

It was a lesson to us all. A lesson from the

youngest, which the eldest and wisest had many

an opportunity to practice.

It needs not to enlarge upon the many lovely

traits of disposition which that reply indicated.

It was the perfume, which told of the perfecting

of the blossom. And so it proved. Ere the

leaves from that summer's roses had withered

upon the ground, her parents leaned over her

little open grave. They mourn her loss as only

such a child can be mourned, and sometimes

the separation seems so long, that the aching

heart almost refuses to be comforted. But they

try to look beyond the dark curtain, through

which the upper glory may not reach our feeble

vision, and say, "I will wait till the morning."

If at any time we are assailed by slander,

our kindest efforts for good are misrepresented,

our motives maligned, let us patiently bide our

time for vindication, and say, "I will wait till

the morning." Or if misfortunes come thick

and fast, and the night of our sorrow seems so

utterly dark, that not a single ray in the whole

sky remains to tell of one star shining above us,

let no impatient unbelief prompt to despair, but

let us rather say, "The night may be dreary

and chill, but it will soon be past. I will wait

till the morning."

What a morning will that be, to which our

brightest sunshine will seem Egyptian darkness.

Where, for every single ray that enters the eye

here, ten thousand rays glowing, refulgent,

shall thrill and vivify every part of our being.

“Light," not like our solar beam, exhausted in

one mission, and then absorbed, but light unfading

in its essence ever more glorious in its

refulgence, as it floods high Heaven, as it pours

its exhaustless stream forever from the true

central sun of the universe the Lamb of God.

One who has dwelt there from all eternity, thus

described it to the prophet of old: "And

there shall be no night there; and they need

no candle or light of the sun, for the Lord God

giveth them light, and the Lamb is the light

thereof."




  

 YI