can convert the bed of rock into the Gate of Heaven. Yes, and when the end of all is reached, and the Bethel road is retrospectively traversed, the testimony of many a Pilgrim will be joyfully re-echoed as you stand by the gate of the many mansions"He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation!" VI. Right Shadows. "Now came still evening on, and twilight grey -Paradise Lost. "Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, -Young's Night Thoughts. "When the sun set, I walked all alone among the hills. The night was illuminated by a full moon, which seemed to stand out of the sky as if it did not belong to the depths of blue beyond." -Eastward. "And tarried there all night, because the sun was set.”- NIGHT SHADOWS. NONE but those who have been in Palestine, can understand or appreciate the beauty and grandeur The tamest of its landscapes is glorified and transfigured with the magical light of Eventide.' of an eastern sunset. I While many such scenes may occur to the recollection, there is pre-eminently one which, owing to its being seen from so many different points, leaves on the mental vision an ineffaceable impression. refer to the varied tints on the mountain wall of Moab, when its dull rocks are transmuted by 'the last fires of day' into a delicate mass of purple, amethyst, and gold. These remarkable outliers of the Land of Promise would in all likelihood now meet the eye of Jacob. From the upland territory, along which he hastened, this great transjordanic "bastion" is specially conspicuous. He would watch the melting hues till, one by one, they had died away, and left nothing but the cold grey mass behind. Not an inapt picture of his own inner experience at the moment; when what had given to E life its best morning brightness had faded from his sight. "The sun was set!" And if a Palestine sunset is gorgeous, equally so, too, we may add, is its nightly sky. No wonder the Israelites loved to travel to their great annual celebration when the lustre of moon and stars irradiated their path (Isa. xxx. 29), the pensive hour of thought doubtless adding intensity to their pious enthusiasm : "How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air, No mist obscures, no cloud, no speck, no star Breaks the serene of heaven. In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths, Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. -Southey. Possibly these brilliant galaxies spoke to Jacob as they could speak to none other. Fugitive as he was, he could not be unconscious of the fact that he had been served heir to the covenant promise. Could he fail to think of those evenings of his boyhood, at Kirjath-Arba, when his aged grandfather had led him forth by the hand, and pointing him upwards to the myriad lights gemming the firmament, told him how the God he served had made them the silent prophets and evangelists of the future. "Look now toward heaven, and tell the |