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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Millennium

It is, indeed, right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the day of God; but not that we should check any human effort by anticipations of its approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads of future ages.

Ruskin.

Wearily have the years passed, I know; wearily to the pale watcher on the hill who has been so long glazing for the daybreak; wearily to the anxious multitudes who have been waiting for his tidings below. Often, has the cry gone up through the darkness, “Watcher, what of the night?” and often has the disappointing answer come, “It is night still; here the stars are clear above me, but they shine afar, and yonder the clouds lower heavily, and the sad night winds blow.” But the time shall come, and perhaps sooner than we look for it, when the countenance of that pale watcher shall gather into intenser expectancy, and when the challenge shall be given, with the hopefulness of a nearer vision, “Watcher, what of the night?” and the answer will come, “The darkness is not so dense as it was; there are faint streaks on the horizon’s verge; mist is in the valleys, but there is a radiance on the distant hill. It comes nearer—that promise of the day. The clouds roll rapidly away, and they are fringed with amber and gold. It is, it is the blest sunlight that I feel around me—Morning! It is morning!”

Wm. M. Punshon.