Is it not God who is holding the man's eyes waking? Is it not God
who is making him search out his own heart, and commune with his
spirit? I believe that so it is. If any one says, 'It is all caused
by the darkness and silence. You have nothing to distract your
attention as you have by day, and therefore the mind becomes
unwholesomely excited, and feeds upon itself,' I answer, then they
are good things, now and then, this darkness and this silence, if
they do prevent the mind from being distracted, as it is all day
long, by business and pleasure; if they leave a man's soul alone with
itself, to look itself in the face, and be thoroughly ashamed of what
it sees. In the noise and glare of the day, we are all too apt to
fancy that all is right with us, and say, 'I am rich, and increased
with goods, and have need of nothing;' and the night does us a kindly
office if it helps us to find out that we knew not that we were poor,
and miserable, and blind, and naked--not only in the sight of God,
but in our own sight, when we look honestly at ourselves.

The wise man says:-


'Oh, would some power the gift but give us,
To see ourselves as others see us!'


and those painful thoughts make us do that. For if we see some
faults in ourselves, be sure our neighbours see them likewise, and
perhaps many more beside.

But more: these sad thoughts make us see ourselves as God sees us.
For if we see faults in ourselves, we may be sure that the pure and