midnights
I think we shall find one day that nobody , not the poet of widest sweep and most daring imagination , not the prophet who soars the highest in his ardour to justify the ways of God to men , not the child when he is most fully possessed of the angel that in heaven always beholds the face of the Father of Jesus , has come or could have come within sight of the majesty of his bestowing upon his children . For did he not , if the story be true , allow torture itself to invade the very soul 's citadel of his best beloved , as he went to seek the poor ape of a prodigal , stupidly grinning amongst his harlots ? '' Leopold did not answer , and the shadow lay deep on his face for a while ; but at length it began to thin , and at last a feeble quivering smile broke through the cloud , and he wept soft tears of refreshing . It was not that the youth had turned again from the hope of rest in the Son of Man ; but that , as everyone knows who knows anything of the human spirit , there must be in its history days and seasons , mornings and nights , yea deepest midnights . It has its alternating summer and winter , its storm and shine , its soft dews and its tempests of lashing hail , its cold moons and prophetic stars , its pale twilights of saddest memory , and its golden gleams of brightest hope . All these mingled and displaced each other in Leopold 's ruined world , where chaos had come again , but over whose waters a mightier breath was now moving . And now after much thought , the curate saw that he could not hope to transplant into the bosom of the lad the flowers of truth that gladdened his own garden : he must sow the seed from which they had sprung , and that seed was the knowledge of the true Jesus .