The Sacrament of Sunset by Archibald Alexander

"The heavens declare the glory of God. " / - Psalm 19: 1

"The sky," says Ruskin, "is the part of Nature in which God has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more from the sole and evident purpose of touching him, than in any other of His works. " It looks like the truth. For there is no scene of earth so fair or majestic that man cannot spoil it. Where the "cataract exults among the hills, and wears its crown of rainbows all alone," he will build him a powerhouse to supply current to some distant town. But he cannot touch the heavens. In the heart of some fairy glen he will placard the virtues of somebody's pills, and plaster the gateposts in a sweet country lane with the specious claims of some quack doctor, but above it all, it is God, and God alone, who spreadeth out the heavens like a curtain and in them has set a tabernacle for the sun. Even in places where the face of earth wears no suggestion of natural beauty the face of the sky redeems it from evil. For, above the squalor of the city's meanest slum, burn the great fires of the setting sun, and overhead the fleecy white clouds sail silently all night long.