text:  Pillar of fire that didst go before me to guide and to quicken--pillar of darkness when thy countenance was turned away to God that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my young heart--in what scales should I weigh thee? Was the blessing greater from thy heavenly presence or the blight which followed thy departure? Can a man weigh off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness of hurricane? Or if he could how is it that when a memorable love has been followed by a memorable bereavement even suppose that God would replace the sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience and offer to cancel the woe but so that the sweet face which had caused the woe should also be obliterated--vehemently would every man shrink from the exchange! In the _Paradise Lost_ this strong instinct of man--to prefer the heavenly mixed and polluted with the earthly to a level experience offering neither one nor the other--is divinely commemorated