---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Thomas, Mathonihah
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 5
number: 11
published: 1902-09
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Mathonihah Thomas, "Evening Song," *Improvement Era* 5, no. 11 (September 1902): 867.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0511unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0511unse
start_page: 867
end_page: 867
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1902-09)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0511unse
  publication_year: 1902
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1902, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Evening Song
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REPLY TO ROBERTS' VIEW OF DEITY.                          867

Being, and that       known only to       the mind:"   Other pagans bore
similar testimony concerning the unity of God.             In his letter to
the Emperor Trajan, (A. D. 98-117)              Pliny, governor of   Pontus,
said among other things:          "They [the Christians] assemble on cer-
tain days before sunrise to sing hymns of praise to Christ, their God.
*   *    *    They submit to torture and death rather than invoke
the gods."
        And Celsus, the forerunner of our modern infidels, thus sland-
ered the early Christians:            "Confessing that these are worthy of
their God, they desire to        convert none but fools, and vulgar and
stupid and slavish women and boys."
        One   more.       Csecilius    wrote:   "What monstrous      notions
*   *    *    they [the Christians] fabricate that that God of theirs,,
whom they can neither show nor see, should be inquiring diligently
into the characters, the acts, nay the words and secret thoughts
of all men!      *    *   *   Most of you are in want, cold, toil, hunger,
and your God suffers it."

                                EVENING SONG.

    When the sun sinks in the west behind the golden clouds
    Which change, as twilight deepens, and dress in purple shrouds;
    'Tis then the earth is quiet, all nature seems to rest;

    Zephyrs gently stir the leaves from mead to hill-tops' crest

    'Tis then the breath of evening comes forth in solemn lay;

    It is the herald of the night, a requiem of the day;

    The trees bow in submission; all life, from sky to sod,
    Is wrapt in twilight hour, in sweetest praise to God.
                                                — Mathonihah Thomas.