The Power of Darkness
Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness. — COLOSSIANS i. 13.
EPHE stories of subterranean caves, where brilliant diamonds, thickly studding vaulted roof and fretted walls, supply the place of lamps, are fancies — childhood’s fairy-tales. Incredible as it may appear to ignorance, on whose admiring eyes it flashes rays of light, science proves that the diamond is formed of the very same matter as common, dull, black coal. It boasts no native light; and dark in the darkness, as the mud or rock where it lies imbedded, it shines, if with a beautiful, yet with a borrowed splendour. How meet an emblem of the priceless jewels that adorn the Saviour’s crown! Besides, like many a gem of man and woman kind, the diamond is of humble origin. Its native state is mean. It lies buried in the deep bowels of the earth; and in that condition is almost as unfit to form a graceful ornament, as the stones that pave our highways, as the rudest pebble which ocean, in her play, rolls upon the beach. Unlike many other crystals, it is foul, encrusted with dirt, and inelegant in form — flashing with none of that matchless lustre which makes it afterwards appear more like a fragment struck from star or sun, than a product of this dull, cold world. That it may glow, and sparkle, and burn with many-coloured fires, and change into a thing of beauty, it has to undergo a rough, and, had it our sensibilities of nerve and life, a painful process. The lapidary receives it from the miner; nor, till he has ground the stone on his flying wheel, and polished it with its own dust, does it pass into the hands of the jeweller to be set in a golden crown, or become the brightest ornament of female loveliness. Through a corresponding preparation Christ’s saints have to go. Are you saved? you have to be sanctified. Are you redeemed? you have to be renewed. You are polluted, and require to be purified; and, as all know who have experienced it, at a great cost of pain and self-denial, sin has to be eradicated — utterly destroyed; in respect of its dominant power, cast down; and in respect of its indwelling power, cast out. This fulfils the prayer, “The very God of peace sanctify you wholly;” and for this, as forming that meetness for the inheritance, which was the subject of my last address, the saints are now either offering up prayer on earth, or, better far, praise and thanks in heaven.
But as the gem, ere it is polished, must be brought from the mine and its naturally base condition, so, ere those whom Christ has redeemed with his blood can be sanctified by his Spirit, they must be called and converted; they must be brought into a new condition; or, in the words of my text, “delivered from the power of darkness,” and “translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.” This, which is the subject before us now, calls our attention to the greatest of all changes. I say the greatest; one even greater than the marvellous transition which takes place at the instant of death — from dying struggles to the glories of the skies. Because, while heaven is the day of which grace is the dawn; the rich, ripe, fruit of which grace is the lovely flower; the inner shrine of that most glorious temple to which grace forms the approach and outer court, — in passing from nature to grace you did not pass from a lower to a higher stage of the same condition — from daybreak to sunshine, but from darkest night to dawn of day. Unlike the worm which changes into a winged insect, or the infant who grows up into a stately man, you became, not a more per feet, but “a new creature” in Jesus Christ. And with deepest gratitude to Him who, filled with pity, and for “his great love wherewith he loved us,” left heaven to save us, let us now consider our original state — “look unto the rock whence we are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence we are digged.”
I. Look at our state of nature and sin as one of darkness.
In its essential nature, sin is as opposed to holiness as darkness is to light; and as different, therefore, from holiness, as a starless midnight from the blaze of noon day. Our natural state is therefore, because of its sinfulness, represented by the emblem of darkness. How appropriate and how expressive the figure! Hence, in describing the condition of the heathen, those who neither know God, nor Him whom to know is life eternal, the Bible says, The darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people. Hence, those ancient prophets who lived in the morning of the church — and in the rosy east, and clouds already touched with gold, saw a sun beneath the horizon hastening to his rise — hailed Jesus, as a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel. Hence also, inasmuch as he reveals saving truth, redeems from sin, and shines upon the path he himself has opened to heaven, Jesus stood before the multitude, and said, as he raised his hand to the blazing sun, “I am the light of the world.” Jesus! Thy people’s shield, thou art also thy people’s sun; a shield that never breaks in battle, and a sun that never sets in night; the source of all the know ledge that illumes, and of all the love that warms us; with healing, as well as heating virtue in thy beams, thou art “The sun of righteousness with healing in his wings.”
To that emblem of our Saviour, so splendid and yet so simple, science imparts additional appropriateness, if the theory be true that accounts for those vast stores of light and heat which we extract from dead dark coal. The coal, which we raise from the bowels of the earth, once grew upon its surface. Some ten or twenty thousand years ago, it formed the giant forests where mighty monsters ranged at will over an unpeopled world. After this rank vegetation had incorporated into its substance those elements of light and heat which the sun poured down from heaven, God, provident of the wants of a race not yet created, buried it in the earth; and thus furnished our world with ample stores of fuel for the future use of man. So, when the sun has set, and the birds have gone to roost, and the stars have come out in the sky, and the door is shut, and the curtains are drawn, and peace and happiness smile on the bright family circle, it is sun-light that shines from the lustres, and sun-heat that glows on the hearth. But whether that speculation of science be true or false, to Jesus we can trace all the light, direct or derived, which illuminates the world. Heavenly fountain of the love that warms and the truth that enlightens mankind, he rose like a sun on this cold benighted earth; and will be the centre around which heaven itself shall roll when tides have ceased to flow below, and suns to shine above. “The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”
But, turning from the Saviour to contemplate the sinner, I pray you to observe, that our state by nature is one not merely of darkness, but of double darkness. It is always dark, pitch dark, even at noonday, to the blind; nor blazing sun, nor shining stars to them. With God “the night shineth as the day,” but to the unhappy blind, “He maketh the day dark with night.” Yet strong as this figure is, it does not adequately represent the full misery of our condition. We had neither light nor sight. That we may be saved, do you not perceive that two things, therefore, must be done for us? We require a medium to see by, as well as eyes to see with; to the revelation of the Gospel must be added the regeneration of the Holy Spirit; in other words, we must have in Christ an object for faith to see, and in faith we must have eyes to see Christ. Inhabitants of a Christian land, we possess one of these, — like the Hebrews in Goshen we have light in our dwellings; and so far we differ from the heathen, for they have neither light nor sight. They live in darkness so gross, that they do not distinguish purity from pollution. They have no more idea of the way of sal vation, than the blind have of colours. They do not know God. Some worship a cow; some a serpent; some a stone; some the very Devil. In them, reason crouches to adore a beast; and man, made in the image of God, bows his erect form and noble head before a lifeless block. When, from the study of that instinctive and unerring wisdom with which the lower animals — the stork in the period of her migrations, the bee in the construction of its cell — act in their allotted spheres, we turn to this amazing, and all but incredible sense lessness, and stupidity of man, what an illustration have we of the saying, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
But we, who dwell in this land, as I have already said, live in light. Like the angel whom John saw, we stand in the sun. Comparing it with most other lands, we may, at least, call our island-home a Goshen. Let these boast their balmy air, and richer fruits, and sunnier skies! In our religious as well as civil advantages, we enjoy blessings that more than compensate for the gloomy fogs that veil these skies, and the storms that rage on our iron-bound shores. Our lines have fallen in pleasant places, and happy the land, nor to be rashly left, where the light of divine truth streams from a thousand printing-presses, and the candle of the Lord shines bright in its humblest cottages. May I not say that, with their multitude of churches, our cities are illuminated every Sabbath, to celebrate the triumphs of the cross, the great battle that was won on the heights of Calvary, and the peace his heralds proclaim between God and man? Men do perish, yet none need perish. There is no lack of knowledge. The road to heaven is plain. “The wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein.” It is better lighted than any street of this city, or the rugged coasts along which our seamen steer, or the harbours which, over surf-beaten bars, they boldly take in winter’s blackest night.
Notwithstanding the fulness of our light, what multitudes are wrecked and perish! They never reach the harbour, — nor, arriving in heaven, get home! And I am bound to tell you that, unless He, who gave sight to the blind, apply his finger, and touch your eyes with “eye-salve,” their fate shall be yours. What though light streams on our eye-balls? We are in darkness till we are converted; because we are blind, — and that not by accident, but by nature, — born blind. There are animals, both wild and domestic, which, by a strange and mysterious law of providence, are born in that state. “Having eyes, they see not.” Apparently unripe for the birth, they leave their mother’s womb to pass the first period of their being utterly sightless. But, when some ten days have come and gone, time unseals their eyelids, and they are delivered from the power of darkness. But not ten days, nor years, nor any length of time, will do us such friendly office. Not that we shall be always blind. Oh, how men shall see, and regret in another world, the folly they were guilty of in this! Eternity opens the darkest eyes, but opens them, alas, too late; “He lift up his eyes, being in torment.” He is a madman who braves that fate; yet it awaits you, unless you bestir yourselves, and, shaking sloth away, seize the golden opportunity to pursue the Saviour with the blind man’s cry, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!”
I can fancy few sadder sights than an entire family, parents and children, all blind — a home, where the flowers have no beauty, the night has no stars, the morning no blushing dawn, and the azure sky no glorious sun — a home, where they have never looked on each other’s faces; but a blind father sits by the dull fire with a blind boy on his knee, and the sightless mother nurses at her bosom a sightless babe, that never gladdened her with its happy smile. How would such a spectacle touch the most callous feelings, and move to pity even a heart of stone! But a greater calamity is ours. The eyes of our understanding are darkened. Sin quenched man’s sight in Eden; and, strange result! the event that revealed their nakedness to our first parents, shut, closed, sealed their eyes, and those also of their children, to the greater shame of spiritual nakedness. Thus blind to their blindness, and insensible of their need of Jesus, alas! how many allow him to pass by! The precious opportunity of salvation is lost — lost perhaps for ever. Oh, for one hour of the sense and energy of the beggars that sat by the gate of Jericho! Stumbling, often falling, but always to rise, they hung on the skirts of the crowd, plunged headlong into the thick of it, and, elbowing men aside, pursued Jesus with the most plaintive, pitiful, and earnest prayer, “Have mercy on us, 0 Lord, thou Son of David! Have mercy on us, 0 Lord, thou Son of David!” Be yours that cry. Follow your Saviour on their feet; hang on him with the vehemence of one who said, “My soul followeth hard after thee.” Be turned by nothing from your purpose; but keep follow ing, and, as you follow, crying; and I promise you that that cry will stop him as sure as Joshua’s pierced the heavens, and stopped the glowing axles of the sun.
That we may have a deep, and by God’s blessing a saving, impression of our need of salvation, let us look at some aspects of our state by nature in the light, if I may say so, of its darkness.
1. Darkness is a state of indolence.
Night is the proper period for rest. When — emblem of a Christian at his evening prayers — the lark sings in the close of day, and leaves the skies to drop into her dewy nest; when from distant uplands, the rooks, a noisy crowd, come sailing, wheeling home; when the flowers shut their beautiful eyes; when the sun, retiring within the cloudy curtains of the evening, sinks into his ocean-bed — nature, however some may neglect her lessons, teaches man to seek repose. So, with some exceptions, all honest men and women go to sleep in the dark. “They that sleep, sleep in the night;” and this busy world lies hushed in the arms of slumber, till morning, looking in at the window, calls up toil to resume her labours. And thus, when we have been summoned at midnight to a bed of death, how loud the foot-fall sounded in the empty thoroughfare! With thousands around who gave no sign of life, with none abroad but prowling dog or houseless outcast or some guilty wretch, with the tall grim tenements wrapped in gloom, save where student’s lamp, or the faint light of a sick chamber glimmered dim and drear, we have felt such awe as he might do who walks through a city of the dead. Yet, in its hours of deepest darkness and quietest repose, this city presents no true picture of our state by nature. We see it yonder where a city sleeps, while eager angels point Lot’s eyes to the break of day, and urge his tardy steps through the doomed streets of Sodom. A fiery firmament hangs over all the unconverted; and there is need that God send his grace to do them an angel’s office, saving them from impending judgments. Are you still exposed to the wrath of God? Rouse thee, then, from sleep, shake off thy indolence, and leap from thy bed — it is all one whether thou burn on a couch of down or straw. “Escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed,” betake you to the Saviour, lest — since the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin, and he died for the chief of sinners, and salvation is without money and without price, and God is not willing that any should perish — thou perish, more in a sense the victim of thy sloth than of thy guiltiest sins.
Ancient Egypt, however, supplies perhaps the best illustration of the connection which subsists between a state of darkness and a ‘state of indolence. God said to Moses, “Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.” And how passed these days of darkness? They neither bought nor sold; they neither married nor buried; they neither rocked a cradle nor embalmed a corpse. No hammer rang; no merry wheel went round; no fire burned at the brick kiln; no woman sang “behind the mill;” no busy tread sounded on the pavement, nor cheerful dash of oar upon the water. An awful silence reigned throughout the land. As if every house had been in a moment changed into a tomb, and each living man into a mummied corpse, they sat motionless — the king on his weary throne, the peasant in the field, the weaver at his loom, the prisoner in his dungeon. As in the story of some old romance, where a bold knight, going in quest of adventures, sounds his
D horn at the castle gate, and, getting no response, enters to find king, courtiers, servants, horses, all turned into stone — they sat, spell-bound, where the darkness seized them. “They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days.”
Still greater wonder! many a man in this world has not risen from his place, I say not for three days, nor for three years, but ten times three years and more. He is no nearer heaven than he was a long time ago. Borne on, indeed, by the ever-flowing stream of time, and ever-downward course of sin, alas! he is nearer the brink of hell. Perilous indolence! God says, “labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life,” “give diligence to make your calling and election sure,” “seek ye the Lord while he may be found,” and therefore, I say, be up, and doing; time is short; the stake is great; death is at the door, and, if he find you out of Christ, damnation is at his heels. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” Of your many calls, and opportunities, is this all the result? Half awakened, yet unwilling to tear yourself from the arms of pleasure, do you avert your eyes from the light? angry perhaps, at being disturbed, perhaps half sorrowful, do you bid us come back at “a more convenient season?” drowsily turning on your deceitful couch, do you say, “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep?” Then, in God’s name, I ask what shall be the end of these things? The end of these things is death.
2. Darkness is a state of ignorance.
Conducted under the veil of night to the nuptial couch, Jacob finds in the possession of Rachel, as he supposes, an ample reward for the seven long years of weary work and waiting. She, whom his heart wooed and his hands won, is now his wedded wife. He wakes a happy man. Neither suspecting how God had punished him for the deceit he practised on his old blind father, nor how Laban, a greater master of craft than himself, had substituted the elder for the younger daughter, fancy his confusion, when he turns, by the rosy light of morn, to gaze on his beautiful bride, to find the blear-eyed Leah at his side. Yet a day approaches when, from dreams of wealth arid pleasure, many shall awake, in rage and unavailing, sorrow, to the discovery of a greater mistake. What Jacob’s mistake to his, who, embracing pleasure, wakens to find himself in the arms of a hideous demon, dragging him down — struggling, shrieking, into the lowest hell?
But if we would see spiritual darkness represented on a scale in any degree commensurate with the multitude of its victims, and with its destructive power, let us turn to the host of Midian. The memorable night has come when, animated by a divine courage, Gideon leads his three hundred to the bold assault. Silently he plants them around the enemy’s lines, waiting till song and revel have died away, and that mighty host lies buried in stillest slumbers. Then, one trumpet blows loud and clear, startling the wary sentinel on his round. He stops, he listens; and, ere its last echoes have ceased, the whole air is torn with battle-notes. Out of the darkness, trumpet replies to trumpet, and the blast of three hundred, blown loud and long, wakens the deepest sleeper — filling the ear of night with a dreadful din, and the hearts of the bravest with strange and sudden fear. Ere they can ask what mean, whence come these sounds, a sight as strange blazes up through the murky night. Three hundred torch-fires pierce the gloom, and advance in flaming circle on the panic-stricken camp. Suddenly extinguished, once more all is dark. Then — as if the dust of the whirlwind, or the sands of the desert, or the leaves of the forest, had turned into armed men, ready to burst on that uncir- cumcised host — in front, on their rear, on either flank, rings the Hebrews’ battle-cry, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” For dear life the Midianites draw. Mistaking friend for foe, they bury their swords in each other’s bosoms. Wild with terror, stricken mad with pain, each man seizes his fellow by the beard, giving and receiving mortal wounds. And so, not by the arms of Gideon, so much as by the hand of the darkness, was skill outwitted, and bravery defeated, and that mighty army routed and slain. Such is the power of darkness! Yet what is that dying host to one lost soul!
Ugliness and beauty, friend and foe, are all one in the dark. And so are all roads when the belated traveller cannot see his finger before him, and the watery pool throws off no gleam, and earth and sky appear a solid mass of darkness. Unconscious of danger, and dreaming of a home he shall never more see, he draws near the precipice; his foot is on its grassy edge; another step, one loud shriek, and there he lies — a bleeding mass, beneath the crag. Nor, when night comes down upon the deep in fog, or rain, or blinding drift, can the ill-starred mariner distinguish the rock from the sea, or a wrecker’s fire from the harbour lights. Thus — showing us how many sinners perish — the darkness is the cause of their death. They are lost — victims to the “power of darkness.”
The greatest of all mistakes is to miss the path to heaven. Yet see how many, turning from Christ, who says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” in the darkness of their understandings, and the depravity of their hearts, have missed, and are missing it? Some think that their charities, arid public usefulness, and household duties, will save them. Some think, by going the round and lifeless routine of prayers, and preachings, and sacraments, and outward services, that they will certainly secure the favour of God. Some think they may go on in sin, and for a while longer dare the danger, and then put up the helm — veering round when they like on the other tack; while many fancy that they are on the road to heaven, when every step they take, and every day they live, is carrying them farther arid farther away. Others regard religion as a thing of gloom; they reckon the friends of their souls to be the enemies of their happiness. Infatuated men! they fly from the voice of the Shepherd to throw themselves into the jaws of the wolf. Nay, there are some plunged in yet deeper moral darkness, who remind me of a convict whom I saw in the Hulks — that frightful concentration of villany and crime. He had seated himself ostentatiously on a bench. With no blush burning on his beardless cheek, but with an expression rather of satis faction in his face, the boy was polishing the fetter on his ankle. Poor wretch, he was vain of its silvery sheen, and raised sad thoughts in us of pity and wonder at the darkness of his neglected soul. And yet more dark and dreadful is the state of many who would once have said of the life they now lead, “Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing?” Gone in iniquity, they boast, with unblushing face, of the victims whom they have seduced; of the abominable debauch eries which they practise; of virtue ensnared by their villanous arts; of simple, unsuspecting honesty they have overreached; of their scorn for religion, of their contempt of its professors, and their loose, licentious freedom from its holiest bonds. They blazon their sins upon their foreheads, and, parading them before the world, glory in their shame.
No man wishes, no man intends, to go to Hell. And who, that was not plunged in the ignorance of deepest darkness, would choose death rather than life, would embrace sin rather than the Saviour, would wave away the cup of salvation to seize a poisoned chalice, and drink down damning draughts of forbidden pleasure? May God enlighten your eyes lest you sleep the sleep of death! Be not deceived. The talc of the goblet, which the genius of a heathen fashioned, was true; and taught a moral of which many a death-bed furnishes the melancholy illustration. Having made the model of a serpent, he fixed it in the bottom of the cup. Coiled for the spring, a pair of gleaming eyes in its head, and in its open mouth fangs raised to strike, it lay beneath the ruby wine. Nor did he who raised that golden cup to quench his thirst, and quaff the delicious draught, suspect what lay below, till, as he reached the dregs, that dreadful head rose up and glistened before his eyes. So, when life’s cup is nearly emptied, and sin’s last pleasure quaffed, and unwilling lips are draining the bitter dregs, shall rise the ghastly terrors of remorse, and death, and judgment, upon the despairing soul. Be assured, a serpent lurks at the bottom of guilt’s sweetest pleasure. To this awful truth may God, by his word and Holy Spirit, open your eyes! Seeing the serpent, seized with holy horror at the sight, may you fling the temptation from you; and turn to Him, who, with love in his heart, and kindness in his looks, and forgiveness on his lips, and the cup of salvation held out in his hand, cries, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” Here, believe me, is peace that passeth understanding; here are joys that will bear the morning’s reflection, pleasures that are for evermore.