Spiritual Illumination

2 Cob. iv. 6. — ‘’ For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in oui’ hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

If we compare the record of inspiration in the Scripture with the equally divine record of grace, in the experience of the heart, we shall arrive at this satisfactory conclusion with regard to the enlightening influence which precedes Faith. The soul is in widely diverse states, as to vision of truth, before and after the mighty and creative call. That effectual summons marks a dividing point and all-important juncture. Before that moment, the mind is dark, and has no right and adequate apprehension of divine truth in its spiritual quality, especially the truth concerning the person and grace of

Christ. After that moment, light having been given to the understanding, there is spiritual vision of the truth, which thus becomes attractive, credible, and influential. This change is due to a direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the nature, transfusing grace, implanting life, and opening the mind to believe the truth. Such is the doctrine, and its close connection with saving faith will be obvious at every step of our progress. Now, my brethren, for the orderly examination of this great enlightening change, it appears to me that no plan can be simpler than to follow the order of time, and consider, first the darkness which precedes the act of renewing grace, and secondly the light which follows it. This is the method which we observe in the investigation of any change in the natural world. This is the order of scriptural representation, Eph. v. 8: “For ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.” And both states are distinctly presented in their succession in the text.

I. We must briefly consider the state of darkness. “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness.” A more powerful figure of illustration could not be employed. ‘The mind goes back to the sublime days of creation; to periods when no sun, moon, or stars beamed upon our chaotic globe, and then to the moment when light was born out of dread obscurity. Such was the utter darkness of the unrenewed soul; such is the work of grace.

He must be a careless reader of the New Testament who has not observed how everywhere the native condition of man is depicted as one of eiTor, obscurity, ignorance, and even blindness. So constant is this representation, that if we deny or overlook it, we must fail of doing any justice to the transformation which ensues. In this sense, as in many others, the Gospel brings “light to them that sit in dai-kness.” It is scarcely necessary to inform you, that this is not what we commonly mean by ignorance. No worldly science will supply this defect. The wisdom we are lookins; for is hidden “from the wise and prudent,” and revealed to babes. The darkness in which the ungodly grope may coexist with the brightest attainments of civilization, and the consummate lustre of taste. The soul may be all light except in its spiritual chamber, its holy of holies, and here may be all blackness. It is very important for persons of all classes to comprehend this distinction between natural and spiritual ignorance. Men may have all knowledge and philosophy, and yet the “preaching of the Cross” may be to them “foolishness.” We see it every day. This was the very career of human degeneracy; — “the world by wisdom knew not God.” 1 Cor. i. 21. The objects which the unrenewed eye cannot take in are spiritual objects. For “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The objects themselves are luminous and lovely; they are presented in clearness of revelation; but they are presented to the blind. Men of enlightened and cultivated powers as to every other field, wander in this, without attention, interest, or distinct knowledge. This is the history of the Gospel in every age: “if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them wliicli believe not lest the light of the glorious Gosj)el should shine unto them.” 2 Cor. iv. 4.

These are strong words, but they are those of the Holy Ghost; and no words are too strong to represent the absence of all spiritual light in most of those who live amidst the clear shining of Christian day. It is an incantation, and the illusory process is ascribed to the evil one. Part of the malady, and its most fearful symptom, is that the blind man does not know that he is blind. “Are we blind also?” asked the indignant Pharisees, John ix. 40, when Jesus pointed out this dazzling consequence of his light on proud minds. Sinners may be addressed as was Laodicea, Rev. iii. 17: “and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind.” Complete experience is on the part of those only who have been in both conditions, and who, with eyes newly opened, look back to the day when they were without sight. And they marvel how they could remain so long without impression from the truth.

Most obviously, we look for no change in the object of knowledge: that abides essentially unaltered forever. God and Christ vary not. The same truth is objectively presented to the believer and the unbeliever. Both read the same characters. Both hear the same messages. Both crucified robbers beheld the same cross betwixt them. All heaven and all hell shall concentrate their gaze on the same Jesus on the day of doom. Yet the apprehended object differs widely. The object is seen divinely. Every object is seen, whether literally or metaphorically, according to the optical condition of the seeing organ. The failure may amount to total absence of vision. He sees nothing. It is there, but not for him. The sun is on high, and in meridian, but these are sightless balls which he rolls. This is the condition of the unrenewed man in the presence of glorious and heavenly realities. Following out the resemblances between natural and spiritual taste, we might liken his heedless ignorance to that of a boor, straying unaffected among the galleries of Florence, Dresden, or Rome. He sees, indeed, with that outward organ which he has in common with beasts — the matter and the form of sculptures and paintings; and this may be compared to what the natural man beholds of religious verity; but the higher beauty and conformity, whether tasteful or moral, are nnseen. The horse sees the mountain or the lake, as well as his master. You can imagine a ^^Tetch so brutalized by passion and base indulgence as to recognize in the purest beauty only a bait for appetite. Every object presented to the cognition of human ruind is apprehended under the forms and conditions belonoino; to that mind. The rapturous clash of instruments and voices in the Messiah of Handel is to some only a chaos of noise. Having ears, they hear not. Why should it be otherwise in the spiritual world? It is not otherwise. You are surrounded by glories which you do not appreciate. There are qualities, relations, beauties, sublimities, to which you are dead. You hear others around you talking of things which you see not. Ah! the god of this world has made you blind. Not to dwell more than a moment, let me ask what see you of the eldl of sin, the beauty of holiness, the impersonation of infinite excellence in Christ, the misery of your defiled and helpless condition, the wrath that is to come, or the free offer of abounding grace made to you by God in Christ? As to all these things, is not the citation from the prophet applicable to you? Matt. xiii. 15: “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”

It has been mooted in the schools of theology whether the fall has depraved the understanding, and whether the unregenerate man, as such, sees the truth less clearly or fully than the regenerate man. But surely any one’s philosophy must strangely canton off the mind into discerptible faculties, and grossly ignore the unity of the human spirit, if it conceives of a fallen creature wholly unfallen in his understanding. Whatever Scripture says of this great change lays a mighty emphasis on the clearing of intellectual apprehension. We do not, therefore, hold that the more truly and adequately the sinner beholds God, the more he hates Mm. The very view of God which lie has is vitiated. The clear view of the God THAT IS would be transforming. In point of fact, it is this very view which actually transforms; as numerous Scriptures show. Ungodly men are void of the true knowledge of God in Christ. Paul explains the enmity of those who murdered Jesus to this cause, in a passage which settles the cjuestion, 1 Cor. ii. 7: “For we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which none of the jDrinces of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Unregenerate men know not this wisdom. If they knew this wisdom, (we may argue with Paul,) they would be rightly affected. Mind and heart are both Tong. As has been declared to you, a certain sort of seeing they have, but not of the objects, as they are, in their spiritual grace and loveliness. And I will observe by anticipation, the human mind is so constituted, in regard to the influence of light on its actings, that as conviction infallibly ensues on received demonstration, so faith infallibly follows upon clear and full spiritual knowledge. The “vail is done away in Christ.” 2 Cor. iii. 14. The reason why any man remains in enmity is given by John, 1 John ii. 11: he “is in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness (// Gloria) hath blinded his eyes.” And such is the deplorable condition of many who are coolly speculating on their own wretched midnight. But we cannot longer dwell on the state of darkness.

II. We must next consider the state of LIGHT. “God who commanded the lig-ht to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” This is a most comprehensive passage, carrying all heaven in its bosom, but we are concerned with it now only in a particular aspect. Mark attentively its grand assertion, made in the name of believers: “God Jiaih shined in our hearts.’’’^ Like that of John: “The true light now shineth.” This is divine illumination. Consider the result of this ray; it is knowledge. There is a communication from God not merely of feeling, frame, mood, disposition, or heart, but of knowledge. This irradiation is “to give the light of knowledge.” To the intellect or knowing power of man, this is of course the primal gift. It is the boon of the understanding to know, and of the spiritual understanding it is the heaven. “This is eternal life, to Tcnoiv the only tiTie God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

]S“ow, it only remains to inquire what is known. What is the object of this science What truth is worthy to invoke this Divine intervention? The answer is distinct: the Gloey OF God; a phrase which in Hebrew idiom brings along with it ideas of surpassing light, such as transfioTired the Hio;h Priest within the vail when it radiated from the cherubic propitiatory throne. Such splendor demands a curtain or a miiTor, to dim and modify the blaze of godhead, and this has been afforded in the humanity of the Son of God. From amidst the central and consumins: disk of insufferable deity there smiles and weeps on us a brother’s countenance. It is” the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Our eye confronts not the absolute godhead, but the mirrored and subdued glory of incarnation. For” we all.

with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glor^, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Such is briefly an exposition of the latter clause of our text. Here we have vividly portrayed the second state of the convert, or that of “light in the Lord.” This is a great contrast, which is most marked in abrupt conversions, like that of Paul himself, whose history furnishes us with a lively type at that juncture when Ananias put his hands on him, and “there fell from his eyes as it had been scales.” Acts ix. 17. All language fails to convey internal transformations, but experience identifies the various scriptural statements, as indicating precisely what has happened to the believer himself A voice has said, “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” Old things are passed away, behold all things have become new. As when a voyager long familiar with our northern stars, but for days confined to his berth with illness, suddenly emerges on some fair tropical night, and, standing on deck, gazes into the deep dark blue of a new heaven, wdth twinkling constellations, and salutes the Southern Cross. Nay, it is a transporting from a dark to an illumined planet, as in that word. Col. i. 12, 13: “Giving thanks unto the Father, wkicli hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son;” in which you cannot fail to observe that the Kingdom of God’s dear Son is the inheritance of the saints in light. The same eye which just now saw nothing, sees all things; not fully, not clearly, yet really. Let the soul stand still amid the spiritual panorama and see the salvation of God. Thus in the beautiful dioramic exhibitions of art, we have sat in darkened chambers, awaiting some exquisite dissolving view, and have seen magical apparitions of cities, lakes, and Alps, growing brilliant upon the canvas. It was all there before. What has been added? My brethren, it is Light! God’s chosen metaphor is best. It is Light. The FIAT LUX has been uttered. God, who commanded light to shine on chaos hath shined in our hearts. The things which vere lately unseen now stand forth radiant. Sin is the dreadful sombre background; Christ, on the Cross, is the heavenly centre of the scene. In that dying face shines all the fulness of the godhead bodily. It was all there before, objectively, but in darkness. Light has broken in, “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Hir: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye might know what is the hope of your calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” Eph. i. 17, 18. Light is thrown on a magnificent object which was late in obscurity. And the lovely image of God, from being a dead statue, opens his lips and says to thee: “I am the Light of the World: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” John viii. 12.

Students of Scripture learn, day by day, what a manifold wisdom lies WTapped in the vocabulary of Inspiration, in which every figure, phrase, or illustration is the best possible. For the heavenly act here intended no metaphor would serve but that of illumination. Of all God’s creatures, one of the most glorious, as he who lias lost it will tell you, is Light. It was well called the shadow of God. It is truth materialized. It is the indispensable condition of seeing; every thing else may be present, object, organ, sensation, but if there is no light, there is no vision. Light makes known to us fonn, color, and beauty. In truth, we see nothing but light; since all we call visible objects are only so much light reflected to the eye. How easily, therefore. Light represents Truth; especially the absolute, infinite, and eternal Truth. “God is Light, and in him is no darkness at all.” He is the first supreme, essential object of spiritual vision; but he is such an object only to the absolute Reason; i. e.^ only to himself God is eternally both knowing and known. The mind is plainly made to receive truth, as the eye to receive light. To an intelligent spirit we conceive no other way of God’s communicating himself than by communicating truth, and himself as truth. Hence most naturally proceeds the figure of radiation or illumination. The divine way of communicating himself as truth is by the Word, Xoyog so called as being revealing Reason, manifestative light: into this deep and precious mystery we may not now inquire. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light sliinetli in darkness, and the darkness received it not.” Some, however, receive; and thus we are brought back to the very point from which we diverged. The act of God, by which the passage from the first state to the second is accomplished, is an act which ]nay best be described as the giving of light

Let me flatter myself, beloved, that no indulgence of mine in the languasre of fio;ure has misled any to sup23ose the interposition of any medium, whether of ray or ether, to be materially present between the thinking substance and the objective truth. Most lamely and feebly we try to clamber up this ladder of words to the heights of God. Sometimes Ave use one round, and then we leave it for one hio’her, and at length ascend above them all. When God gives light, that which he operates is “wiought in and upon the thinking subject, the mind. Hence the other scriptural emblem. God’s touch gives light to a blind eye; in other words, gives sight, or enables it to see. The faculty is awakened. There is visual power where there was none. The nerve that was dead is alive; what the old English of our Bible calls “quickening.” By another figure it is named “calling.” God “hath called you out of darkness into marvellous light.” 1 Pet. ii. 9. All these modes of representation go to indicate that the faculty of vision is a gift of God’s grace, and product of his immediate power, and not merely a new and unprompted activity of the hitherto unquickened nature.

I^ow, the progress of our experimental investigation constrains us to look at the scriptural connection between God’s sovereign renovating act and light. It is not a pulpit trope, nor a metaphysical vagary, but a connection set forth in biblical statements, too often recurring to be accidental or unimportant. We have seen the apostle John’s identification of light and life, Ac have seen in juxtaposition the new light and the new life. 1 John i. 1. The Christ who had been subjected to their senses was “the Word of life.” “The Life was manifested and we have seen it, (/. <?., it is Light for only light is seen.) Then, in verse 2, it was “mth the Father,” as in John i. 1, “The Word was with God.” Now, this identity of light and life is instructive and comforting. There is light, there is life, in the Word; there is truth, and there is a new nature by eflfectual calling. Peter affirms the like instrumentality of truth. He who has this light, this truth, this Divine eternal Word, has regeneration, 1 Peter i. 29: “being born again (here is regeneration) by the Word of God, (here is the Logos as communicative of truth,) which liveth and abideth forever.” (Here is the eternity of the divine truth or Word, so communicated.) A wretched darkling, under conviction of his sin and sorrow for the same, is astray in a waste, howling wilderness. The path of deliverance is right before him, but he dares not advance his foot one step lest he plunge over a precipice. Either by degrees, or all at once, a wide-spread light addresses itself to the eye, and every thing is clear. low, the result would be precisely the same if the traveller were blind, and his sight were suddenly restored. Both figures are used in Scripture. In both what is vouchsafed is vision. In both it is the Spirit of God who acts. In both, God “shineth in our heart to give the light of the knowledge of his glory.” It is the waking up of a new nature, a quickening, a new birth, a renovation, a regeneration, an effectual call from darkness to light. If tke text teaches any thing, it teaches that bold doctrine of the Reformation champions, that the first touch is that of God. While he does no violence to freedom; while he conducts his greatest marvel in new creation according to the laws he has impressed on the human mind; while he draws by the bands of a man; while he allows the soul to move agreeably to vision of truth, — it is God who begins. It is the same God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, that hath shined in our hearts. In the first motion our hearts have no activity. The irradiation is of God. Of God’s part in the spiritual birth, we cannot be conscious. Our consciousness takes knowledge of a lowxr plane, or of our own acts and states; but of the instant result we are instantly conscious. The blind eye is turned towards the benignant surgeon; it sees not the hand, or the couching-needle; but it looks and sees the countenance of love. The acts of God are graciously mysterious, especially in the birth of a new nature. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it Cometh nor whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” John iii. 8. Yet the results are visible and momentous. It is, however, of great importance to warn every young Christian that experiences so far removed from those of common life cannot be adequately reported in words or comprehended in definitions. The very simplicity of the acts forbids this. That which is unique baffles comparison. The difficulty is not peculiar to this subject, nor to matters of religion. It inheres in many parts of the world of intellect and even of sense. Try a few instances: Give a perfect definition of Truth. Explain

to one who never felt it the feeling of love. Give a deaf man some notion of harmony. Describe light to one born blind. How, then, can you hope, by any art of cunning language, to represent what is peculiar to spiritual apprehension of truth? Experience only can set it beyond all mistake; and experience, guided by the Word, will distinguish it as simple cognition from all those emotional consequences wliicli color it, and sometimes seem to be included in it, but wliicli really follow it as effects in the order of nature.

But, supposing this divine illustration to have been vouchsafed to the soul, what lias this to do with faith? There is a spiritual knowledge, a new and peculiar apprehension of the truth. But is this Faith? The question is imyortant and delicate, and the reply should be well considered and diligently weighed. Before offering a categorical answer, there are some general remarks which will serve to clear not only this, but many kindred subjects. The operations of the mind in regard to objective truth are very recondite and very rapid. This is true, even of those which are most familiar and simple. Thoughts, emotions, and choices, which are successive, may seem to our consciousness to be simultaneous. As the ray of light and the ray of heat, to use j)opular phraseology, enter by the same aperture at the same instant, so a perception and an emotion may be undistinguishable in time, and yet one may be the caus of the other. The final cause of such rapid succession is occasionally discoverable. I behold a ferocious wild beast beside my bed — I am filled with terror. Safety is promoted by such constitutional fears; and such fears to be useful, must follow instantly upon the mental apprehension. It is this which causes, and, of course, precedes the fear, yet no measurable tune can be interjDOsed between them. Hundreds of similar examples might be gathered from every field of human knowledge and sensibility. The cases are innumerable, where, in the order of time, two mental acts, states, exercises, or phenomena j)resent themselves to us as synchronous, when one is as really the cause of the other as the entrance of light is the cause of vision. And this has a direct bearing on the subject of spiritual apprehension, as connected with saving faith. In the happy experience of the renovated soul they may seem to be one and the same; an undivided look at Jesus Christ, dying and drawing sinners to himself We might even go further: though we have no prism to divide the ray, many colors go to form this look of the new creature; not only faith, but hope, love, and joy. Yet these seemingly inseparable rays may be distinguishable.

There is no faith where there is no knowledge. There is no evangelical faith where there is no spiritual knowledge. Wherever sj)iritTial knowledge is present, there is genuine faith, by a necessity of nature and grace. It is not necessary for the redeemed soul to determine the names or effect the analysis of these acceptances of truth. Yet, in strictness of philosophical language, spiritual knowledge is distinct from Faith, and precedes it. By knowledge, the object is furnished which is received by faith as true. The divine ray breaks on the face of Jesus, making it luminous; this is Knowledge; the soul recog-nizes in it the face of its Saviour; this is Faith. But this will become more clear when we come to treat of the nature and the object of faith itself

The statements of doctrine which have occupied us in this discourse touching the spiritual knowledge which precedes faith, may be summed up in few words. Since the fall, man comes into the present life destitute of any clear, just, and adequate knowledge of divine things, and this his ignorance being derived from a depravation of his entire nature, including the intellectual faculty, is not removed by any natural discipline or accomplishment in worldly science. This darkness, while it remains, is an effectual preventive of all right views, feelings, and determinations. To remove this, and to connnunicate to the soul just apprehensions of divine realities, God is pleased to intervene in the case of his people by a direct and instantaneous act terminating on the mind itself, and empowering it to see. This act is j)revious to all saving exercises, and is of God’s sovereignty. Though known only by its effects, it gives life, and in giving life, gives the power of spiritual vision. It is variously represented as giving sight to the blind, and as giving light to an eye in darkness. This spiritual illumination takes place at the new birth. The instrument employed by the sovereign Spirit in all the acts, believings, feelings, and volitions of the soul so regenerated, is Truth. The renewed mind beholds divine objects in a new and indescribable manner, in their self-evidencing brightness, in their beauty, loveliness, and glory, so as to appreciate, taste, and relish them, and in a certain as yet imperfect degree discern them as they are. This new and spiritual cognition, wliicli cannot be represented to sncli as possess no experience, comprises all the circle of revealed truth, and all the objects of the spiritual interest; but in its first actings it more especially fixes on and takes in the glory of grace in the face of Jesus Christ, which object it now, for the first time, apprehends. Under the enlightening of the Holy Ghost the mind most particularly views with apprehension and interest the truth that God is reconciled to it through this Redeemer. And all this apprehension or cognition of the new creatme is preparatory to saving faith, from which, when both are in high measure, it cannot be distinguished.

But what, my dear hearers, is doctrine without experience? The mountain spring is but a mockery of the man athirst, unless its cool crystal stream be tasted? The sun is nothing, unless its ray be seen or felt. Have you made any appropriation of the truth revealed? Has this great luminary ever risen upon your benighted soul? You know something of the cloud, the obscurity, the tempest — but what do you know of any brightness of grace, breaking through those lowering skies? Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from tLe dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Cry aloud to him who giveth liberally and upbraideth not. Let your request be, “Lord, that I may receive my sight!” The grace, the glory, are ready to break through. See you not abeady the dawn of a light, which is the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ? Fix your eyes there. Let Jesus Christ be the one object. Follow up each leading ray. Sigh and pant for nearer vision. There is but one object for the convinced sinner, and that is the dying Jesus. It is before you. He, he is before you! That vail of incredulity hides one whose hand is already reaching towards you to give sight. Oh! be persuaded of his love; see him as he is; accept him as Saviour, Teacher, Master. Make our hearts glad by receiving a grace offered through the medium of a broken ministry, and the honor will be all his; for let me close mth the entire contexture of the passage: “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, liatli shined in our hearts, to give the light and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exercise of the power may be of God, and not of us!” Amen.