The Shining Light

“The path of the just is as the shining tight, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” — PROV. iv. 18.

T?VERY man’s life is a path. Long in some cases, it is in others so short that many — - that all those, indeed, of whom our Lord says the kingdom of heaven is — leave no impression on the sands of time other than the prints of little feet and a few brief steps. With all varieties of length, this path presents also an endless variety of scenes and circumstances. Like travellers whose road, passing over a mountainous district, now climbs to the summits of the hills, and now plunges into their gloomy gorges — some meet many “ups and downs” in life; they come out of one difficulty to encounter another; their home is saddened by successive bereavements; misfortune follows on misfortune, as do the billows on each other that come swelling in with foaming crests to break, and thunder on the beach. On the other hand, some who enjoy the peace of God and a good conscience, have so little in their outward circumstances to give them trouble, that their life, like a river flowing by wooded banks and through fertile fields, glides smoothly on; and they are in considerable danger of loving the world too well, of forgetting a better one, amid so much in this to gratify their desires. But, long or short, bordered with flowers or beset with thorns, life is but a pathway which has, for all the crowd that travel it, in the cradle a common beginning, and in the coffin a common end.

The grave is the end of all men. Here all things earthly — the grandest schemes, ambition’s ladder, love’s torch, the marriage altar, the conqueror’s sword, the poet’s laurels, the rich man’s gold, the poor man’s sorrows, woman’s beauty, and manly strength — find their tomb. “One dieth,” says Job, “in his full strength, being wholly at ease and in quiet; his breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow. Another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust; the worms shall cover them.”

But life is a path in another, and still more important, sense. We shift the scene. Now, in place of many roads that start from a common cradle to meet again, after diverging far apart, in a common grave, we see but two; and they proceed in entirely opposite directions. They open differently — a wide gate admits to this, a narrow one to that. They end differently — these the inscriptions above their respective portals: on this, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction; and many there be that go in thereat;” on that, “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth to life; and few there be that find it.” Solemn words, which it were well all had grace to lay to heart! On the one path or the other our feet are planted; and since every step is one upward to heaven or downward to perdition, it is sufficient to cast a solemn aspect over the glories of each setting sun, to think that it leaves us a day nearer hell, or nearer heaven. Different in character

—that broad and this narrow; different in access — that wide and this strait; different in their ends — this terminating in heaven and that in hell: these roads, on which a motley crowd, kings and beggars both, may be met, differ no less in the character of those who travel them; and we are thereby furnished with tests for determining, each for himself, this grave and most important question — On which am I travelling? To which of the parties do I belong?

One of these lies in the progressive advancement of God’s people in virtue, in holiness, and in all manner of heavenly graces — a distinctive feature of their character which it may be interesting and profitable to study, as set forth in this beautiful image, “The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

But, before looking at the figure, let us, in the first instance, consider Why God’s people are called just.

Of all who have lived in the world since Adam’s fall, our Lord Jesus Christ alone was, in the strict and proper sense of the word, entitled to that high character — to an appellation which He obtained from an unlooked-for quarter in the darkest crisis of His history. The fulness of time has come. The hour of redemption strikes. All things are now ready — the altar and the victim both. There is the wood and the fire, and the Lamb also for a burnt-offering. Heaven and hell look on in high expectancy. The representative and substitute of an elect world, the Son of Mary and of God, stands before Pilate to be condemned to death; and pour out His sinless soul an offering for sin. At this moment, to human eyes, the fate of Jesus hangs in the balance: for though the Jews demand His execution, the Roman governor refuses His assent. Strange rumours about this same Jesus of Nazareth, how He cured the most inveterate diseases, calmed storms on the deep, cast out devils, opened the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, and even the graves of the dead, have reached Pilate’s ear; stirred, astonished, and awed the palace. The Roman hesitates to strike; not so much probably out of regard to justice, as because he is afraid to challenge and provoke the power of this unknown; and rouse perhaps a lion in this gentle Lamb. Besides, there is a strange calm, lofty, mysterious dignity in the bearing of the prisoner that strikes terror into the heart of his time-serving, guilty judge; making him shrink back like one who is about to take a leap in the dark — he knows not where. Indeed, once and again, he attempts to save the accused. He pleads his cause, but in vain. And now, as no way of escape seems left, either for the prisoner or himself, submitting like a heathen to the Fates, he resumes his place on the seat of judgment, and, though reluctant, is about to pronounce the fatal sentence. At this critical moment there is a stir among the crowd, through which one, wearing Pilate’s livery, is seen elbowing his way. He comes in hot haste, a messenger from Pilate’s wife; and ascending the steps, whispers this warning in his master’s ear, “Have thou nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of Him.” Strange, of all the thousands whom Jesus had blessed and cured, there was not so much as one to cry, Crucify Him not! Strange, as the only confession of Him came from the lips of a dying thief, the only voice raised in His behalf came from the lips of a dreaming woman! Yet though He was despised and rejected of men, though He came unto His own and His own received Him not, well spoke that dreamer. Let the guards unbind His arms, let Him break the strange silence that seals His lips, and He holds up His hands high above that raging multitude, before them, before the priests, before Pilate, before heaven as well as earth, before God himself, to say, These hands are clean! He, and He alone, of all that ever lived, since sin entered our world, was without sin — guile, there was none in His mouth; guilt, there was none in His heart. In Him a clean thing came out of an unclean. Though entering the world by Mary’s womb, He was by birth the Just One. Though called the friend of publicans and sinners, He — holy, harmless, and undefiled, separate from sinners, as oil from the water amid which it floats — was in life the Just One. Though condemned as a malefactor, and crucified between two thieves, He was in death the Just One. He died, as Scripture says, “the just for the unjust, that we might be saved” — that His righteousness, the merits of His holy life and of His atoning death, being imputed to us, we might appear righteous; in othef words, be reckoned just in the judgment, and therefore acquitted at the

bar, of a holy God. Thus the apostle says, “justified by faith” — in other words, made just through the righteousness which grace on God’s part imputes, and faith on ours receives — “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So I remark —

It is through the righteousness of Jesus Chiist that any, in the strict and proper sense of the term, are just in the sight of God.

Society divides itself into a variety of classes — an arrangement that to some extent seems as much a law of Providence as the division of the hand into fingers, or of a tree into boughs, and of its boughs into branches. So we speak of the higher and lower classes, of nobles and commoners, of sovereigns and subjects, of the rich and the poor, of the learned and the unlearned. Like the differences of stature among the individuals of a crowd, between even giants and pigmies, to one who surveys them from a lofty bartizan, the ordinary distinctions of society vanish in the sight of heaven; and in the eyes of Him who looks down on the world from the heights of divinity, there remains but one, only one distinction. It is that which divides the whole human family, princes and peasants both, into two great classes — the good and evil, the just and unjust — and so, for example, it is said, “God maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and the good; and his rain to fall on the just and unjust.” At any rate, no other distinction but that survives the stroke of death; descending with us into the grave and making it our peaceful bed, or a doleful prison. You cannot tell the skull of a king from that of a beggar; and in the grave, beauty the most charming and deformity the most revolting moulder into indistinguishable dust. Yet Jesus knows them that are His. It is as the just they sleep in Him; and as the just they shall rise from their graves on that day when the trumpet sounds the resurrection, and it shall be said “to the north, Give up, and to the south, Keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth!”

But how do any become just with God? It cannot be because they are sinless. There is not a just man on earth that doeth good and sinneth not; and the inspired author of that statement also remarks of those who may in a sense be called just, “a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.” And since the best do fall, and that not seven times, nor seventy times seven, but times and ways innumerable, notwithstanding that they do rise again, and, through the grace of God sanctifying the humbling lesson, may rise, like the fabled giant, stronger than before, then in the words of the patriarch, “How can man be just with God? If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand.” Such being the case, the apostle argues with unanswerable logic, that by the deeds of a law which requires perfect obedience, in other words, by man’s own righteousness, “no flesh can be justified in the sight of God.”

The Shuhite asked, as you will find written in the Book of Job, “How can man be justified with God? how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, that is a worm; and the son of man, which is a worm?” Bildad’s question finds its answer, the grand difficulty of all heathen nations and ages its complete solution, in the gospel. Let this poor “worm” but creep through the dust to the foot of the Cross, and bathe itself in the blood of Calvary: and how it is changed! What a change on that which, once a creeping caterpillar, crawling on the ground and devouring garbage, now spreads its painted wings, and springs into the air to live in sunbeams and to feed on flowers! What a change on the leper, when, bending his way from the prophet’s house to the banks of Jordan, he goes down into the sacred stream; and dips, and dips again, and, taking the seventh plunge, rises from the parting waters with a skin like a little child’s! But a greater change is here. At the foot of the Cross, sprinkled with the blood of Christ, the sinner changes into a saint; the unjust into the just; the condemned into the acquitted; the child of hell into an heir of heaven. Putting off self-righteousness to put on Christ, he exchanges a beggar’s rags for a kingly robe; once covered with iniquity as with a garment, he now stands apparelled in one finer, fairer, costlier than ever angel wore; and in the eyes of his Sovereign Judge, the believer, happy man! is without spot, or stain, or any such thing. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

As appears from this figure, the spiritual life of the just, the justified, the believer in Jesus, is one Q{ progress.

A connoisseur in works of art, so soon as the dust of years has been wiped from an old picture, can name the master who painted the glowing canvas. So also, though time has left no record of their history, and no date stands carved on the crumbling ruins, an antiquarian can tell from its form when that arch was sprung; from their capitals, by what hands, long mouldering in the dust, these grand, impressive, silent pillars were reared on their massive pedestals. The works of all great men, and those of all great ages, are marked by properties peculiar to themselves. And features entirely their own are eminently characteristic of all the works of God; so characteristic of these that the untutored Arab when challenged to prove in God the existence of a being whom he had never touched, nor heard, nor seen, regarded the scoffer with amazement! nor deigned to return any answer to his gibes but one borrowed from the scenes of his native desert: “Just as I know,” he replied, in terms worth a volume of divinity — “Just as I know,” pointing to a footprint on the sand, “whether it was a man or a camel that passed my tent last night.”

So distinguished by a divine wisdom, power, and goodness are God’s works of creation and providence that all Nature, by the gentle voices of her skies and streams, of her fields and forests, as well as by the roar of breakers, the crash of thunder, the rumbling earthquake, the fiery volcano, the destroying hurricane, echoes the closing sentence of this angel hymn, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory!” But the works of God are not less marked by their progressive character than by the attributes of wisdom, power, and goodness. A work of time, the world was built story by story; and course by course the pyramid of animated nature rose from its base, till man, his Maker’s image, and creation’s crowning work, was placed on its lofty summit. Brief as is the history of creation compared to the large portion of the Bible which is devoted to the story of redemption, the opening chapter of Genesis, though leaving much unexplained and wrapt in impenetrable obscurity, shows us God working onward to His Sabbath rest by a series of successive creations; and when we close the pages of revelation to examine those of nature, they who are skilled to read that older record, see progress inscribed on all its stony leaves.

Then, the Providence that governs the world is equally characterised by progress. It is to be seen every morning in the approach of day — not flashing like an explosion to startle the world from sleep, but advancing, by silent though steady steps, from the first faint streak in the east through all the glories and changing hues of sunrise, of amber and saffron and gold and purple, to the blaze of the perfect day; we see it in the growth of plants, from the pale, tender shoot which lifts a tiny head above the soil to its maturity in the tree that, with its stately form rifted in the rock, throws out its giant arms, and, battling with the elements, defies the rage of storms; we see it in the change a few days make on the flowers of the garden, or a few months on our corn fields or a few swift years in our families where girls grow into women, and boys into stalwart men. Like God’s works of creation, and His works also of providence, redemption, while displaying all His attributes in their brightest lustre, and forming His greatest work, is also marked by this never-failing feature of progress. The temple of salvation was not built in a day, or in a century, or even in a thousand years. Its foundation was laid in Eden, and at a time remote as the Fall — laid in that promise of a Saviour which God embosomed in the curse He pronounced on the cunning serpent, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Yet not till four thousand long years had come and gone did the Redeemer crown His work; and, in the dying but triumphant accents of His expiring breath, pronounce it finished.0

And it is with the work of our sanctification, the work of renewing grace in the soul, as with all God’s works in all places of His dominion; “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.” In this, as in all things else, progress is God’s plan, and man’s pathway to perfection. Let this yield comfort to some in whom grace seems but a little spark — a feeble, flickering flame, easily quenched and often ready to expire. Let them not be cast down; but pray God, with His Spirit and the breath of His mouth, to blow the smoking flax into a bright, burning, heaven-kindled, and ascending flame. The day of small things in grace is no more to be despised than the day of small things in sin; for it is commonly with Christ formed within us as it was with Christ on Mary’s bosom, in the carpenter’s house of Nazareth. He grew in wisdom as in stature; at first a feeble babe, hanging on a mother’s breast, clinging to a mother’s side, He grew betimes into a man whose voice hushed the tempest, whose foot trode the rolling billows, from whose presence devils fled, and whose behests even the dead obeyed.

Imitating Him whom faith receives both as our propitiation and our pattern, we are by pains and prayer to grow in holiness and humility; in sweetness of temper and heavenliness of mind; in active obedience and patient suffering; in conformity to the will and delight in the ways of God. Why should we be cast down, dispirited, disheartened, and ready to abandon all efforts in an unwarrantable despair? No doubt, whether our aim be high or humble, we always come short of the mark? Yet let us be thankful, though we have not reached, if we are nearing perfection; if, like the harbour lights, we see it ahead of us, not vanishing on the stern, but growing on the bow; if our course shows marks of progress; if our spiritual life is lighting up like the morning; and we can express our experience in the words of the apostle, “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

As does not appear in this figure, the progress of God’s people in a life of grace may be helped and hastened.

The progress of those celestial luminaries that raise the tides of ocean and rule the seasons of the year, and make night and day, morning’s growing dawn and evening’s deepening twilight, is independent of us; both of our works and our wishes. Those heavenly bodies that roll through the fields of space, move in orbits beyond our reach; nor did man ever interfere with their machinery but on that occasion, when, for a special purpose and by miraculous power, Joshua laid his hands on their wheels — “So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted not to go down about a whole day; and there was no day like that before or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.” All experience confirms that observation of the inspired historian. Ah, time moves no slower for the wishes of the miserable wretch, in whose eyes, as he waits the day of execution, its sands never ran, and in whose ears its lessening hours never struck, so quickly — and the long night passes and the dawn comes no sooner for the wishes of the crew that, wrecked on the thundering reef, with a straining ship breaking up beneath and every moment threatening to ingulf them, scan the east with anxious eyes; and watching for the first streak of light, weary, and pray for the coming of the morn. The natural light which shines over our heads and brightens into the perfect day, obeys the unalterable decrees of heaven — our wishes cannot hasten its progress, nor can our indifference by one moment delay or hinder it.

It is otherwise with grace in the soul; in the life, habits, and hearts of God’s chosen people. No doubt sanctification, like redemption, is the peculiar work of God — the life of grace in His people being as much His work as the light that breaks and brightens on the eastern sky when, with almighty hand, He throws open the gates of day. Yet, while God by His Spirit works in sanctification, we also are to work. In this field, as in that of the conversion of the world, Christians are honoured and are called to be fellow-workers with God — the injunction of the apostle being laid on them all: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Hence we are exhorted to grow in grace; to grow in the knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ; to labour for the bread that never perisheth; to forget the things that are behind, and press forward, onward, upward — the path we move on, progress; the end we aim at, perfection. No effort of ours can either hasten or hinder the dawn of day; but by watchfulness and prayer, by the devout use of our Bibles and the hallowed observance of God’s holy day, by waiting on Him in all the ordinances of His house and holding fellowship with our heavenly Head, and Lord, and elder Brother, we can do much to promote our growth in grace, and mature our meetness for the kingdom of heaven. Let us labour for such lofty ends. Anything beneath them is to mistake the grand purpose of life, and to peril the salvation of our souls. He who imagines that the grace of God, once received into his heart, will grow in that soil without either effort, or care, or prayer of his, as without these the dawn breaks and the day brightens above his head, is grievously, fatally mistaken. Alas! his case is described by another figure, though also borrowed from the break of morn: — unlike the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day, his goodness, a delusion, shall be “as a morning cloud and the early dew” that vanish away; and, dissolving into empty air, leave neither on earth nor sky so much as a trace behind them.