Life

“He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life” — John viii. 12.

There is no light in the world so beautiful as the light of life, nor is there any light so revealing. The light of nature does not tell us half so much that we would like to know. There is a deeper revelation in the feeblest breath of life than in all the tremors of all the golden stars. The helpless cry of infancy says more to the human soul than the sun coming out of his chamber to run his race of strength. The light of life carries in its bosom all possible revelations; it reveals my God and my immortality. All arguments for my God grow pale before this certainty; all arguments for my immortality faint in the splendour of immortality begun. Life is the

Jacob’s ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, that binds heaven to earth. The tiniest spark of life is the first step of an ascent whose midway is the angel, whose summit is the Throne of God. The more life is in me, the nearer I am to the Throne; my revelation grows not by what I get from without but by what I gain from within. If I had fulness of life I would have perfectness of vision; I would know what God is, what man is, what heaven is. Is it not written, “This is life eternal to know Thee”? And yet, marvellous to tell, this unspeakable glory may be mine — be mine now, here, in the midst of the present world: “He that folio weth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” It is not by dying it shall come to me; it is by following — following the steps of the Master through life’s strait gate and life’s narrow way. It is by taking up the cross, by lifting the burden, by bearing the sacrifice, by doing the will, that the doctrine shall be known to me.

My soul, hast thou measured the true value of thy life? It lies not in its leading but in its following. It is not what thou hast that reveals to thee thine immortality; it is the sense of what thou hast not. The measure of thee is thine aspiration — thy thirst for Christ. All things rise to their own level. If thy goal were the dust, thou wouldst not seek to transcend the dust; thou wrouldst be satisfied. As long as thou art a child of the dust thou art satisfied, and it is the smallness of thy life that makes thee so. But as thy life grows large it seeks more than it can get below — the measure of the stature of the perfect man, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. Thy glory is thy power to follow; it tells thee there is something beyond thee which yet is thy birthright. Thy cry for God is the voice of God within thee, thy thirst for the heavenly air is the breath of heaven in thy heart. Thy conscious want is thine open door, thy sense of sin is thy height of Pisgah, and thy vision of the world’s gathering shadow is made by the light of life eternal.