The Uncreated Beam

“In Thy light shall we see light.” — Psatm xxxvi. 9.

A uiTTLE while ago I was in a certain cathedral when the sunshine, pouring through a very vivid stained-glass window, fell upon the open Bible, and stained its pages with the colour of the medium through which it passed. It was no longer the simple sunshine, but tinted green or purple, as the case might be. And the happening became symbolic, and took on spiritual significance. For how often we filter God’s plain light through coloured windows of our making. We construct a transforming medium, and then we affect to bask in the eternal Light, when all the time we are moving in perverted light of our own creation.

Perhaps it is the stained window of prejudice. A man may cultivate a prejudice until it becomes one of the firm and established windows in his life. He sees everything in the purple rays of this medium. He sees his neighbour in this misinforming light. He looks at society and business as they lie in the self-created hue. Nay, the Bible itself reflects the light of his own prejudice, and he sees only what he wants to see, and not what the Holy Spirit revealed. If only ‘he would remove that stained-glass window, and let God’s sunshine stream through, then in God’s light he would see light, and the revelations would be the ministers of truth and holiness.

Or perhaps the perverting medium is a mean or false ambition. Our ambitions directly influence our desires, and our desires are master-elements in determining our interpretation of God’s truth. We may believe just as much as we want to believe, and that ‘‘want’’ is largely fashioned by the most zealous ambition which is reigning in the soul, It was on this matter that our Master uttered a very significant word : — ‘‘ How can ye believe who seek honour one of another.” Here is belief in one direction fatally affected by a search in another direction. That is to say, a man’s faith ‘is directly related to his quest. A man who is feverish for honours, and who will take any road to get them, cannot believe in Jesus, for the simple reason that he cannot see Him. Everything is deeply coloured in the red hues of his own fiery ambition. He does not see anything as it really is, not even the Lord Himself. And except that man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.

And so for the only wise and healthy life of the soul we need plain-glass windows, ‘* If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light.” If we would enter into the wonderful secrets of salvation we must receive ‘“‘ with meekness”’ the engrafted word, and let it shine like unadulterated light upon all the powers and business of the soul. The revelation may be very startling. ‘‘ Thou hast set our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance.” But the exposure is only the first step to transformation, and, having loved the light, we shall most surely become children of light.