The Light-House

Like the treacherous signal-boats that are sometimes stationed by the wreckers off an iron-bound coast, the shifting systems of false religion are continually changing their places. Like them they attract only to bewilder, and allure only to destroy. The unwary mariner follows them with a trembling uncertainty, and only finds out where he is when he feels his ill-fated vessel crashing into a thousand fragments on the beach.

But how different from these floating and delusive systems is that unchanging Gospel of Christ, which stands forth like the towering light-lioiise of Eddystone, with its beacon blaze streaming far out over the midnight sea! The angry waves, through many a long year, have rolled in, thundering against that tower’s base. The winds of heaven have warred fiercely around its pinnacle; the rains have dashed against its gleaming lantern. But there it stands. It moves not. It trembles not; for it is founded on a rock.” Year after year, the storm-stricken mariner looks out for its star-hke light as he sweeps in through the British Channel. It is the first object that meets his eye as he returns on his homeward voyage; it is the last which he beholds, long after his native land has sunk beneath the evening wave.

So is it with the unchanging Gospel of Christ. While other systems rise, and fall, and pass into nothingness, this Gospel (like its immutable author) is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. While other false and flashing lights are extinguished, this, the “true light,” ever shineth.

The Christian goes to his Bible, and finds it always the same. The life-giving doctrines of the Cross, which first brought peace to his soul, are still his solace; the precepts of the Divine Law are still his delight. They have never lost their ability to guide him, or their power to console him. Upon this Gospel his fathers pillowed their dying heads; upon this he means to rest in the trying hour; and he trusts that it shall be the precious heritage of his descendants long after his own corruptible body shall have mouldered into dust.