Christ the Light
“I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”’ — John 8: 12.
WE are told in the first chapter of Genesis that the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. God said, Let there be light and there was light. The moral and spiritual darkness which followed the sin of our first parents was denser than the physical darkness of chaos. Into this spiritual darkness the light began at once to shine, The curse upon Satan, if Eve heard it, was to her the first beam of the coming day. The dawn grows brighter, until, in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, it is almost daylight. John the Baptist, though a bright and shining light, was but as the morning star to announce the rising of the sun. Now the sun is up, and we have the noon-tide of its glory in the text: “I am the Light of the World.”
A LIGHT TO WORK By. The moon and stars give a beautiful light, but theirs is a light to sleep by. Walk down the streets of Baltimore at midnight, and you are not surprised to find the stores closed and the houses dark. The people are asleep. Walk down the streets at noonday, and if the stores should be closed, you would feel like crying fire to wake the people from their lethargy. Daylight is the time for work. Jesus Christ went about doing good. His life was one of incessant toil; and those of us who walk in that light must be active like him. If we sleep now, it is with the sun shining in our faces,
A LIGHT WHICH DIRECTs. “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness.” Many false tapers will be seen along the way.
Men, with powerful intellects, kindle other lights; and they are the Will-o’-the-Wisps that lead into the quagmires of sin and death. Christ is the only true light. The “Great Britain,” a ship which cost a million dollars, left port with a valuable: cargo and three hundred souls aboard. During a storm the captain mistook a wrecker’s light for a light-house and the ship was wrecked, the cargo lost, and many passengers drowned; and so those who turn
from the true light to guide their vessels of life by these wreckers’
lights which appear may expect a like disastrous result. This Christ-light, to us, may not be very bright, on account of our lack of clearness of vision. The sun may be shining in all its splendor, and yet the diseased eye may see little of its light; but it is all that we have, and whatever Christ is to us we should follow. A party of us went down three hundred steps into the gold mine at Kings Mountain, The guide carried before us a little tallow candle; it was all we had, and we followed that flickering taper until it brought us out into the brightness of the sun. And the conviction you now have may be but as the flickering taper. Follow it out, and you will soon be rejoicing in noonday glory. A LIGHT WHICH PROTECTS. Daylight is a better safeguard than a hundred soldiers. The assassin sneaks in the dark. IfI were compelled to pass through the dangerous streets of a great city, I would prefer to go alone in the daytime, rather than with ten thousand men in the dark. The murderer may creep through the ranks in the dark and plunge his dagger into my heart. Jesus Christ, the light, is the soul’s protection. “They that follow me shall not walk in darkness.” His light is our shield, against which the fiery darts of the wicked fall harmless. A hunter once found himself near a wounded tiger. He heard its growl and the rustle of the leaves under its feet, and he remained crouching in a painful position holding his empty gun one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, fearing lest the breaking of a stick might cause the hungry beast to spring upon him. By and by the sunlight from the East began to tip the tree-tops and to fling its bright javelins down through the boughs. Then the tiger hied away to its den. The coming light was the hunter’s safety. And our sins were like hungry tigers, ever’ ready to devour us. It was the light from heaven which saved us. The light, Christ Jesus it was which came by faith and drove away the sins that threatened our destruction. And none are safe, except those who walk in this light.
A LIGHT WHICH BEAUTIFIES. There is something in man which distinguishes him from the beast. He is a ruin, but like the ruins of Thebes he is noble. He has an imagination, a conscience, a reason, a judgment and a memory; and he has these, before conversion, as well as after. Paul, before he was saved, reasoned before the Jewish Sanhedrin, to convince them that he ought to persecute Christians. The difference between Paul before conversion and Paul after conversion was that this light from Heaven had beautified his entire being. A party of us ascend King’s Mountain before day. As we painfully climb the steep side, our first view is upon a valley of blackness. As we ascend the darkness appears only more distinct. By and by the sun is rising; the light is shining from the East, and when we reached the summit, we find ourselves standing in the centre of a great circular room, carpeted with green and hung about with curtains of crimson and gold. What made the difference? What magic power changed the valley of darkness into the valley of beauty? It was the touch of God’s artist, the light. The Apostle Paul, as the persecutor, was in his massive proportions just as majestic as the mountain, but covered with clouds and darkness, The Apostle Paul with Christ filling his soul was like that moun- tain, lighted up by the glory of heaven. Whatever there is beautiful in you will be made more beautiful by the light. And this light adds new beauties, The beauty of unselfish love, of ministering to others, of humility, of hope and of holiness is added by the light, Christ Jesus. No skill of ancient masier, seen in paint- * ing or sculpture, can compare with the moral beauty of the character made by Jesus Christ.
A LIGHT WHICH REVEALS. Christ on the cross reveals to us our condition as sinners. No where else can we see what sin is; how God hates it. And through Christ on Calvary shines mercy.: It is the only place in all God’s universe, of which I know, where mercy shines at all. Nature is the administrator of justice; keep her laws, and you are rewarded. Break her laws, and you are punished. He reveals to us our own character. Comparing ourselves with ourselves, we may be easily satisfied; but, when we compare ourseives with Christ, we see how far short we have come.
Our pollution is thus made manifest, as we bring it into the light. The housemaid may complain of the sun shining into the room, -because it reveals the dust on the carpet, and the mistress may prefer that the sun shall not fill the parlor, lest the shoddiness of the furniture be seen; but it is not the sun’s fault; it is the fault of the housemaid and the furniture. Let the sun reveal the dust, that we may get rid of it. Let it show our shoddiness, that we may cast out all sham and take in only the real.
A LicHT WHICH Gives LIFE. “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”’ Darkness and death are twin sisters. I have read of a cruel experiment made by some German philosophers, who put a poor child into a dark room and kept it there for twenty years, giving it food and water and clothing, but keeping out the light, to see what effect darkness would have upon the body. The child came out blind, tremulous and idiotic. Whether this is true or not, it might be true. Darkness withers. The “bottomless pit” of the Bible, a place in which there is eternal withering, falling, degeneration, without ever touching bottom. You have read of Dr. Kane’s experience in the long Arctic night, when his crew went blind, his dogs died, and he and they suffered such depression as he could 7 not describe. A world without Christ is, indeed,
A dungeon horrible on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed,
Yet from those flames no light,
But rather darkness visible.”
The presence of Christ accepted and loved can change this hell of death into a heaven of life.
A LIGHT WHICH NOTHING CAN Put Out. A taper of money you may follow very well for a while. Culture will light a man when there are no intricacies and little danger of losing his way. Friendship may satisfy, while friends are true. Almost anything can help us through a bright experience, but to everyone there will come a time of darkness and dampness when the taper of money and friendship and culture will flicker out, and it is then ‘that the light, Christ Jesus, shines the brightest. The last words of Rutherford, as he passed through the valley of the shadow of death, were: “I feed on manna; Oh, for arms to embrace him;
Oh, for a well-tuned harp.” - Dr. Payson’s shout of victory in this hour of trial was: “The battle is fought, the victory is won; I am going to bathe in an ocean of purity and benevolence and happiness through all eternity.” Richard Baxter, when dying, said to his friends: ‘‘I have pain; there is no arguing against sense, but I have peace, I have peace.’’ Robert Bruce, taken suddenly ill at the breakfast table, a few hours afterwards called his children to him and calmly said: “Now God be with you, my dear children; I have breakfasted with you, and shall sup with my Lord Jesus this night.” An old Christian man in the South was told by his physician that he would soon die. ‘“You are mistaken,” said the Christian, “I am not dying.” The next day the doctor insisted that he would live but a few hours. ‘ You are mistaken,” replied the Christian, with a smile, “I do not intend to die.” He came back to see him in the evening, when the death-rattle was in his throat and the death-stare in his eye, and he said: “I told you the truth; I was faithful to you; you are dying this moment.” ‘Oh, no,” replied the man of God, the light gleaming for a moment through his eye of death, “I am almost well; a few more breaths and I shall be perfectly well.” And that old dying Christian told the truth. He was getting well while dying; he was passing through the darkness of suffering and sin and struggle into the light of perfect health and righteousness and rest. The heathen priest used to light his lamp and leave it float out upon the Ganges; if it buffeted the waves and continued to flicker, it was an evidence that the departed soul had gone safely over. We put out all flickering lamps and candles, in the presence of death, because we walk in the sunlight along the path which shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. How different the experience of those who will not open their minds and hearts to the light! Hobbes, the Infidel, who spent his life following the light of reason, had to say, as he came to death, “I am taking a fearful leap in the dark.’’ Goethe, the poet, whose praises have been upon the lips of all lovers of good literature, as his eyes grew misty, reached out his hand and said: “‘ Open the shutter, and Jet in the light.””. The men of unbelief are the men about whom the darkness thickens as age comes and death threatens. The men of faith are the men about whom the light brightens as age comes and death promises relief.
REFLECTIONS. What is the use of light without eyes? Men are blind in sin, and though Christ, the light, has flooded all history and shines with noonday splendor at this moment, they do not see it. He not only gives light, but sight. He opened the eyes of the blind, and he has power to-day to give all who wish it that spiritual discernment which will enable them to behold him, Do you fail to enjoy the light from a lack of vision? Come to the great physician, and have the eye salve of truth applied, and then you will see clearly.
What a little thing can keep out the light. With my little finger I can shut out from my eye all the sun. And so little sins may shut out forever the light of life from our souls. Let us absorb and conserve this light. We are not to be simply reflectors. Reflection is a cold process. Better reflect light than not shine at all, but we are to be ourselves the light of the world. Our streets are lighted by the gas which was made from the coal that had been buried for centuries beneath the surface; the coal that had gathered up in the growing vegetation the beams of the sun and locked them in its prison house. And now that light, so long locked up, is let loose upon our streets, and we walk in its rays. We should absorb the very nature of Christ. As we study his words, as. we worship him, striving to be like him day by day, we absorb the light, then by a process of combustion, self-sacrifice, the zeal of God’s house consuming us, may we be enabled to give forth this light unto the world, so that, as they walk in the light that we make, they shall be walking toward the light eternal; and bye and bye, you and I having been buried, and our lives forgotten, yet all that light that we have made will be conserved in the work of our lives, and when he shall come the second time without sin unto salvation, the light from heaven will be met by the light from earth, and that united light will be the glory of the throne. hs