CHAPTER XII. THE LIGHTS OF THE WORLD. "Ye with mild radiance, every hour, From your dear Saviour's face benign, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house."— MATT. v. 14, 15. SUNDAY light is meant to be carried into daily life, the one is the inspiration and direction of the other: we receive on the first day a supply for the remaining six days. Christians are the lights, not of the church, but of the world not of sabbath days, but of weekdays - not of sabbath life, but of daily life. When Jesus addressed a few rugged fishermen of Galilee, and one or two publicans professing Christianity, and said to them, "Ye are the light of the world," does it not seem as if the world into which they were sent to give light was then in darkness? Was it really so? Was our Lord ignorant of polished Greece? Had he never heard of imperial Rome? Had he seen or heard of none of the monuments of artistic magnificence and of exquisite beauty unrivalled in former ages? The world had then a statuary, whose very remains are now carefully treasured up in our Museums, the admiration of cultivated taste. It had then paintings, so beautiful and so perfect that the very birds of heaven pecked at the grapes upon the canvas as if they were growing upon the vines of the earth. And it had poetry too, so rich that the very fragments of it, which have been drifted down the centuries of the world, are at this moment stored and studied by all who wish to see what bright thoughts in eloquent words human genius can convey. There were in the world gifted and eloquent orators; there was persuasive eloquence, advancing science, and literature, and civilization, of no ordinary greatness. All these existed at the moment that Jesus said to his followers, in language that thousands would have shrunk from, "Ye" are the light of the world. Jesus knew of all these attainments of the earth, and he could appreciate their excellency and beauty too. He that could see and seemingly admire the exquisite tints upon a violet or a rose, who could prefer to all the artistic magnificence of Solomon himself the fair lily of the garden, or the wild field flower, we may depend upon it, had a taste that could appreciate, and did appreciate, those efforts of the brush and the chisel to recover what was lost in Paradise, a perfection that had passed away like a dream, and left scarce a wreck behind it. But whilst he was aware of all, and could exactly estimate all he only could see, because he only could fathom, its utter emptiness and unsatisfactoriness, for nothing of all this cast light on the deepest problems that agitate the heart of man. Socrates, and Plato, and Apelles, and Homer, and Sophocles, could reflect no light upon questions intensely momentous. What must I, a poor sinner, do to be saved? had neither echo nor answer from ancient oracles. Not beauty, but bread will feed me; not the arts and sciences, but a blessing from my Father can do me the highest good. Jesus scanned the wide world with that eye that took it all in; and saw in all the glory that shone from the temples and academies of Athens and Corinth, a pale day that would soon end in everlasting night; he heard in the eloquence of the most gifted orators of ancient days, words that had no echoes in the hearts and consciences of a hungry, an ignorant, and a perishing people; and he beheld, in all the paintings of its painters, and in all the statues of its statuaries, the fugitive attempts to embody still more fugitive impressions; - there was beauty to the eye, but no nutriment to the heart. Under all this exterior also there lay deep corruption; amid all this splendor there was great moral wickedness; and Jesus, with the foresight of a prophet, and with the wisdom of a teacher, and the truthfulness with which man never spake, turning from beholding the magnificent panorama of artistic greatness and grandeur, said, "Ye, the fishermen of Galilee—” not ye, the painters, the poets, and the sculptors of the world"are the light of the world." And he spake truly. If he had not said it, it still would have been true. For what do we find? When we look beneath the surface of the beauty and glory on which the ancient world prided itself, which modern sceptics quote as a proof that we are not indebted to Christianity for all that we most admire, we find lurking the most revolting immorality. Some of the religious rites of the cultivated Greeks were so abominable that they would now be prosecuted by the public magistrate: the names of the most illustrious ladies of the days of Socrates and Plato are not remembered with admiration and approbation now. Athens, in its meridian, in the very age of Pericles, had a population of six hundred thousand, and out of the six hundred thousand, five hundred thousand were slaves, that might be hanged, or drowned, or stoned at their master's bidding. The arts concealed, they did not extirpate, slavery. At first you admire this exterior loveliness, but the moment you look down below, you see what a frail, worthless, and superficial thing is the richest outward splendor among a people without the living and sustaining power of inward and true Christianity. The arts and the sciences may beautify the outward path, they cannot make the path of immorality to be abhorred. They may adorn much that is good, or they may conceal with a meretricious splendor much that is false; but they cannot secure a true and pure morality. They may make an academy, they cannot constitute a people. Arts are not the parents of whatsoever things are pure, and just, and beautiful. Painting, poetry, science, music, are fit to be the handmaids, they never can be the mothers of all that truly adorns and really elevates mankind. They may beautify the capital of the pillar, they cannot be its strong and everlasting foundation. In all the cities of Greece and in all the provinces of Italy, there was no such thing as a home; therefore there was no such thing as a people. Christianity has given the first, and through the first it has generated all the dignity and greatness of the second. It is the light of Christianity, or Christ reflected upon the world, alone, that solves the deepest questions, and answers the most anxious inquiries of mankind. The object of light is to disclose what would be otherwise unseen. What do we see in this light? The very first object this light discloses is God. The ideas of God entertained by even the most gifted of ancient times were extremely distorted and imperfect but if we look at God in the light we now have, his greatness, his goodness, his mercy, his justice, his holiness, his character, shine out grand and noble; not comparison, but contrast, to every conception of his glory that was entertained before. The sun can only be seen in his own light; Deity can be seen in his own eternal splendor only. A Christian now has an idea of God the heathen nations never dreamed of. Heathendom, in fact, was midnight; Mahometanism is a smoke that darkens the air; Romanism is a portentous eclipse at noonday; but Christianity is the light that shines in darkness, and reflects its beams upon every problem that man feels most deeply important, and gives the sure answer to every question that needs an answer in the yearning heart of nature. One great question, for instance, has long been felt, How shall man, a sinner, be justified before God? No oracle but that of the Bible gives an answer to it. Another question has often been asked, What is the way to heaven? No light from ancient shrines, or altars, or temples, or tripods, gives us the least explanation. Will God pardon the sins of them that believe, confess, and forsake them? To that question Heathenism can give no reply. Take any one subject, the deepest and dearest in a dying hour, and where can we get light upon it except from this blessed book, from this holy and precious religion? So much has this book done for us, that the problems that perplexed the academy in ancient times are now the aphorisms that are taught in Sunday schools. The great questions that philosophers could not solve, a Sunday school child now will clearly and distinctly explain. Our children know more, and understand more about God, about conscience, duty, heaven, and responsibility, than all the philosophers of Greece and Rome put together. What has made this alteration, whence is this vast superiority? The light of the everlasting gospel is the reason of it. The least in the kingdom of heaven- that is, in the present day - knows more than the greatest beyond or before it. The Parthenon, with all its unrivalled magnificence, before God and before an enlightened mind, sinks into utter meanness and contempt beside that living temple growing up in the age in which we live, built of living stones, upon Christ the Rock |