Into his marvellous light : studies in life and belief

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Into His Marvellous Light 1

II. Christ the Pillar of Light 19

I. Into His Marvellous Light

I.

INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT.

" Into His marvellous light." — 1 Peter ii. 9.

He who would attain great things must first believe great things. "To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly." Great lives can be traced back to great aspirations. Ignoble and barren ideas of life do not produce rich and fruitful lives. Men do not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles. Those who in any calling accomplish the higher possibilities of that calling are those who from the first have realized that those higher possibilities exist. The water of the stagnant pool has no energy to rise. The stream that comes bounding from the mountain has in itself power to bound heavenward again in the fountain. Mountains and fountains are essentially related. High springs are the birthplaces of vigorous powers. In all legitimate callings he who succeeds is he who has had high conceptions of success. In the Christian calling this is true. The great Christian lives have felt from the beginning that Christian life is great ; that the light into which the Lord calls us is no " common light of clay/' but, indeed, " His marvellous light."

I would speak to you of some glorious possibilities of Christian experience. "Into His marvellous light." By each of the three chief apostles, John, Paul, and Peter, the splendid possibilities of Christian experience were fully realized. Each has described, by a characteristic title, Christian experience as it looked to him. John calls it " the everlasting life ; " 1 Paul calls it " the glorious liberty ; " 2 Peter calls it " the marvellous light." 3 We are not surprised to find these men becoming great Christians, when their views of Christian experience were so high and wide and great. They saw the greatness of their calling, —

" And by the vision splendid (Were) on (their) way attended."

They tried to live out toward the measure of life's possibilities. In this they were not alone. Many have done the same, many are now doing the same, — believing great things and always living toward great things. To us the

2 Rom. viii. 21.

Christian life has not grown dull, formal, conventional. It has grown newer and greater ; in spite of all the many things in our common existence to hold one back, and keep one down, and beat out one's courage, and blunt one's spiritual perception, and " call the glory from the gray," the Christian calling is to-day God's marvellous light, more wonderful ever as the years pass, lighting up along the avenues of our experience glorious possibilities of knowledge, of direction, of endowment, of support.

Whoever is led to some particularly luminous and happy word wherewith to describe a great experience earns the thanks of all whose privilege it may afterwards be to share that experience. He thus becomes a voice through which many souls utter themselves. We thank the Apostle Peter for his description of the Christian calling. That word, " into His marvellous light," tells magnificently what they find that calling to be who realize its possibilities.

Truly God's marvellous light ! How marvellous this light in contrast with darkness ! — " Who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light." Contrast the situation, the moral atmosphere, the motives, the high and holy enjoyments, the goodly fellowships, the eternal consolations, the brilliant destiny of one who walks and lives in God's marvellous light, with the situation, the atmosphere, the motives, the pleasures, the fellowships, the destiny of one who walks in bestial, profligate, sensual darkness.

How marvellous this light in contrast with the cold twilight of commonplace, conventional experience ! All the difference lies between them that lies between one of our most sullen, humid, relaxing, sunless winter days and one of our dry, clear, buoyant, glorified and glorifying mornings of the early summer. They who have lived in the twilight of conventional religion, acknowledging the routine, but discerning nothing in the substance of their faith to excite wonder or joy, cannot conceive the exhilarating happiness of the higher Christian experience when the liberty is really " glorious," and the sight is really " marvellous."

But we wish to examine in detail some of those glorious possibilities of experience which may unfold themselves to one and another who are called of God's Spirit into His marvellous light. We wish to point out how in a glad and clear Christian experience we may be made far richer and completer than we were before. And I know of no better way to illustrate our

INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT.

theme than to bring forward four types of experience which were realized respectively by four great lives at moments when they stood peculiarly unshadowed in His marvellous light. Their experience, unique for each one of them in respect of the circumstances which attended it, furnishes, in respect of the power realized in it, incalculable encouragement and hope to the Christian of to-day who is walking in the light, as Christ is in the light.

Peter, Paul, John, and Stephen, each in his own life, met an hour when he realized especially the blessing of the marvellous light, and when his experience therein created a magnificent suggestion and encouragement for us. Peter's supreme experience of the marvellous light was on the mountain of the Transfiguration ; 1 Paul's was on the road to Damascus ; 2 John's was on the island of Patmos ; 3 Stephen's was in Jerusalem, at the hour of his intense trial and his victorious death. 4 Each, in his special hour of marvellous light, discovered a glorious possibility of Christian experience. When he stood unshadowed in the marvellous light, Peter realized the meaning of spiritual knowledge ; Paul realized the meaning of spir-

1 St. Matt. xvii. 1-9. 2 Acts ix. 1-8.

INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT.

itual direction ; John realized the meaning of spiritual endowment; Stephen realized the meaning of spiritual support.

Peter, with the sons of Zebedee, stands before the Lord on the mountain top, called without warning into His marvellous light. An utterly new conception of the Person of Christ is imparted to him in that hour. He sees the fashion of his Master's countenance altered, His face shining as the sun, His raiment white and glistening ; and, under the power of emotions he can neither resist nor control, he realizes the meaning and the influence of spiritual knowledge. Behold the new conflict of feelings within him. He is afraid, sorely afraid, bowed to the earth beneath the overshadowing cloud, beneath the sense of unfathomable mystery, beneath the lustre of Omnipotent glory. Yet he is also at peace. With the greater mystery has come a new-born calmness, a sense of having been admitted to something greater than the world can give, and although he measures not his words, nor hardly knows what they are, a new created consciousness of the blessedness of the new knowledge forces from him the confession, " It is good to be here."

His experience is indeed unique in respect of the circumstances attending it ; but the substance of Peter's experience in that marvellous light of the Transfiguration is essentially the experience of all of us who, called from darkness into light, are finding out the meaning and the influence of spiritual knowledge. How unlike is the actual influence upon us of spiritual knowledge to that which we once imagined it to be ! At the beginning of our Christian life we may have thought that the sense of mystery in connection with spiritual knowledge would pass away as we grew older, and that all things would become plain to us. At the beginning there were many things we could not understand ; but, we thought, " I shall understand all presently." How different has been the real influence of advancing spiritual knowledge ! If the Lord has called us, with advancing years, still farther into His marvellous light ; if, as He gave to Peter a new and more magnificent view of the Person of Christ and of the relation of the law and the prophets to Christ, He has also given us brighter and fuller vision of the Lord ; it is no more true of us than it was true of Peter, that the sense of mystery has passed away under the brighter vision of the truth. No ! with the marvellous light has come to us, as to him, the marvellous cloud, the more overwhelming sense of the infinite-

INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT.

ness, the unfathoniableness of truth ; of the wonderf ulness of God ; of the tremendousness of the Divine purpose ; of the impossibility of comprehending all that God is, all that God means. Think not that spiritual knowledge means the clearing up of mystery; think not that spiritual knowledge means the reduction of the infinite truths of God to the easy and familiar terms of everyday life. Spiritual knowledge means to be drawn step by step into the marvellous light of the glory of Christ, and in that light to realize the overshadowing cloud of the infiniteness of truth, till a man sinks down before his God and worships with holy fear. But in that fear is peace. Though each step forward in the marvellous light unfolds more that overwhelms us, more that makes us feel how little we are, and how vast Christ is, we know that here, and only here, have we found the peace the world can neither give nor take away. Though pressed to the earth by the weight of truth we cannot grasp, of knowledge we cannot attain, the consciousness of having reached a nobler life burns within us, and our soul testifies to Christ, " Lord, it is good to be here."

" Into His marvellous light ! " Saul of Tarsus is pressing on his way, impassioned with a mistaken purpose. Suddenly, without a warning, he is called out of darkness into Christ's marvellous light. As with a bolt from heaven, his old life, his old purpose, his old passion, are stricken to the earth. Out of the wreck rises a new man, blind to all behind him, blind to all around him, praying to Christ, " Show me what to do ! " It is his crisis, his second birth. Standing unshadowed in the marvellous light, Paul realizes, for the first time in his life, the meaning of spiritual direction.

As of Peter, so of Paul, we may say that his experience is indeed unique, if we regard only the circumstances attending it ; but we know that his experience in its substance has been that of others whose lives are brought to a crisis in the marvellous light. Paul is by no means the only person who has realized this possibility of Christian experience, even the full meaning of spiritual direction ; who was going on in a certain course which he was satisfied to consider a right course ; who was yielding himself up to a purpose which he was satisisfied to call a proper purpose ; who resented all criticisms upon his course and all interference with his purpose, till life was brought to a standstill by the call of God, speaking out of some providence or shining out of some truth.

INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT.

Paul is not the only one who thought he had light, who persisted he had light, until the light came — God's marvellous light — to show him that he had been walking in darkness. Paul is not the only one who has been called into the marvellous light to realize there, suddenly and fully, the necessity of giving to life a total change of direction, and who has been conscious that that new direction could not be worked out from the past, a continuance of old lines ; but must be a cutting and closing of old lines and a laying of new lines taken straight from Christ Himself. Who that has truly realized this experience of spiritual direction, — whether for him it has amounted to a total change of direction or has been but a bringing back to straightness of lines that had grown lax and crooked, — who, I say, has truly realized this experience of spiritual direction without looking back upon it in wonder and thankfulness? How extraordinary is the revealing power of that marvellous light when it has flooded our path in some moral crisis of life! How it divides the false from the true, exposing, with its unpitying glory, the miserableness of our fallacies, the weakness of our self-delusions ; how it shows up the wrongness of wrong, till, though we have long trained ourselves to call evil good and darkness light, we can answer not a word ! Yes, the sudden accuracy of the long distorted conscience in discerning between good and evil; the rapidity and exactness of self -conviction ; the dissolving and disappearance of familiar shadows of conventional untruths, — these are the wondrous phenomena which attend the inrush of the marvellous light. How extraordinary and how precious is the directing power of that marvellous light when it has completed in us its unpitying work of self-revelation ! Like some tremendous search-light at the mast-head of a man-of-war, when it has turned its awful beam upon the past, disclosing the mistaken way, the unholy delusion, the vanity, the sin, it leaves that past in darkness, abandoned and forgiven ; it sweeps about and pours its glory into the future, streaming now upon a new path, a new way, a new direction, we had not seen, disclosing now new meanings, new motives, new delights we had not realized.

" Into His marvellous light ! " The Lord's Day is spreading over Patmos its mantle of peace, where the lonely Apostle John waits the fulfilment of his exile. Perhaps, even to his obedient soul, the sense of the fruitlessness of his life is weighing upon him. Certainly, for his eagle spirit, it must have been a bitter thing to be caged on that silent rock, when his soul burned to speak a living word to a dying world. Believing, as I do, that the Revelation of John is earlier in time than the Gospel or the Epistles of John, you will see that as yet he had written nothing of that truth which none could write so well as he. On that still Sunday morning, as he walks and thinks, a Voice speaks behind him : " I am Alpha and Omega." He turns, and finds himself standing in the marvellous light. And out of the light comes the charge, the sevenfold charge : " Write, write, write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter." Where is now the loneliness of the exile ? Where is now the sense of the f ruitlessness of lif e ? Gone, forever gone. For the apostle has received his message. In the marvellous light John has learned the meaning of spiritual endowment. Henceforth life can have for him no indefiniteness, no scattering indirection. He has had his orders from his King. His life-work is laid upon him.

Is he alone in this ? Is he realizing a possibility of spiritual experience which none of us may realize ? Yes, alone, if you look but on the circumstances amidst which he received his message ; alone, if you think but of the audible and visible phenomena of that glorious hour, — the voice that mingled with the sound of thundering waves, the glittering girdle, the illustrious countenance " as the sun that shineth in its strength." 1 But not alone, if you think of the substance of his experience rather than of its form. He is but one of many whom God has called into His marvellous light, that He might give them a message, to write or to speak or to live, for His sake and for man's sake. He is but one of many who know what it is to have heard a Divine call summoning them to the consecration of life, for the utterance of the truth and love of Christ ; to utter that truth by a faithful, constant, self-denying service ; to utter it by a pure and gentle ministry of influence, in their own homes, in their own social sphere, in the manifold labors of the church of Christ, Happy are they who can in any sense be conscious of having been called into the marvellous light of Christ, and of having there received a spiritual endowment, — a call, a charge, a message from Him Who has had prophets and apostles as His willing messengers. Can you feel that Christ has given you anything to do ? Can you feel that He has laid any charge upon your life? given you aught to tell or show, in speech or silence to your fellowmen ; aught to make plainer to the eyes that do not see His marvellous light ? Be thankful, for in this you are treading near to the very holiest ground man has ever been permitted to tread !

" Into His marvellous light ! " As one who stands tied to a stake, in the rising tide which must soon cover him, Stephen, the first of the deacons, stands in the rising tide of hatred and malignity which must soon sweep away his life. It is an awful hour, of fierce and unrelenting strain ; immediate expectation of bodily pain, and of the mystery of death. With irrepressible curiosity the eyes of all the council are fastened on him to see if he will break or stand under the strain. " And looking steadfastly on him they saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." Why does he not break under the supreme strain of his life? What is that light upon his face ? It is His marvellous light, the same that Peter had seen, and the same that John and Paul were yet to see. " They looked steadfastly on him." " But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." In that marvellous light he realized, in the hour when he would most have desired to realize it, the full meaning of spiritual support. When the stones were raining upon him, he was praying "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." When the cries of madness were raised about him, he was interceding, " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." When the climax of confusion was bursting over him, " he fell asleep." What was his secret ? What could raise him so far above his circumstances ? What could keep him in perfect peace through all that bitter storm ? It was that possibility of Christian experience which is within the reach of all who are standing in His marvellous light. Spiritual support : the grace that still keeps us from breaking, when the strain has reached the breaking-point ; the power that still renews trust and love and hope when untoward circumstances have hedged us in and bound us fast ; the love that shall still hold us fast with Everlasting Arms, till we fall into the blessed sleep, entering eternally into His marvellous light ! Amen.

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II. Christ The Pillae Of Light

t

II.

CHKIST THE PILLAK OF LIGHT.

Preached on Easter Day, 1891.

" I am the light of the world : he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." — John viii. 12.

A light. A moving light. A man following a moving light. And so my theme, this Easter morning, is and must be " Christ the Pillar of Light." For this is what He means when He says : " I am the light of the world : he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." It was the Feast of Tabernacles, commemorating the journey through the wilderness. In the court of the women were blazing the great candelabra lighted in memory of the pillar of fire. Christ mounts the memory, and speaks from it as from a throne. " I am the light of the world : he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." He loved to mount the greater memories of Israel, and to speak from them as from thrones, His

CHRIST THE PILLAR OF LIGHT.

own kingship over the lives of men. Is it the hoary memory of Abraham, the father of the faithful ? Like a king He says : " Before Abraham was, I am." 1 Is it the memory of the manna in the desert ? Like a king He says : " Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." 2 Is it the memory of the water pouring from the smitten rock ? Like a king He says : " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." 3 This morning He speaks to us from the pillar of light. He mounts that memory, and utters Himself from it, as from a throne. " I am the light of the world : he that f olloweth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

When, looking back to the desert of the exodus, we consider this memory, Israel's pillar of light, we find, on reflection, four reasons why, in the glorious field of resurrection truth, it becomes a worthy symbol of the risen Lord. 4 First, there was light. Second, there was moving light. Third, there was the lighting of the way. Fourth, there was the lighting of the follower.

1 St. Jno. viii. 58. 3 St. Jno. vii. 37.

CHRIST THE PILLAR OF LIGHT.

First, there was light. Light in the pillar itself. It was not the glory of the sunset falling on it, and painting it with transitory color ; it was not the glory of the moon, pouring over its surface a sheen as of burnished silver* The light was the immanent substance of the pillar ; the glory was an underived glory, proceeding from itself. Whilst the common light of day remained, the pillar was a pillar of cloud, the stately witness of its own continuance ; but when darkness overspread the wilderness, when landmarks vanished, and peril ambushed itself in shadow on every hand, then the heart of that cloudy shrine disclosed its interior and immanent glory, pouring light out upon the darkness.

Second, there was moving light. Onward moved the pillar, telling them the wilderness was not their home. Onward, ever onward, from encampment to encampment, from stage to stage ; from palm-shadowed Elims of repose ; from sultry deserts of scarcity ; from hard-fought fields of battle, — still the light moved on.

Third, there was the lighting of the way. It was a perpetual revelation. Hour by hour new features of the wilderness disclosed themselves to the march of light. Paths before unknown were revealed beneath that searching glory. Precipices unsuspected were thrown out of shadow. Ambushes were unmasked, and safety travelled in the train of light.

Fourth, there was the lighting of the follower. The glory fell on every follower. They went through the desert not like prowling robbers, hating detection ; beams from the pillar of light flashed on the vestments of priests, on the spears of soldiers, on the trumpets of choirs, on the ea^er faces of men and women. Walking in the light, they became an army of light. He only lost the light who ceased from following.

Ask not, then, what Jesus meant when, standing in the Temple court in the Feast of Tabernacles commemorating that desert pilgrimage, He called Himself the light of the world. Ask not, then, what Jesus means when, meeting us who believe His resurrection and His risen life, He says to us, this Easter morning, to each man, each woman, each youth, who will receive His word : "I am the light of the world : he that f olloweth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the licit of life."

" I am the light of the world," — Christ the piUar of light. " He that f olloweth Me," — Christ the moving pillar of light. " He that followetli me shall not walk in darkness," — Christ the moving pillar of light, lighting up the way. " He that followetli Me shall have the light of life," — Christ the moving pillar of light, lighting the follower.

I. " I am the light of the world," - — Christ the pillar of light. Christ is light, for Christ is God. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Christ is God manifested. He is the effulgence of His glory. " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 1 Christ is the light of the world. Coming into the world He has brought in Himself a light for every man. The Holy Spirit is the medium, through Whom, as through an atmosphere, the light is carried into the life of each soul. Whoever has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him sees the light by means of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the light of the world ; even as the atmosphere which transmits the sunlight is not the sunlight, but is the medium through which we receive the sunlight. Christ says : 6 1 am the light of the world." Christ is not the reflection of a light, as sometimes the windows of a house blaze with the reflection of the sunset. He is the light. The pillar of light in the desert was not bright with the

1 St. Jno. xiv. 9.

CHRIST THE PILLAR OF LIGHT.

reflection of sunset, nor with the reflection of moonbeams. Its interior and immanent substance was light. It was the underived source of light. It gave light where there was no light. So is Christ the pillar of light. Light is the immanent and underived substance of His being. It is impossible to walk in the unshaded presence of the sun's rays and not be in the light. It is impossible to walk in the unshaded presence of Christ and not be in the light ; for He is the light ; therefore He says, with the positiveness of one who formulates an axiom : " He that folio weth Me shall not walk in darkness." This truth is the postulate of this Easter message. It is the truth assumed as the formation of further reasoning. Whoever grants this postulate, and so receives Christ as the underived and immanent light, is carried already to the conclusions which I have suggested. Whoever cannot grant this postulate, whoever is unable thus to receive Christ, not as a glorious reflection of some light exterior to Himself, but as in Himself and as of Himself light, is unable to accept the truths which rise from this foundation and pile themselves up before our eyes as a pillar of light. I plead with every soul which, on this Easter morning, pants for a more abundant, richer life, to grant this postulate which Christ Himself pronounces, when He says : "I am the light of the world."

II. " I am the light of the world : he that followeth Me/' — Christ, the moving pillar of light. The pillar of light is not anchored in the desert, to stand forever in one place, a wonder of the world, a spectacle to be marvelled at by gaping crowds, or to be ignored by the absorbed and the indifferent. It has appeared for a purpose : to lead men on, shining upon their way, and shining upon themselves. Therefore it moves ; it leads ; it adapts itself to their necessity, which is the necessity of progress. It goes before them that they may follow. It precedes them into all new conditions and new scenes, that it may disclose those conditions and illuminate those scenes. So is Christ the moving pillar of light. Whoever keeps with Him must keep moving. To walk in His light is to be a follower. Forward is His watchword, and is ours. To go to men and lead them on is still His work. To all among us, in whom is His Holy Spirit, revealing the light, Christ is the moving pillar of light, the light that ever goes on — and on ; that says to us by its own gloriousness, "Follow Me." Christ is energy as well as light, — a light that moves as well as a light that sliines. " The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." 1 Behold with what energy the pillar of light moves when the stone is rolled away from the sepulchre, and the light becomes the light of the risen Lord. Behold how in the brief forty days between the Kesurrection and the Ascension He is placing Himself before men to lead them onward, to lead them upward. The angel in the sepulchre testifies to the women of the moving pillar of light, saying, " He goeth before you into Galilee : there shall ye see Him." 2 On the Emmaus road we see the moving pillar of light placing Himself in touch with those two sad lives, and shining upon their way till their own hearts burn with answering light. 3 On the Ascension morning: we see the moving pillar of light, leading them out as far as Bethany, 4 and then leading them up in heart and mind to that life more magnificent, —