Tj Throughout these pages [of his annotated Bible], we are con- stantly impressed by the large mental frontier of Smetham — his range of faculty, his many-sidedness. Here is a fragrant wild flower of the sermonic type, which crops up in that paradise of perfumed philosophy, Solomon's Proverbs. It elucidates that celestial metaphor of the soul's advancement, " The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." The annotation is this : " The nature of the light remains the same. The first feeble ray of the morning has the same chemical elements as those of the brightest noon. So with Christian character." ^
(2) To walk in the light gives expansion to all man's capacities. There is no mental or moral faculty of human nature which is not improved and perfected by walking in the path which leads to eternal life. This results from close and constant association with the Christ, who is the treasury of wisdom and knowledge, and the sum of all excellence. Intimate fellowship with Him is health- giving in the highest degree. It means purity of atmosphere, for He takes us to the mount of vision above the fogs and vapours of impurity and sin ; it means strength, because He is the Bread of Life, of which if a man eat he lives for ever ; it means growth on every side of life, because the Christians say : " Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." Thus in Him and through Him the Christian is perfected.
* W. G. Beardmore, Jama Smetham, Painter, Poet, Essayist, 82.
236 THE TWO PATHS
^ When Christian was passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death it was night, and he could scarcely see his way, but the day began to break as he came near the end of the first part of it, and the sun shone ever brighter and brighter upon the more dangerous part of the valley, so that he was able to walk more safely. Then said he, " His candle shineth on my head, and by His light I go through the darkness." And so, while there may be but a feeble light on your path when you first begin to love and serve Jesus, it will grow brighter like the rising sun as you continue to do so.^
(3) " Unto the perfect day." At this point the simile of the text fails. Here the sun rises but to set ; it travels to its midday splendour only to give place to midnight gloom. It is not so there : her " sun shall no more go down," for " there is no night there." Here light streams to us from God only through created media of His appointment. He " made two great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : he made the stars also " (Gen. i. 16), and through them light streams from Him to us. Hence it is in nature as it is in grace; light and darkness are constantly interchanged, whilst we receive His gifts through created media. But in the Heavenly Country there is no such change, because " the Lord himself is her everlasting light," and the light that is in Him streams forth upon the children of light in one unending day. Blessed permanence of that unending day, that undecaying light ! There is no night there, thank God ! It is not advance and retrogression, but one unchecked progress ; it is not the interchange of happiness and misery, but one unend- ing song of the children of the day, revelling in the everlasting light.
This means not only glory, but also the development of humanity beneath the rays that stream from the light of God. It is there that the hidden powers of the intellect are developed, and the magnificence of mind is manifested. It is there that the capacities of the heart to love are recognized, for there alone its hidden depths are sounded. It is there that the wondrous energies of the spirit are unfolded, in a degree now inconceivable to us, as it is flooded with the vision of God. There, and there only, is the grandeur of humanity realized, where the varied capacities of each created nature attain their perfection. In the
» J. Jeffrey, The Way of Life, 52.
PROVERBS IV. i8, 19 237
imperfect there is no rest, but when we are perfect, "as he is perfect, in the perfect day," then shall be realized by us the joy of the sons of God.
^ When the organism of the oak and the environment which fosters its growth unite to produce the sturdy king of the forest, we consider ourselves justified in concluding that God meant an oak-tree to be the outcome. And when we find a moral nature so constituted that it tends to develop along the line of rectitude, purity, and love, and an environment which offers the least resistance in the direction of righteousness, it is a safe inference that God purposed the development of that nature in the direction of righteousness. When He made the way of transgressors hard, and caused the path of the just to shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, God pointed the direction in which our race was to move. He indicated the destiny of man. He forecast the consummation of the work of the ages. He foreshadowed in that one fact the moral order and progress of man.