(2) When at length God gave the greatest of revelations, a revelation which was the consummation of all preceding ones; when the Sun of Eighteousness arose with healing in His wings ; then when the morning stars which heralded the light had dis- appeared in the brightness of His rising, when the Son of God came He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. When God would shine forth in all the brightness of His grace, thank God, it was in human form. His greatest gift was in the " man of sorrows and acquainted with grief " : a man though God : human though Divine. He who cg-me thus in human form was " the effulgence of the Father's glory, the express image of his person."
^ One of the heroes of the old Greek legends of whom the Greeks were very fond was called Prometheus. His name means " forethought." He was the friend of the human race, and the inventor and teacher of the arts which adorn life. The Greeks believed that Prometheus took away from man the evil gift of
' G. Matheson, Leaves for Quiet Hours, 144.
PROVERBS XX. 27 303
being able to foresee the future ; and that he was the first who brought fire to men, and taught its use. Pitying the misery of men, who knew not how to cook, he stole fire from heaven, and gave it to them. He also formed men out of clay or mud, and made them alive by putting in a spark of fire, or causing the winds to breathe life into them. But we who have the Bible in our hands know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the real Prometheus. His human soul, indeed, is a lamp which God kindled at Bethlehem nearly nineteen hundred years ago. But as the God-man, He is a Fire, — " the Dayspring from on high," — " the true Light which, coming into the world, lighteth every man." " In him is life ; and the life is the light of men." He is " come to send fire on the earth " — the fire of grace, and refining fire, as well as the fire of judgment. He baptizes " with the Holy Ghost and with fire" — to enlighten the mind, and purify the conscience, and warm the heart with the Divine love.^
^ I think I am beginning to feel something of the intense pride and atheism of my own heart, of its hatred to truth, of its utter lovelessness ; and something I do hope, that I have seen very dimly of the way in which Christ, by being the Light and Truth manifested, shines into the heart and puts light there, even while we feel that the Light and Truth is still all in Him, and that in ourselves there is nothing but thick darkness. I do not know whether you have been led to think as much as I have lately about all those texts which represent Him as Light, as shining into the heart, and in connexion therewith, as wrestling with the powers of darkness. " There was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour." "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." He that "caused the light to shine out of darkness shine into your heart." They afforded me very great delight some time ago when nothing else would ; an intense thick darkness, darkness that might be felt, brooding over my mind, till the thought that had been brought to me as if from Heaven — " the light of the Sun is not in you but out of you, and yet you can see everything by it if you will open your eyes " — gave me more satisfaction than any other could. Since then another train of feeling led me to experience the intense misery of pride and self, as if that were the seal of the darkness, and that I could find no relief but in joining the two thoughts together : it was pride, it was self, it was sin, which separated between me and God, which produced the darkness. Christ had taken that away, and therefore the true Light shineth.^
^ C. Jeidau, Messages to (he Children, 38.
' The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 119.
304 THE LAMP OF THE LORD
III.
The Office of the Lamp is to Shine.
1. The lamp of God in our nature gives forth a self-searching light. — It searches the hidden recesses of a man's own nature. It is that by which God seeks to make it impossible for us to sin with impunity. It is the Lord's light in man that protests agamst the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, and brings to view life's privileges and responsibilities. It is the flame in the heart that claims relationship with Him who is light and in whom is no darkness at all.
^ " I cannot do this," said a Christian merchant, in reference to some business operations in which lie was asked to take part, " I cannot do this. There is a man inside of me that won't let me do it. He talks to me of nights about it, and I have to do business in a different way." Thank God for the restraining testimony of conscience ! Let us always listen to the witness, and follow its guidance. Let Lord Erskine's rule be ours. That rule he stated publicly at the bar in these unmistakable words : " It was the first command and counsel of my youth, always to do what my conscience told me to be my duty, and leave the conse- quence to God. I have hitherto followed it, and have no reason to complain that any obedience to it has been even a temporal sacrifice ; I have found it, on the contrary, the road to prosperity and wealth, and I shall point it out as such to my children." Akin to this was John Wesley's rule: "To follow my own conscience, without any regard to consequences, or prudence, so called, is a rule which I have followed for many years, and hope to follow to my life's end." ^