There are three stages in the history of the soul's enlighten- ment.
1. Spiritual penitence. — I say spiritual penitence, because there is a repentance which is by no means a rising of God's light in the soul, but merely a transient emotion, which passes into indifference and may deepen into despair. True repentance is the turning of the whole heart to God on the discovery of its own darkness and estrangement. Its chief cause is not so much the remembrance of guilty acts, as the feeling of a guilty heart — it is not the sense of sin — it is not the terror of judgment — it is the feeling of a deep darkness in the soul itself,
•■ C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 2617, p. 171.
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and the turning of the soul to the Lord that He may make it pure.
2. Spiritual penitence must pass into spiritual love. — Again the word spiritual is emphatic, in contrast with that semi- pious emotion which is always convulsively striving to learn whether the soul loves God or not. Spiritual love is not so much the feeling of our love to God, as of His love to us. It is the belief that He loved us amidst all our misery, and coldness, and sin — that from childhood the same loving power has guided us. It is the love which has swept into the soul, subduing its whole being, and becoming its ruling emotion. And this is requisite, because love is the insight of the soul, it colours all its visions, for the ruling passion of a man creates his world.
3. Spiritual love necessitates spiritual prayer. — Again the word spirituxil is emphatic. The first cry of life is prayer ; but by spiritual prayer I mean living fellowship with the Father, the prayer which pervades the whole life of the soul. This is the full dawning of the light of God. He who lives in prayer, lives before the unveiled eternity. This life of prayer loosens from the bonds of sense, and elevates the spirit in the unclouded regions of Divine glory. When man daily walks with God thus, then he is living in the light. By penitence, therefore, the soul turns Godwards; by love its eye is opened; and by prayer it moves in the sunrise of the eternal light.^
IT In the days of the monarchy in Madagascar the festival of the native New Year was ushered in at sunset by the Queen taking a bath. That ceremony over, and the short twilight having ended in complete darkness, a signal was given by lighting a torch outside the palace in Tananarive. The signal was answered at once. Bunches of hay fastened to poles had been made ready, and these were lighted and waved on high. Throughout the city, on the wide plains beyond, on the hill-sides beyond these, and on to the farthest ridges, these lights gleamed in the clear darkness of a tropical night. Then in widening circles, North, South, East and West, torches blazed from hill-top to hill-top, until, in about twenty minutes from the start, the signal would be flashed to the writer's district some 200 miles to the South. Almost instantly, the whole country-side would be gilded with these tiny points of flame. In appearance it was much as if on some frosty November night the multitudinous stars had slid down from the
1 E. L. Hull, Sermons Preached at King's Lynn, 1st series, p. 65.
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sky to bespangle the pall of earthly darkness. Everywhere throughout the land the palace-torch had been translated into a call, " Arise, shine ; for thy light is come."
IT Certain men slept upon a plain, and the night was chill and dark. And as they slept, at that hour when night is darkest, one stirred. Far off to the eastward, through his half -closed eyelids, he saw, as it were, one faint line, thin as a hair's width, that edged the hill-tops. And he whispered to his fellows: "The dawn is coming." But they with fast closed eyelids murmured, " He lies, there is no dawn." Nevertheless, day broke.^
IV. And the Glory of the Lord is Risen upon Thee.
It is wonderful, not only that God should give us light, but that that light should be His own glory. Creation is a part of God's glory, but it is only a moonlight glory compared with that of redemption. God, in the gift of Jesus Christ, displayed the whole of His nature. Creation is not a canvas large enough for the whole image of God to be stamped upon it, Byron speaks of God's face being mirrored in the sea ; but there is not space enough for the face of Deity to be fully reflected in the broad Atlantic, or in all the oceans put together. The image of God is to be fully seen in Jesus Christ, and nowhere else ; for there you behold attributes which Creation cannot display. Creation can manifest love, power, wisdom, and much else ; but how can Creation manifest justice, and justice lying side by side with mercy, like the lion and the lamb ? It is only in Christ that you can see this wondrous sight, God hating sin with perfect hatred, but yet loving sinners with much more than the tender- ness of a mother towards her child.