346 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
heart's rest and joy. We are sure that He knew what He was saying and had Divine right to say it : "I am the light of the world."
3. What does Jesus mean? How is He the light of the world ? Let us understand what light is and does.
(1) "The light of the world," " the light of life "—the words send us instantly abroad into the world of Nature. They set us on the hilltop watching the sunrise as it filli the east with glory. They show us the great plain flooded and beaten and quivering with the noonday sun. They hush and elevate us with the mystery and sweetness and suggestiveness of the evening's glow.
Any one who has watched a sunrise among mountains will know how the light opens out depths of beauty and life where but lately the eye rested on a cold monotony of gloom or mist. At one moment only the sharp dark outline of the distant ranges stands out against the rosy sky, and at the next peak after peak catches the living fire, which then creeps slowly down their rocky slopes, and woods and streams and meadows and homesteads start out from the dull shadows, and the grass on which we stand sparkles with a thousand dewdrops.
^ Walk on the central glacier of the Oberland in the gloom of a summer night. The grey clouds have hung about the Grimsel, and inflicted on you the sense of chill October, instead of bringing the sweet clearness of an August afternoon. The night has gathered starless and cold ; but you are bent on your journey, though it requires all the energy of your determination to carry you through the discomforts of the march. The path at first is sharp and stony, then it is steep — steep in descent, steep in ascent — and your already tired and aching feet make you feel that it is hard to know which is the worse of the two. However, you have passed the polluted moraine, and at last you are on the ice. How cold it is! The breeze comes sweeping down the glacier, and chills you to the bone. Onward you go. The clouds are clearing. Things are better. Star after star is plain above you, and the giant mountains tower grim and gaunt around you, but, at any rate, less wrapped in shrouds. Onward you go, taking more and more courage. What is that shaft of amber, clear and fine as polished steel ? What is that flash of deeper glory which shoots across the heavens ? What is that line of scintillating gold and crimson which marks the crenulated crests of the mountains, and makes their enow-peaks and ice-lines like transparencies drenched
ST. JOHN VIII. 12 347
in living fire ? How glorious it is, the breaking of the dawn — the breaking of a real splendid August morning over the region of eternal snow! Gradually it steals down the slope of the mountains, till the very glacier itself is aglow. Now a world is before you, startling in its wildness and beauty — your graceful Finster Aar and savage Schreckhorn, and Strahleck barrier, and then, beyond, the soaring Eiger and the grim and meditative Monch. Wild and beautiful in form and strangeness, — it is all before you now. Ah ! it was all there, in its strangeness and stateliness, even when you shivered in the mist and darkness. It was all before you ; but to you it was useless, unperceived, un wondered at. You needed the magic of light to reveal it. You know what it is, though it was there before you knew it. You are a debtor to the tender mystery of the dawn.^
^ Twice recently has it been my privilege to watch the sun rise in circumstances of unusual beauty. Long before his appear- ing we had tokens of his coming. The horizon, and the clouds that gathered in little flocks about the horizon, and banks of clouds further remote abiding motionless in the highest places, began to clothe themselves in appropriate raiment to welcome the sovereign of the morning. Dull greys, gleaming silver, deep reds, dark purple — all available hues were to be seen in that array. Then in the fulness of time the great flame rode out among the encircling glories, making them all appear dim and faint in the presence of his own effulgence.^
(2) Now the idea of light, long before the time of St. eTohn, had become spiritual in its religious application ; and when Christ speaks of Himself as the " light of the world," it is no darkness of nature that He has in view, but the darkness that rests on men's thoughts and life, the darkness that all true men feel more or less in themselves. Wherever men have arisen to the power of thought, and are capable of looking "before and after," there comes home to them a deep sense of their ignorance. Their outlook is fast bound on all sides; and "more light" is their instinctive cry amid encircling darkness, or a twilight of uncertainty more perplexing sometimes than darkness itself. They look upwards, and long that the day may break on their mental struggle, and the shadows flee away from their hearts. The outward light is not enough. The eye is not satisfied with seeing. There is the conscious need of a higher light than ever