* Knox Little, The Light of lAfe^ 4. ' J. H. Jowett, The Silver Lining^ 69.
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348 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
lit up sea or shore. The darkness of the world, in short, is a moral darkness, in which man is often unable to see his true way or choose his own good.
He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon.^
TJ " I am the light of the world " ; and before His coming. His appearance was foretold in tokens of purple and gold. Here and there, in Isaiah and Jeremiah, we have great peaks tipped with the light of the coming day, suggesting the glory in which the whole world would be bathed in after time. " He shall feed his flock like a shepherd"; is not that a foretoken of the tenth chapter of John ? " Liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound " ; is not this the herald of the wonderful happenings which thrill the gospel story through and through ? And then, after all these golden hints of promise there came the Sun, the Sun of Eighteousness with healing in His wings, and the whole world passed into a new day.^
(3) But Christ's words must be interpreted by their reference to the light which was then being celebrated. Of that light we read that "the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way ; and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light." This was a customary mode of directing the move- ments of large bodies of men, whether caravans or armies. In the case of an army a tall pole was erected in front of the chief's tent, and from it a basket of fire was suspended, so that the glare of it was visible by night, and its smoke by day. The head of a marching column could thus be descried from a great distance, especially in wide level tracts with little or no vegetation and few inequalities of surface to interrupt the view. The distinctive peculiarity of the Israelitish march was that Jehovah was in the fire, and that He alone controlled its movements and thereby the movements of the camp. When the pillar of cloud left its place and advanced the tents were struck, lest the people should be separated from Jehovah and be found unfaithful to Him. During the whole course of their sojourn in the wilderness their move-
* Milton, Comus. - J. H. Jowett, The Silver Lining, 69.
ST. JOHN VIII. 12 349
ments were thus controlled and ordered. The beacon-fire that led them was unaffected by atmospheric influences. Dispelled by no gales, and evaporated by no fiercest heat of the Eastern sun, it hovered in the van of the host as the guiding angel of the Lord. The guidance it gave was uninterrupted and unerring ; it was never mistaken for an ordinary cloud, it never so altered its shape as to become unrecognizable. And each night the flame shot up, and assured the people they might rest in peace.
^ There is no difficulty in understanding what was in our Lord's mind at this time. Already He had made two distinct allusions to the incidents of the wilderness journey. In the sixth chapter He spoke of the manna which God had sent down from heaven, and He said : " I am the bread of life." Then in the seventh chapter He spoke of the water which gushed out of the rock, and He said, " If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink " ; as much as to say, " I am the rock from which the living water flowed." And in the text it is said : " Then spake Jesus again unto them " — implying that He was taking up the same subject after a little interval — " saying, I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life," alluding, evidently, to the third great symbol of the exodus, the pillar of fire, by which Jehovah guided His people through the wilderness. So it seems clear that our Lord is referring here to Himself as the fulfilment of this great Old Testament type — " I am the light of the world."
4. There are two things, then, that light does, and it seems as if Christ had them both before Him when He said, " I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in the dark- ness." The first is that it enables us to see. Enter a dark room and you do not see anything ; but bring a light and you see what the room contains. The other is that it guides us. The lights at the harbour mouth are there to guide vessels safely into the harbour. And one has sometimes discovered the use of a light, even though it were but the glimmer of a candle in a cottage window, when one has been overtaken by the darkness on some hillside or unfrequented moor. So we have —