John i. 9. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
AS in the material world there is but one source of light to all the heavenly bodies; so in the spiritual world there is one Sun of Righteousness, that lighteth everv man that cometh into the world. There are other lights: John himself was a burning and a shining light. But he, and all the rest, shined with
a borrowed lustre. Christ is the only true source both of light and life; as St. John has told us; and as I propose in the present discourse to shew.
I. He was the only true light previous to his incar- nation— As being the Creator of all things, it was He who said, " Let there be light, and there was light." As the Former both of angels and men, he gave to each their intellectual and moral powers. Men, the lower order of beings, he endued with reason and con- science ; distinguishing them by these faculties from the brute creation, which possess only that which we call instinct. When man had fallen, and lost, to a considerable degree, the faculties with which he had been invested, the Lord Jesus, agreeably to the cove- nant he had entered into with the Father, undertook to restore to man such a measure of light as his necessities required. This he did,
1. By the republication of his law —
[It was the Son of God who led his people out of Egypt through the wilderness : for that people, by their murmurings, we are told, " tempted Christ*." The law, therefore, both moral and ceremonial, we suppose to have been given by him. At all events, we are sure that they were, each of them in its place, rays emanating from him; " he being the end of bothb," the end to which each looked, and the end by which both were fulfilled. The moral was " a schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faithc:" and the cere- monial shadowed him forth, in all his offices'1.]
2. By a long train of prophecies —
[It was " by the Spirit of Christ" that all the prophets spoke, from the very beginning6. And thus, with progressive clearness, was the mind of God revealed, relative to the re- storation of fallen man. Whatever was made known respecting the Father and his eternal councils, it was all declared by the Lord Jesus Christf. No information on these inscrutable sub- jects ever proceeded from any other quarter : all the light that was in the world emanated from Christ alone ; and was confined to his chosen people. All the rest of the world were left in the grossest darkness that can be imagined".]
a 1 Cor. x. 9. b Rom. x. 4. c Gal. iii. 23, 24.
d Col. ii. 17. c 1 Pet. i. 12. f ver. 18.
g Isai. lx. 2.