" III THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD Again, therefore, Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of the world."-ST. JOHN VIII:12. ET many are saying: ، “ The Light of the Y of the bloody rain in Europe and Asia, they exclaim: "The Sun has suffered total eclipse: it is not light, but the mailed fist, that triumphs; it is not the Lamb, but the Lion, that conquers; it is not Christ, but Cæsar, that is on the throne." But such expressions are the mere noise of brains in the throes of thought-friction. Chiefest of the lessons we may learn in this school of international agony is this: Civilization is not a synonym for Christianity. Some have confidently assumed their identity, but the brute is now busily gnawing and clawing that assumption to pieces. No, my friend, Christianity has not failed; it is your efficient, clever, cruel, Christless civilization that has failed, is failing, and must fail, hour by hour. Tomorrow it will utterly fade, and over its heap of charred ruins, bleaching bones, unmarked graves, broken bodies, and accusing hands of mothers and little children, the Light of the World will arise afresh with heal ing in His wings. When our Christless culture, which is a very thin veneer for the blackest barbarism, has been stripped off; when our fragile might and fictitious power have been triumphantly slain by the Spirit of the Lord; when our ambition to reign has been supplanted by our passion to serve; when kings and emperors have had this final bloody breathing spell before laying their crowns and swords and guns at the feet of Christ, then shall we discover newer, deeper, richer meanings in the life and ministry of Him who borrowed the centre of the solar system to interpret His nature and character: "I am the light of the world." I One of the primary facts concerning the sun is its creative power. Go where you will, the fertilizing wonder of light confronts you. Look at the sky above you, at the earth beneath you, or search the deeps under the earth, and you are ever in the presence of light's begetting power. The coal miner brings his black diamonds from the bowels of our planet. Yet is he not simply uncovering huge layers of stored-up sunshine? The immense coal fields of China, of America, of the world, are nothing more nor less than condensed sunlight. Untold ages ago God filled our world-cellar with coal, and every lump taken out of it is a clot of the sun's blood turned black. In spring earth's face is wreathed with a measureless smile of greenery. One spring is a miracle too great to be told; but when you think of all the springs that have been, with their illimitable patches of colour, their throb of pregnant power, their whir of wings, and their wafture of fragrance, how can you recount the sun's generative capacity? Why, every little brown seed that has wakened to life in the long, long history of the world; every sprig of grass that has climbed out of its tiny grave and become an emerald string for the south wind to finger a resurrection melody on; every tree that has thrown out its branches as so many begging hands to be filled with treasure from the atmosphere; all the animal life that has come and gone, all the animal life that is, and is to beall represent the bloody sweat and aching agony of the sun. Scholars say that if the sun were suddenly blotted out, there would not be a sign of vegetable and animal life on this globe at the end of seventy-two hours. This floating ocean in the air above us would come down in blinding snowdrifts; rivers, lakes, and seas would turn to solid ice; the temperature of the whole atmosphere would drop 260 degrees below the freezing-point. Life would be utterly impossible. Indeed, Tyndall was so profoundly impressed by the creativeness of light that he said all our philosophy, all our art, all our poetry, all our science, Plato, Shakespeare, Raphael, and Newton-all are potential in the forces of the sun. This, of course, is materialism gone to seed, if it ever needs to go. The sun, under God's directive mind, helps to build the body in which a Raphael or a Newton lives for a few years; but the undying Newton, the immortal Raphael, neither of these imperial spirits, nor the lowliest human that ever dwelt in a house of clay, pays homage to sun or star. They get their being from behind the veils of force and sense. God breathed His very Self into them and sent them out from the golden homelands of the soul to pioneer among the wilds of sense and time. For a few years they wrought in the fields of the human, then shook themselves free of their enveloping dust, and returned to that God who ever lives and loves, covering Himself with light as with a garment. Now, as the sun creates all physical life, our Lord creates all spiritual life. “I am the bread of life" -He is the soul's nourishment; "I am the water of life"-He is the soul's perpetual cleanser; "I am the light of life "-He is the soul's illuminator; "I am the light of the world"-He is humanity's germinating power. Thus does Christ's spiritually creative sway suggest the far-off birth of things. "In the beginning—God.” God was old, the Ancient of Days, when the heavens and earth felt the first stir of life in the maiden womb of the universe. Light is God's eldest daughter in the family of physical forces. Old night and chaos were touched to splendour and harmony by the brooding spirit of Deity. "And God said, Let there be light and there was light;" here we are at the dim beginning of things; God has begun to unfold the universe. "I am the light of the world; " here we are far advanced in the course of things; God has humanized Himself, limited the Illimitable to the dimensions of the human, and is going about this part of His creation in the form of a Man. How could the solar system be without the sun? Is it possible to have a circumference without a centre? Well, a sunless solar system is the counterpart of a Christless world. Before all things, the Beginning of all things, all things hold together in the Christ of God. The world-creating Word became flesh that He might create a new humanity. "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new." For Christ strikes a celestial newness through our terrestrial oldness. The low-flying things give place to the high-up realities. He bridges the gulf of spiritual distance that separates us from God. The forgiver of sin, He is also the giver of the life that is life indeed. Is it too much to say that, apart from Christ, even the God of all hope has no hope for the world? Evidently, God has no other way of saving the world but in and through Christ. He is the fount whence flow the sweetening streams of the higher humanities; He is the Spiritual Sun, out of which come all our immortal radiances. Before Newton, men thought that colour was produced by refraction. But, by a |