"LIGHT OF THE WORLD”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 935, 31 March 1930, Page 16

"LIGHT OF THE WORLD”

INTERESTING SERMON AT NORTHCOTE Seeing Christ as the light of the vvorld, and darkness as the refuge of ; evil, Rev. F. A. Thompson preached an Interesting sermon in the Northcote I Church yesterday. He said the Oriental's love of light was as pronounced as his hatred of darkness. None dared lie down in darkness. So the small slipper lamp on the lamp-stand ever gave its faint light, literally, "to all that are in the house.” No matter how poor the people might be. or how feeble the flame they could afford, or how often their tiny lamp needed replenishing with oil—among the poor, castor oil •—they must have a light all night. The glorious sunshine of Palestine fnade darkness specially abhorrent. An Eastern has a passionate love of the sunshine in which he basks, for the most of the day, for some eight or nine months of the year. Night, too, is always a time of danger from ordinary robbers, when in the dark “they dig through houses”; from Bedouin raids, and from hostile neighbours, to an extent which it was difficult for us in New Zealand to realise. But the chief reasons why they must have a light all night was their dread of evil spirits, and the ghosts of dead people. There is reason to conclude from the changeless nature of the East that the mass of the people held very similar superstitious in ißible times. It was one of Israel’s chief mercies that in the desert Jehovah “Led them ail night by a light of fire” (Psalm 73:14). Nehemiah would understand the immense comfort of this as no Westerner could, when in his prayer he says: “Thou in Tjjy manifold mercies forsook them not in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud departed not from them by day to lead them, nor the pillar of Are by night to show them light.” (Neh. 9:19.) The darkness of the desert at night would have been awful to them without that wondrous light. One Important, ceremony celebrated at the Feast of Tabernacles, the autumn harvest festival, was symbolical of the Divine light, which “the people that walked in darkness” were to see, and which was to shine "upon them that dwell in the land of the shadow of death.” So it seemed that Jesus had referred to this ceremony in these words spoken by him in the temple at that very Feast of Taberracles:—“l am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, hut shall have the light of life.”