SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. “GOD IS LIGHT.” . —Saint John, 1-5. (By the Rev. A. H. Collins.) * s bght.” What a marvellous definition of God that is! How simple, yet hqw unutterably sublime! How transparently clear, yet how “dark with excess of light.” • How familiar, yet how fathomless. God! The word is on every lip, the thought in every mind, but though the most commanding intellects have devoted their ripest years and i powers to the study, “No man Hath seen ‘ God at any time.” You know how the school-men and creed-makers have tangled themselves in verbal and metaphysical subtleties in the attempt to define God, and palpably failed. Contrast their labored and ponderous efforts with »Saint John’s threefold word, “God is Spirit,” “God is light,” “God is love.” The differ-ence-is the difference between a fragrant and dewy roue and those ugly odorless tissue paper made by the hand of man.

“God”! Take the other word, “light.” It is in the poor man’s dwelling, and the rich man’s hall. The old man delights to sit where its last slanting ray lingers longest. It has been analysed and labelled, and yet no one has ever fathomed ithe mystery of light, and these two proftfndities'—God and light—are wedded in one definition of the Divine Being. “God is light”; what can anyone say of a text like this? Comment seems akin to the folly that flings a stone at a lily oi; destroys life to dissect it. But here the word stands a burning bush whence proceeds the voices “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” It is the shrine of Diety, yet we may draw near. Reverent we must be, but courageous as well.

“God is light.” That is to say, what God is in the moral and spiritual world may in part be understood by what light is in the physical universe—source of purity, fount of gladness, soul of beauty, well-tspring of life, author of revelation. The analogy fe simple, striking, complete. Modern science has discovered spots. in the sun, and a$ if to anticipate this, Saint John says, “and in Him is no darkness at all.” Tne double negative is very strong. “Darkness is not in Him, no, not in any way.” There is nothing in God which can be associated with “the works of darkness.” No error, no ignorance, no death, no sin. “Darkness has no place at all in Him.” So reads the 20th century New Testament.

Light is pure. By its very nature it resists and repels defilement, and travels, unstained through each medium of uncleanness. Snow is stainless as it falls from the hand of the Great Creator. No whiteness can surpass it, but how soon its glory is dimmed when it falls under the foot of man! Water sparkles and gleams at the well head, falls from the heavens, hangs in a myriad dewdrops on leaf, and spray, and spike of grass, but contact with earth invariably leaves a stain. It is said that fever germs have been detected in dew-drops, and a single particle of clay will make a glass of water cloudy. But you cannot stain sunshine. You may set a trap to catch a sunbeam, hut if you could catch it, you could not defile it.

God is in the world as the sun is in the sky, shining on vilest hovel and on polluted men. yet untouched by either. Jesus Christ passed through the world like a pure white ray of light. “Holy, holy, holy art Thou. 0 Lord God, Thou King of Saints.” “God is light.”

Light is free. The wealth of the wealthy cannot purchase it; the skill of the most inventive cannot monopolise it, the poverty of the poorest is no barrier to the baptism of its holy blessing. It gilds the palace of the lordly unbribed by chink of gold, and it illumines the peasant’s cottage on the same free terms, and “God is light.” God is God’s free gift to every soul of man. “A truism”? Thank heaven, yes, it is; but it was not always so. Martyrs have suffered stripes, imprisonment and death for saying that. God was for “the elect,” and the rest of mankind was left to “the uncovenanted mercies of God.” These pagan ideas are slowly dying, and finding sepulchres in the limbo of exploded falacics. May they have a deep grave, and no resurrection. For God is not the God of one land, one age, one race, one church; He is the God of all lands, ages, races, religions, and churches, the Friend, Helper, Redeemer of the world; and to set a bound to His grace is folly like that of the British Chancellor who proposed a tax on window panes. “God is light,” and light is synonymous with freedom, amplitude, bountifulness. God is God’s free.gift t 6 all worlds. Thou shin’st with everlasting rays, Before the insufferable blaze; Angels with both wings veil their ey%; What, then, to me, thine eye could turn, In sins conceived, of woman born, A worm, a leaf, a blast, a shade? And the answer is this: “God is light.” Light is life. For without it the most potent soil is barren. In shadowland, vegetation languishes, trees droop, color flies, life wastes. Perpetual winter means perpetual death. In God “we live and move and have pur being.” What does that mean ? It means, there is not a wo?m that crawls, a bird that ewims in the vast fields of azure air. a midge, or the bright seraphim, but draws its life from God. It means that in the world of thought and fancy God quickens the mind and peoples the brain with ideas. Music, poetry, painting, sculptury, are His gifts. It means that God is the Father of our spirits, ai*d the body without the soul is an empty and desecrated temple. Light is gladness. For throe drear days Egypt was gloomed, sight failed, motion ceased, music was hushed, and the stoutest hearts Part of the horror of Saint Paul’s voyage was due to the darkness. Little children dread the dark, and birds cower in their nests and forget to sing. But when the morning gilds the sky the children shake their spirits free of foar, and feathered songsters, like the priests of Nature, rise and sing their matin-song at the opening gates of day. God is the pure fount of gladness, and not until we know Him do we know the true blessedness of living. In darkest shade, if He appear, My dawning is begun ; He is my soul’s sweet morning star, And He my radiant sun. Finally, light is revelation. “Mountains by the darkness hidden are as real as in the day.” That is true, and we welcome Thomas Lynch’s cheerful lines. But though as real they are not as visible. They are there, and we are glad to know it, but they are shrouded, and it needs the light to make them visible. One lovely day in June, my friend and I journeyed from Basle to Lucerne. When we left “the holy city of Switzerland,” P.r Lord Stfaftesbury called it, the sha-' do\vs were creeping down the mountains,'

and before we reached the lake city, darkness had fallen, and instead of a scene of entrancing loveliness, we walked to our hotel under the dark shadows cast by electric lamps. A few hours’ sleep, and then morning, and with it what a superb sight! What an apocalyps of glory! Behind stood the mountains robed in. tenderest green, with here and there a waterfall, like a sash of silver on an emerald robe. To the right Mount Pilatus lifted its majestic peak, swathed in mist and belted with snow, while from its scarred crest white, fleecy clouds floated like celestial banners. To the left lay the “Glacier Garten,” with its records of the ice period, its couchant 1 lion carved in the solid rock, and its huge boulders like thunder-bolts forged by the furies. In front stood the Regi Kulm, like a sentinel guarding the pass, with its rachet railway, like a monster caterpillar creeping slowly up its sides. At our feet lay the lake, calm as a silver sea, and over all stretched the wide heavens, a canopy of torquoise bine. It was all there the night before, all save the light to make it visible; but because the sun revealed it, my soul bowed and worshipped, like the pilgrims of Penuel say: “Lo! God is here' and I knew it not.” “God is light.” He reveals the hidden glories of Nature and grace. As the sun is seen by its own light, so God is manifested in Jesus Christ. We know neither the will of God, nor the works of God, save as He reveals them to v.s. God and man, duty and life, time and eternity, what do we know of either apart from Crod? Hence great Milton's great prayer: Thou celestial light, Shine inward, and the mind, through all its power Irradiate: there plant eyes, all mists from thence Purge and disperse. “God is light,” pure, free, Joyous, quickening, revealing,, and He brings these great boons within the reach of every soul of man. “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” But we must put ourselves in right relations. We must get the right focal point. We may cry for the light, stand in the light, walk in the light, or we may turn our faces away and “choose darkness rather than light.” “God is light,” and “if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with Him, and the blood of Jesus Christ Hie Son cleaneeth us from all sin.” “God is Spirit.” “God is Light.”