DARKNESS
The world hates virtue; it cannot bear perfection; it might endure benevolence, but
absolute purity and righteousness it cannot, away with. Its native instincts are
wrong; it is not towards the light that men are going, their backs are to the sun, they
are journeying into the thick darkness. 2338.590
It is strange, but it is true, that there are many who love darkness. I said just now
that this was contrary to nature, and so it is in one sense. Unfallen nature could not
bear darkness, but fallen nature loves it. Hear what God says about it, “Men love
darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” Night is the time of the
world’s merriment. Then the thief steals out to do his deeds of ill. “They that be
drunken, be drunken in the night,” and then is the time for “wantonness and
chambering.” As the apostle saith, it is the hour of evil. Darkness seems to be
attractive to some men. Strange is it, but it is so. The fascinating power of sin is just
like the fascinating power of darkness. 3366.378
Can you see Jesus in the dark? Yes. We sometimes see him better in the dark than in
the light. If you will go outside in the daytime and look up, you will not be able to see
a single star; but if you will get into the bucket of a well, and go down into the
darkness, very soon you will behold the stars. To descend may sometimes be the
shortest way to ascend. 3370.420
Our Lord here on earth may be said to have been always in the dark, in comparison
with the glories which he left, in contrast with the bliss that he has reassumed. To
be here at all, was to him to be in the dark. 3370.423