January 20. The Light of the World

"To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" Luke 1:79 Suppose the sun were never to rise again, and the light of every star were put out — what a gloomy world this would be! This is the picture of the world, in a moral and spiritual sense, without Christ, as it is painted in these words, "darkness and the shadow of death!" — no light to guide, to cheer, to produce joy and beauty. A world without Christ would be utter blackness — unilluminated by a singe ray of sun, or even by a single far-away star. Christ is light. Only think what light does for us! It makes our days very bright; it shows us all the beautiful things that are around us. But it does far more. It produces all the life of the earth — and then nourishes it. There would not be a bud or a root or a leaf — were it not for the sun. Nor would there be any beauty, for every lovely thing in nature — the sun paints. Think of Christ, then, as light. His love brooding over us causes us to live, and nourishes in us every spiritual grace. Every beam of hope is a ray of light. What the coming of light is to a prisoner in a darkened dungeon — that is the bursting of mercy over the guilty soul. Light gives cheer; and oh what cheer the gospel gives to the mourner, to the poor, to the troubled! Is it not strange — that any will refuse to receive this light? If one would persist in living in a dark cave, far away from the light of the sun, with only dim candles of his own making, to pour a few feeble, flickering beams upon the gloom — we would consider him insane. What shall we say of those who persist in living in the darkness of sin — with no light but the candles of earth\