1 John 2:8

1 John 2:8

Darkness and Light.

I. How difficult it is in health to recollect how we felt in sickness, how difficult to remember pain when the whole body is at ease. The world is full of such strange secrets of life and feeling; the same persons cannot recall their former selves very often, so different are they at one time from what they were at another. Much more is it not possible to live the lives of others, to feel their feelings, to enter into the unknown lands of hearts that are not our own. How then shall we, living in daylight, realise what it was to live when the world was dark? How can we go back in spirit to a time we have never known, and catch something of the glad surprise with which the first watchers welcomed the light of Christ? A little we know from the darkness of our own hearts being cleared away, but this is of ourselves alone. We have not seen the light of Christ first rising in its glory and its gladness on the darkness of a world that was dark. Darkness was on life; darkness was on death: darkness was the only certainty.

II. And then came light, light into the living grave, the Son of God moving upon earth, breaking through with words of power outward sorrow, disease, and death. O Christ, the noble army of martyrs praised Thee; the holy Church throughout all the world did acknowledge Thee. The high places of earth caught the light; pinnacle after pinnacle, city on city, flashed with Divine fire. Africa, Egypt, Cyrene, Alexandria, and all the old giant powers of early time passed into brighter day. Imperial Rome, with all its glorious charnel-houses, was smitten with the heavenly ray; the farthest West saw the great light, a light and a life that needed the deeds of those who still loved darkness to show its exceeding power. "Unto us a Child was born; unto us a Son was given." The first Christmas is our earthly life beginning, the second our heavenly, both seasons of joy unspeakable to those who love light.

E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. i., p. 24.

References: 1 John 2:8 . Preacher's Monthly, vol. vi., p. 350. 1 John 2:12 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1711; W. Harris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 336.