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LIFE AND LIGHT

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 1, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 35.

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LIFE AND LIGHT.

“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” So says the evangelist, of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Life.
Life and light are in a way synonymous terms. In the physical world light comes in the sunlight. In other words, God gives life to the physical world in the light of the sun. If all sunlight were cut off from our world, it would not be long ere all life—vegetable and animal—would become extinct.
What the sun is to the world, flooding it with a wealth of beaming, fructifying life, that Jesus Christ is to the spiritual world. He is “the Sun of Righteousness.” He is “the Light of the world.” “He is the Light of Life.” There is no part of the earth where His light is not. He has written His Gospel of life and light not only in His holy Word, the Bible, but in the pure, crystal water, in the strong, rigid rock, in the mighty mountain, in the fertile valley, on the tiny grass blade, in the noble, symmetrical tree, in interlacing fern and fragrant flower, in the azure heavens, in the brilliant bow of promise. In all these has Jesus Christ written with the pencil of physical light the Gospel of God, the light of life.
Man may not see it. We may shut our eyes to the light of the sun.
“A finger’s breadth at hand will mar A world of light in heaven afar, A mote eclipse a glorious star, An eyelid hide the sky.”
And so may man wilfully close his eyes, or he may willingly allow ambition, pride, hate, pleasure, appetite, passion—self in some form—to hide from his sight the great flood of spiritual light flowing from the heavenly Fountain. But the light is there—there all the time. God is everywhere present by His Spirit, and “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
Darkness is sin and selfishness, and ignorance of God. Those who are in sin are those “having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Satan is “the prince of the power of darkness.” Those who consent to be led by him are children of darkness, “in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
Step out of the darkness, sin and self, into the light of God’s love. In other words, yield to God. Give up yourself, your all, to Him, for He has purchased all. Accept of His Word, the Word of life and light, and yield to do what it commands to be done, to trust when it says trust, to believe all that it has promised, to yield all that it says to yield, and to receive all that it asks you to receive,—Jesus Christ in His fulness. Do this with all the heart, with an eye single to God’s glory, and “thy whole body shall be full of light.” Yea, it will be full of life.
As you use that light to God’s glory, as you let it shine out to those in darkness, as you let the life currents of holy endeavor flow through you to others, that life will cleanse out the disease of soul and body, and bring healing to every fiber of the being; for “if the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus [separation from sin, Rom. 6:10], that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”
We are glad that there is coming into the Christian world longings for the Spirit, the power, the life of God. It is not a theory; it is not a fancy; it is not imagination; it is not a matter of the future alone: God is a present and ever-living God. His life is the present all-powerful life of His eternal Spirit. It will come into the heart and soul and strength of every one who will open his ears to hear its melodies, open his eyes to see its glories, open his mouth to taste its goodness, reach out his hands by faith to grasp its eternally real blessings, yield himself to the harmony of that life, that every fiber of his being may be vibrant with the heavenly melody, the life of God. O, “receive ye the Holy Ghost”!