'Our lamps are gone out.'--MATT. xxv. 8.
This is one of the many cases in which the Revised Version, by
accuracy of rendering the tense of a verb, gives a much more
striking as well as correct reproduction of the original than the
Authorised Version does. The former reads 'going out,' instead of
'gone out,' a rendering which the Old Version has, unfortunately,
relegated to the margin. It is clearly to be preferred, not only
because it more correctly represents the Greek, but because it sets
before us a more solemn and impressive picture of the precise time
at which the terrible discovery was made by the foolish five. They
woke from their sleep, and hastily trimmed their lamps. These burned
brightly for a moment, and then began to flicker and die down. The
extinction of their light was not the act of a moment, but was a
gradual process, which had advanced in some degree before it
attracted the attention of the bearers of the lamps. At last it
roused the half-sleeping five into startled, wide-awake
consciousness. There is a tone of alarm and fear in their sudden
exclamation, 'Our lamps are going out.' They see now the catastrophe
that threatens, and understand that the only means of averting it is
to replenish the empty oil-vessels before the flame has quite
expired. But their knowledge and their dread were alike too late,
and, as they went on their hopeless search for some one to give them
what they once might have had in abundance, the last faint flicker
ceased, and they had to grope their way in the dark, with their
lightless lamps hanging useless in their slack hands, while far off
the torches of the bridal procession, in which they might have had a
part, flashed through the night. We have nothing to do with the
tragical issue of the process of extinction; but solemn lessons of
universal application gather round the picture of that process, as
represented in our text, and to these we turn now.