'The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day.'--PROVERBS iv. 18.
'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
their father.--MATT. xiii. 43.
The metaphor common to both these texts is not infrequent throughout
Scripture. In one of the oldest parts of the Old Testament, Deborah's
triumphal song, we find, 'Let all them that love Thee be as the sun
when he goeth forth in his might.' In one of the latest parts of the
Old Testament, Daniel's prophecy, we read, 'They that be wise shall
shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to
righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.' Then in the New
Testament we have Christ's comparison of His servants to light, and
the great promise which I have read as my second text. The upshot of
them all is this--the most radiant thing on earth is the character of
a good man. The world calls men of genius and intellectual force its
lights. The divine estimate, which is the true one, confers the name
on righteousness.
But my first text follows out another analogy; not only brightness,
but progressive brightness, is the characteristic of the righteous
man.
We are to think of the strong Eastern sun, whose blinding light
steadily increases till the noontide. 'The perfect day' is a somewhat
unfortunate translation. What is meant is the point of time at which
the day culminates, and for a moment, the sun seems to stand steady,
up in those southern lands, in the very zenith, raying down 'the
arrows that fly by noonday.' The text does not go any further, it does
not talk about the sad diminution of the afternoon. The parallel does
not hold; though, if we consult appearance and sense alone, it seems
to hold only too well. For, sadder than the setting of the suns, which
rise again to-morrow, is the sinking into darkness of death, from
which there seems to be no emerging. But my second text comes in to
tell us that death is but as the shadow of eclipse which passes, and
with it pass obscuring clouds and envious mists, and 'then shall the
righteous blaze forth like the sun in their Heavenly Father's
kingdom.'
And so the two texts speak to us of the progressive brightness, and
the ultimate, which is also the progressive, radiance of the
righteous.
I. In looking at them together, then, I would notice, first, what a
Christian life is meant to be.
I must not linger on the lovely thoughts that are suggested by that
attractive metaphor of life. It must be enough, for our present
purpose, to say that the light of the Christian life, like its type in
the heavens, may be analysed into three beams--purity, knowledge,
blessedness. And these three, blended together, make the pure
whiteness of a Christian soul.
But what I wish rather to dwell upon is the other thought, the
intention that every Christian life should be a life of increasing
lustre, uninterrupted, and the natural result of increasing communion
with, and conformity to, the very fountain itself of heavenly
radiance.
Remember how emphatically, in all sorts of ways, progress is laid down
in Scripture as the mark of a religious life. There is the emblem of
my text. There is our Lord's beautiful one of vegetable growth: 'First
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.' There is the
other metaphor of the stages of human life, 'babes in Christ,' young
men in Him, old men and fathers. There is the metaphor of the growth
of the body. There is the metaphor of the gradual building up of a
structure. We are to 'edify ourselves together,' and to 'build
ourselves up on our most holy faith.' There is the other emblem of a
race--continual advance as the result of continual exertion, and the
use of the powers bestowed upon us.
And so in all these ways, and in many others that I need not now touch
upon, Scripture lays it down as a rule that life in the highest
region, like life in the lowest, is marked by continual growth. It is
so in regard to all other things. Continuity in any kind of practice
gives increasing power in the art. The artisan, the blacksmith with
his hammer, the skilled artificer at his trade, the student at his
subject, the good man in his course of life, and the bad man in his,
do equally show that use becomes second nature. And so, in passing,
let me say what incalculable importance there is in our getting habit,
with all its mystical power to mould life, on the side of
righteousness, and of becoming accustomed to do good, and so being
unfamiliar with evil.
Let me remind you, too, how this intention of continuous growth is
marked by the gifts that are bestowed upon us in Jesus Christ. He
gives us--and it is by no means the least of the gifts that He
bestows--an absolutely unattainable aim as the object of our efforts.
For He bids us not only be 'perfect, as our Father in Heaven is
perfect,' but He bids us be entirely conformed to His own Self. The
misery of men is that they pursue aims so narrow and so shabby that
they can be attained, and are therefore left behind, to sink hull down
on the backward horizon. But to have before us an aim which is
absolutely unreachable, instead of being, as ignorant people say, an
occasion of despair and of idleness, is, on the contrary, the very
salt of life. It keeps us young, it makes hope immortal, it
emancipates from lower pursuits, it diminishes the weight of sorrows,
it administers an anaesthetic to every pain. If you want to keep
life fresh, seek for that which you can never fully find.
Christ gives us infinite powers to reach that unattainable aim, for He
gives us access to all His own fullness, and there is more in His
storehouses than we can ever take, not to say more than we can ever
hope to exhaust. And therefore, because of the aim that is set before
us, and because of the powers that are bestowed upon us to reach it,
there is stamped upon every Christian life unmistakably as God's
purpose and ideal concerning it, that it should for ever and for ever
be growing nearer and nearer, as some ascending spiral that ever
circles closer and closer, and yet never absolutely unites with the
great central Perfection which is Himself.
So, brethren, for every one of us, if we are Christian people at all,
'this is the will of God, even your perfection.'