To most men there is something very hopeless about these words, a hopelessness with which too many of us are familiar. The tone is like that of some clever, old, hardened, unloving man of the world, who says to the young, and the aspiring, and the sanguine, "Ah, it is all very well, hope, and romance, and doing wonders, like infantine diseases a painful necessity; you will soon grow out of them. There is nothing worth caring for very much; and you will soon be old and done for, and then the grave. Vanity of vanities!" This is indeed a gospel of despair. I do not think it is good teaching for the young; and more still, I do not think its prophecies need to be fulfilled. To a large extent we may decide what our old age may be.
I. "Truly the light is sweet." Yes, to those who have once known what it is, otherwise not. For in practical life, whether we deal with the realm of faith or of morals, we still find men contented dwellers in the darkness. They go on in life with the morals and the religion of their class, with a morality and religion deeply unintelligent. They go on with the work of life, and a Sunday church if quite convenient; and they reach their ambition; and they place their children; and life thins off to the end; and they are dull and drowsy, for the night is spreading over them, and they have had no religious intention to be the light of their light.
II. As in the matter of faith and opinion we need at least one interpretative principle to make us know where we are, so in practice we need one definite intention if the gloom of practical irreligion is to be driven away. That which strikes one in the phenomenon of conversion, wherever it occur, as universally present, is the concentration of the mind to one point, and the new force which comes of the concentration. A man ceases to wander aimlessly in a fog, scarcely hoping to get anywhere, unless it be to heaven when he no longer can be here get to heaven by unintentionally stumbling into it in the dark. He now knows what he means, he now sees his object, and the path lies straight before him. And so we say that a man has "found peace;" and his character grows strong; and the consistent, well-knit life manifests the workings of a grace Divine.
III. But if men choose darkness rather than light in the matter of religious practice, equally true is it that they do so in the matter of religious faith and thought. The attitude of most men towards a new thought or a new side of an old thought is that of impatience and repugnance; they will not bear to hear it expressed and explained, but drown it in cries more forcible than intelligent. "This man speaketh blasphemy," said men of Christ; and to many a voice of God the same response has been made.
IV. From Christ we learn a rule of life, and that rule is conscientiousness. And from Christ we gain a saving light of faith for these dark days; and it is that "God is good, and His mercy endureth for ever." This light is sweeter and better far than the cynicism of disappointed age; it is a light for youth in its gladness, and for the strong man in the plenitude of his powers, and it is indeed a saving light as we feel our way to the sanctuary of the tomb.
W. Page-Roberts, Law and God,p. 52.