The True Light and the False
The desire for light is one of the deepest natural instincts of man. The heathen man prayed that if he were to be smitten, he might be smitten in the light, and not in darkness. And the idea of Christ's Gospel is, that it is a light shining in a dark place, to which, however, men can close their eyes, so that they cannot see it, but go on still in darkness. All the apparatus of the Church is for this simple end to enable men to have that light which is life, and to have it more abundantly.
I. I do not myself regard this light as given to us to enable us to fathom mysteries. Christianity is a very simple thing. Its object is just this one to bring men's wandering hearts back to God. It shines rather upon the will and conscience than upon the intellect; and the path of duty is very seldom other than simple and plain. "Love God," says the great Latin doctor, St. Augustine, "Love God, and then do what thou likest." He means that if we love God, we shall never even wish to do anything that would displease Him. Our perplexities, such as they are, arise when the love of the world, or the love of self, cuts across and comes into conflict with the love of God.
II. What is the Kingdom of Man that we are bidden to welcome with hosannas and hallelujahs? Is it a kingdom where every man shall do that which seemeth right in his own eye? Is it the rule of selfishness, of material force, of barbaric splendour, of inordinate wealth? Is it the rule of scientific discovery, reckless of all considerations save its own results? Is it that state which is so well figured in the phrase, "light without love"? The signs of the kingdom of man are manifest enough among us; I would fain see more tokens of the Kingdom of God. If Christianity has failed, what else is there that has triumphed? Where is the tree of life in your philosophy or in your science, that you have ready to plant on either side of the river, bearing its twelve manner of fruits and yielding its fruits every month, and whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations? If all you mean is to bid us rid from Christianity all that we have imported into it that is, alien from its name, foreign to its purpose, destructive of its true moralising influence I could join in your cry with heart and soul. I am only too painfully conscious how much there is that is hollow, unreal, nay, almost revolting, in many of the most popular forms of the religionism of the day. I have no love for what Jeremy Taylor called "a too curiously articulated creed." I mourn over the folly of those who seek to persuade rational beings that Christianity is a thing of spells and rites and incantations. I have not much confidence in the stimulants which are given to emotions that lie in perilously close neighbourhood to unsanctified and even sensuous passion. I have not so learned Christ from Paul. To me the Gospel is a simpler and help-fuller thing. It teaches me not so much how to feel according to the standard of religious propriety, how to express myself according to the standards of Catholic orthodoxy, but how to live after the pattern of the Sermon on the Mount, how to die in the faith and with the hopes of the great Apostle Paul. And what I have to preach is, that if any man be in Christ, really and truly, by that very fact he is, or becomes, a new creature. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
Bishop Fraser, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 369.
References: John 12:37-41. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1844.John 12:42; John 12:43. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xv., p. 244; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 148.