This is _the_ thing in all our living and serving and doing and giving, _that men may know Jesus_ to the trusting, risking, loving point, the glad point. Everything that we can bring of gold and learning and labour and skill is precious, it is as purest gold, _if_ it lead men into heart-touch with Jesus. And it clean misses the mark if it does less.
Who would be content to give a Belgian or Polish starveling a bare bit of bread, and a lonely stick of wood, and a rag of cloth. Bite and stick and cloth are good, but it"s a _meal_ and a _fire_, and some _clothing_, the man wants. And you have both ready at hand. _Things_ are good, provided by money and skill and research and painstaking efforts. They _do_ good. But it"s Jesus men need. It"s the warm touch that lets _Him_ fully in with all of His human sympathy and all of His G.o.d-power, that"s what they need.
Given the sun and quickly come warmth and food and shelter, health and vigour and increase of life. Given Jesus, and the warm touch with Him, in His simple fullness, just as He is, and surely and not slowly, there come flooding in all the rest of an abundant life, physical and mental and of the spirit.
John "_was not the light_." He was only the candlestick. And he was content to be that. He was a good candlestick. The light was held up. It could shine out. How grateful the crowd was. The road had been so dark.
It is a bad thing when light and candlestick change places. The crowd seems to get the two confused sometimes. We get to thinking that the candlestick is the light, and the light is--lost sight of. We gather about the candlestick. It"ll surely lead the way out through the dark night into day. It"s such a good candlestick, so highly polished. And sometimes the human candlestick itself gets things a bit mixed. It thinks, then it feels, then it knows, with a peculiar quality of self-a.s.sertive certainty, that after all _it_ is the light that lighteth every one that is so blessed as to come within the radius of its shining. And bra.s.s does take a high polish, and makes an attractive appearance. It does send out a sparkle and radiance _if_ only it is somewhere within range of some real light, patient enough to keep on shining in the dark, regardless of non-appreciation or misrepresentation or misunderstanding.
Is it any wonder the road is so full of people wandering in the night gathered about candlesticks? Is it surprising that the ditches are so full of men and candlesticks mixed up and mired up together? Yet it is always heart-breaking. There may be talent and training of the highest and best, and scholarship and culture, eloquence and skill, inst.i.tutions and philanthropies. And there is so much of these. And these are good in themselves, and of priceless practical worth when seen and held in their right relation to _the_ thing.
But it needs to be said often and earnestly: _these are not the light_.
They are given to point men better to the Light. They"re road-signs, index-fingers. And they are seen at their best when they point to the Light so clearly that the crowd quite forgets them in hastening to the Light they point out. They serve their true purpose in being so forgotten. They are still serving and serving best even while forgotten.
The Real Thing of Light.
And John goes on to intensify yet more what he is thinking and saying: _there was the true light_, _the real thing of light_. They were bothered, in John"s old age when he is writing, with false lights, make-pretend lights, that led people astray. Every generation seems to have been so bothered and confused. And even our own doesn"t seem to have entirely escaped the subtle contagion. The ground is a bit swampy in places, boggy.
Low-lying land runs to bog and swamp. And the air gets thick with heavy vapours. And strange will-of-the-wisp lights form out of the foul damp ga.s.ses, and they flit about in the gloom this way and that. And people are led astray by them deeper into swamp and bog. It"s surprising to find how many, that grow up in well-lit neighbourhoods, wander off after the swamp lights, and even follow them so contentedly. That"s partly due, without doubt, to the false lights borrowing so much of the mere outer incidentals from the true. And they succeed in producing a make-up that easily deceives the unwary and untaught.
There"s a teaching to-day, for instance, that magnifies bodily healing.
The name of Christ is freely used. And the old Book of G.o.d freely quoted. And men are really healed. There can be no question of that.
There are sufficient facts at hand to make that incontestably clear.
But bodily healing does not necessarily argue divine power. There are results secured through the operation of unfamiliar mental powers that seem miraculous. And clearly there are devilish miracles as well as divine. Miracles simply reveal a supernatural power, that is, a power above the ordinary workings of nature. Then one must apply a touchstone, a test, to learn what that power is.
It is striking that in this teaching I speak of now there is never mention of the atoning blood of Christ. And this is the sure touchstone by which to detect the real thing of light and the make-believe. The outstanding thing in the life of Christ is His death, and the tremendous meaning which His own teaching put into that fact of His death.
There is none of the red tinge to this make-believe light. It has the unwholesome unnatural tingeing of swamp lights. And those who are healed through this teaching will find themselves in a bondage the more terrible because so subtle. And only the power of the blood of Christ can ever break that bondage.
There was the real thing of light. Here _is_ the real thing of light.
There"s a distinct tingeing of red in it. It"s the only light. It only is the light. Every other is a make-pretend light, however subtle its imitations and reflections: it will lead only into swamp and bog and ditch and worse.
And then John goes on to add a very simple bit that has not always been quite understood in its simplicity. There was the real thing of light _that lighteth every man that cometh into the world_. There is a little group of varied readings into the English here, found in the margin of the various revisions. But the central statement remains the same.
Whether John is saying that the light, that lighteth every man, was now coming down into the world in a closer way. Or, that every man is lighted as _he_ comes into the world, the chief thing being told is the same. Every man in the world is lighted by this Light.
Through nature, the nightly twinklers in the wondrous blue overhead, the unfailing freshness of the green out of the brown under foot; through the never-ceasing wonders of these bodies of ours, so awesomely and skilfully made, and kept going; through that clear quiet inner voice that does speak in every human heart amidst all the noises of earth and of pa.s.sion; through these the light _is_ shining, noiselessly, softly, endlessly, by day and night.
It is the same identical light that John is telling us of here that so shines in upon every man, and always has. There is no light but His. His later name is Jesus. From the first, and everywhere still, it is the light that shines from Him that lights men. He was with the Father in the beginning. He acted for the Father in that creation week. He gave and sustained all life of every sort everywhere, and does, though only a third of us know His later, nearer, newer Name--Jesus.
But the light was obscured, terribly beclouded and bedimmed, hindered by earth-fogs, and swampy clouds rising up, until we are apt to think there was no light, and is none; only darkness. Then He came closer, and yet closer. He came in nearer form so as to get the light closer, and let it shine _through_ fog and cloud, for the sake of the befogged, beswamped crowd.
And then--ah! hold your heart still--_then_ He let _the_ Light-holder, the great human Lantern, be _broken_, utterly broken, that so the light might flash out through broken lantern in its sweet soft wondrous clearness into our blinded blinking eyes, and show us the real way back home. It was in that breaking that it got that wondrous exquisite red tingeing that becomes the unfailing hall-mark, the unmistakable evidence of the real thing of light.
And it"s only as men know of this latest coming of the light, this tremendous tragic Jesus-coming of the light, that they can come into the full light. That"s the reason He came in the way He did. That"s the reason when He gets possession of us there"s the pa.s.sion to take the full Jesus-light out to every one. And this pa.s.sion burns in us and through us, and ours, and sweeps all in the sweep of its tender holy flame. In this way every man may be fully lit, and so in following the Jesus-light he shall not walk in the darkness where he has been, but in the sweet clear light of life.
Looking for Recognition.
Then we come to the first of John"s heart-breaking sentences. John had a hard time writing his Gospel. He was not simply writing a book. That might have been fairly easy for him with his personal knowledge and all the facts so familiar. But he is telling about his dearest Friend. And the telling makes his heart throb harder, and his eyes fill up, and the writing look dim to him, as he tries to put the words down.
Listen: _He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world recognized, or rather acknowledged, Him not._ It was His world, His child, His creation. He had made it. But it failed to acknowledge Him. He came walking down the street of life. He met the world going the other way. And He gave it a warm good-morning greeting.
And it knew Him full well. It knew who He was. But it turned its face aside and walked by with no return greeting. This is what John is saying. It recognized, it acknowledged Him not.
You mothers know the glad hour that comes in a mother"s life when her little babe of the wee weeks knows her _for the first time._ She"s busy bathing or nursing, or, she"s just hovering over the precious morsel of humanity when there"s really nothing needing to be done. And the babe"s eyes catch her own and _a smile comes,_ the first smile of recognition.
And the mother-heart gives a glad leap. She murmurs to herself, "Oh, baby knows me!"
And when the father comes home that night she greets him with, "Baby knew me to-day." And there"s a soft bell-like tender ring in her voice that vibrates on the strings of his heart. And all the folks within range are advised of the day"s event. And the mother clear forgets all the sharp-cutting pain back there just a little before, in this joy, this look of recognition.
I knew of a woman. She was of an old family, of unusual native gift, and rare accomplishment. And her babe came. And the time came when ordinarily there would be that first sweet look of recognition, but--_it didn"t come._ There was a defect; something not as it should be. And you mothers all know how she felt, yes, and you true fathers, too. She was heart-broken. And she turned aside from all the busy round of activity in which she had been the natural leader. And for years she devoted all her splendid talents, her strength and time, to just one thing, a very simple thing; only this,--_getting a look of glad recognition out of two babe-eyes._
_He_ looked into the face of His child, His world, for the look of recognition. But there was none. And He was heart-broken. And He devoted all His strength and time, Himself, for those human years to--what? One thing, just one thing, a very simple thing, only this: to getting a look of recognition out of the eyes of His child.
Aye, there"s more yet here. He _looks_ into our faces, eager for that simple direct answering look into His face and out of our eyes, yours and mine. And we give Him--things, church-membership, orthodox belief, intense activity, aggressive missionary propaganda, money in good measure, tireless, and then tired-out service--_things!_ And all good things. But _the_ thing, the direct look into His own face answering His own hungry searching look, that look in the face that reveals the inner heart that He _waits_ for so often, and waits, a bit sore at heart.
For you know the eye is the face of the face. It"s the doorway into the soul, out through which the soul, the man within, looks. I look at you, the man inside here looks out at you through my eye. And I look at the real you down through your eye. The real man is hidden away within, but looks out through the eye and is looked at only through the eye. We really give ourselves to Jesus in the look direct into His face which tells Him all, and through which He transforms us.
A Heart-breaking Verse.
Then comes John"s second heart-breaking verse; but it is just a bit more heart-breaking in what it says. Listen: _He came to His own home, and they that were His own kinsfolk received Him not into the house but kept Him standing out in the cold and storm of the wintry night._
One of you men goes home to-night. It"s your own home, shaped on your own personality through the years. It"s a bit late. You"ve had a long hard day. You"re tired. It"s stormy. The wind and the rain chill you as you turn the corner. And you pull your coat a bit snugger as you quicken your steps and think of home, warmth and comfort, loved ones, and rest for body and spirit, too.
As you come to the door you reach for your latch-key, and find, in the busy rush, you seem to have forgotten it, somehow. So you ring the bell or knock. And suppose--be patient with me a bit, please. Suppose your loved ones know you"re there. You even see a hand drawing aside the edge of the window shade, and two eyes that you know so well peer out through the crack at you; then the shade goes to again. Yes, they know you"re there. But the door, your own door, doesn"t open. How would you feel?
And some one says to himself, "That"s not a good ill.u.s.tration. That thing couldn"t happen. It isn"t natural." No: you"re right. It _isn"t_ natural. It could not happen to _you_. I am sure it could not happen to _me_. If it could I"d be heart-broken. _But this is what happened to Him!_ This is what John is saying here. He came to His own front door, and they whose very image revealed their close kinship to Him, received Him not into the home, but kept the door fast in His face.
Then there"s a later translation. This old King James version bears the date of 1611, I think. And the English Revision is dated 1881, I believe. And this American Standard Revision I am using has 1901 on its t.i.tle page. But there"s a later revision. It bears a yet later date, 1915, April 27. But it is a shifting date. Each translator fixed his own date.
This latest translation runs something like this: He _comes_ to His own.
That"s you and myself. We belong to Him. He gave His breath to us in Eden. He gave His breath to you and me at our birth. He gave His blood for us on Calvary. We belong to Him. The image of His kinship is stamped upon us. We may not acknowledge it, but that can"t change the fact.
_He comes to His own, and His own_--and here, as the scholars would say, there are variant readings. Let me give you one or two I have found.
Here is one: He comes to His own, and His own--puts a chair outside the door on the top-step. It"s a large armchair with a cushion in, perhaps.
And then His own talks about Him through the crack of the door, or likelier, the window. It"s reckoned safer to keep the door fast.
Listen to what he says: "He"s a wonderful man this Jesus; great teacher, the greatest; the greatest man of the race; His philosophy, His moral standards are the ideals; wonderful life; great example." They fairly exhaust the language in talking about this Man. But notice. It seems a bit queer. The man they"re talking _about_ is _outside the door_. His own claim is left severely outside.
Some make it read like this: He comes to His own, and they who are His own open the door a _crack_, maybe a fairly respectably wide crack. We all like the word _Saviour_. Yes, we cling tenaciously to that.
Selfishly, would you say? We want to be saved from a certain place we think of as _down_, that we"ve been taught about, and don"t want to go to--_if it"s there;_ the way men talk about it to-day.
And we want to be saved into another certain place we think of as _up_, and where we surely want to go _after_ we get through down on the earth, and _must_ go away somewhere else; with that "after" and "must"