Walking in the Light

1874

Thomas à Kempis, shut in the monastery of St. Agnes, in the fifteenth century, began his immortal treatise on the Imitation of Christ with the sentence, "He that keepeth my words shall not walk in darkness, saith the Lord." And according to his faith was it unto him. In the superstitious darkness of that day, leading an obscure life, celebrated for his skill and diligence in copying pious books, à Kempis did not walk in darkness. His devout book shows that he walked in light, and the Father which is in secret set the candle upon a candlestick, so that the light of the German monk's meditations has enlightened the hearts of men in every nation of Christendom even unto this day.

It was in Bedford jail, working hard with his hands to keep his family from starving, with no hope of release, and with impaired health that John Bunyan, the tinker-preacher, drew that noble portrait of the brave, invincible Christian, who kept heart in the Shadow of Death and overthrew Apollyon; and that other one of Faithful, who cheerfully laid down his life in Vanity Fair; and that of brave Hopeful, whose head never sank beneath the waters of the River of Death. In Bedford jail he had that vision of the Delectable Mountains, and of the Giant Great-heart. No circumstances can darken the soul of him who walks in the light.

But there are Christians who ingeniously devise ways of keeping themselves in darkness. We speak of the Dark Ages as though they were indeed of the past; but the Dark Ages always continue, and there are plenty of pious Protestant people who build medieval cloisters for their souls. Hardly a week passes that we do not get a letter from some one who has looked himself in a more hopeless jail than Bunyan's at Bedford, and barred the door with hard texts about unpardonable sins, and hard sayings about the hopelessness of those whose day of grace is gone forever. They have not chosen the Giant Great-heart for their guide, but have taken tie Giant Despair for their keeper. About texts of Scripture there may be mistakes. About the fatherhood of God there can be none. Men who penetrated ancient labyrinths unwound a thread as they went in, that they might have a guide for their wandering feet when they wished to come out. He who tries to understand the intricacies of theological speculation, or to penetrate to the meaning of the dark sayings of Scripture, needs to keep fast hold to the thread of God's fatherhood and tender mercy. If he does not let that go, he will not lose himself in darkness. The first two words of the Lord's Prayer are a torch put into every man's hand to light him through every dark valley.

But there are people with whom this owlish love of darkness is a disease. Drive away one brood of doubts from them and there straightway comes another. Now there is but one remedy for this. Had à Kempis sat idle in his cloister, studying only his own mental exercises, he might have lost himself in a midnight of hopeless darkness. The illuminating of beautiful manuscripts of good books was wholesome employment. Had Bunyan been idle he might easily have brooded on the wretched condition of his family and the dark problems of theology until that jail would have become a very Doubting Castle to his soul. Making tagged laces to save his family from starvation and preaching the Gospel to his fellow-prisoners were fountains of spiritual health to him.

A man's own soul is a dark place. One's motives and thoughts find experiences are a labyrinth never yet explored to the end. An experience that springs from a physical condition not easily separable from one that comes of a spiritual exercise. It is better not to live much there. The course of man's life is from within, outward. He is the healthy man who sees not himself but his work. It is not necessary that one should understand physiology that one may learn which muscles to use in walking. Some men would have their eyes turned round that they might look within, but God pointed all of man's senses outward. Luther, and Bunyan, and Wesley at the critical period of their lives abode in darkness for months or years, not because God willed it, but because they set themselves to study themselves; they lay in wait for their own sins like a cat watching for mice; but when they arose and went forth to do for others the light shone all about them. If a man will darken the windows of his house and refuse to walk abroad he must not imagine that the sun does not shine.

There is a very theological little Sunday-school lullaby that enjoins on a child to "cast his deadly doing down." The doing of a Pharisee is no doubt deadly — rather his Pharisaism is deadly, not his "doing." There is nothing healthier than doing. Let a man called into the vineyard wait for no experiences, but go to work. It is he who hears Christ's words and does them whose house is planted on a rock. The deadliest thing in the universe is idleness and stagnation. — Beecher in Christian Union.