"The Father of the lights:" a sermon to children.
Light is one of the most wonderful things in the world. Some heathen nations have been worshippers of fire or of the sun; but we should be thankful that we know better than they. Our souls want a living, loving God; and the sun does not love or live. We worship, not light, but "the Father of the lights." Let us think of some of the lights of which God is the Father.
I. SUN-LIGHT. The sun is a great work of God. It is adorned like a "bridegroom;" and it is strong like a "giant." Our whole world, and many others, get all their light from it. The moon takes the sun's place during night; but its light is just sunlight second-hand. Star-light, too, is sun-light, for all the twinkling stars are suns. Now, God made all these upper lights. He made also all light and fire which man has on earth. Every coal-field is just so much "sown" light. Every lump of coal is full of bottled sunshine. Man may strike a light, but only God is its Father.
II. LIFE-LIGHT. The light of life is a higher kind of light than sun-light, and it also comes from God. We see it:
1. In plants. What makes a flower so beautiful? It is the light of life. The eye of the daisy—the "day's eye"—is bright with this light.
2. In animals. Life-light makes the birds sing and the lambs gambol, and fills the air with the buzz of insect gladness. The lion is the king of beasts so long as he has the light of life, but "a living dog is better than a dead lion."
3. In man. In him this light is of a more precious kind, which shall burn on forever. "The soul that rises with us, our life's star," shall never set. It shall blaze on alter the great lights of heaven shall have been put out.
4. In angels. Every angel is "a flame of fire." Those who stand before God's throne are the brightest; they are the seraphim, the shining ones. The angels are "the morning stars," and God is their Father.
III. TRUTH-LIGHT. This gives us the light of knowledge. Every useful book which tells us truth about nature, or the world, or our own bodies and minds, is a light from God. But the highest and best kind of truth is about God himself, and about the way to him. We have this truth in the Bible; and so the Bible is "a lamp shining in a dark place." Those lauds are in darkness which have not the Bible; for it tells of Jesus the Savior, who lived and died and lives again—"the Light of the world," the dear Son of "the Father of the lights."
IV. GRACE-LIGHT. Truth-light is a light outside; but grace-light is one which God kindles within our hearts. Only those persons have the light of grace whose souls are illuminated by God's Holy Spirit. No sooner does he touch our sin-blinded minds and our sin-darkened hearts than they begin to shine with God's light. This new soul-light will "shine more and more unto the perfect day." All the lamps of grace are fed, as well as kindled, by "the Father of the lights."
V. HEAVEN-LIGHT. The home of God there is full of light. In hell, all is darkness; on earth, there is mingled light and darkness; in heaven, there is only light. "There shall be no night there." God and the Lamb are "the light thereof." And everything in heaven reflects its light—the jasper walls, the pearly gates, the golden streets, the crystal river, the white robes, Now it is holiness that is the light of heaven. All there is pure. Grace-light, when a good man dies, blazes up into glory-light. And all the holiness of heaven streams from the Holy, Holy, Holy One—"the Father of the lights."
CONCLUSION.
1. "The Father of the lights" is the Father of little children, and he wants them to call him by that name.
2. He wishes to set the children among his lights.—C.J.