[December 11th, 1859.]
The knowledge of God is essential to all religion. 1. Because religion consists in the relation of the soul to God. 2. Because that relation, being that of a person to a person, is of necessity a rational relation. That is, it supposes knowledge of the person to whom the relation is sustained. Our inward state is determined by our cognitions; not by mere speculative apprehension, but by the apprehension of the true nature of the objects of knowledge in their relation to ourselves. Therefore, if we have wrong views of God, and of his relation to us, we necessarily have wrong feelings; that is, we cannot have true religion. Thus, if we conceive of God, 1. As a principle or power, or as the unconscious life of the world, whose life is the life of the world, then we cannot stand to him in the relation of creatures or of children. He cannot be our father, protector, governor or portion. 2. Or if we conceive of God as a being who created the world and exercises no providential care over it, and holds its inhabitants to no responsibility, then we cannot stand in the true relation to him. 3. If we regard God as all benevolence without justice, then again all is wrong as to our internal state.
The knowledge of God being thus essential, the Scriptures employ all methods of communicating it. His names, his attributes, his works, his word, his Son, are all modes of revealing God. God is described sometimes in a word, sometimes by an enumeration of his attributes or acts. We are not to consider any one name, or any one work, or any one description as exhausting the idea as made known to us. When it is said God is a refuge, he is that and more. When it is said he is love, he is that and more. There are two things intended by that declaration. One is that there is nothing in him inconsistent with love; the other is that love exists in him in an infinite degree.
When, therefore, it is said God is Light, we are not to understand that there is nothing in God but what light represents, but only that there is nothing in him inconsistent with the idea expressed by light, (in him there is no darkness at all;) and that all that the word expresses belongs to him in an infinite degree.
Two things are intended, when it is said God is Light. 1. What he is in his own nature. 2. What he is to us.
I. God in his own nature is Light. We know nothing of material things but their phenomena. We know nothing of light but its effects and its laws. What it is in itself we do not know. Therefore its essential nature is not the point of comparison between God and light. He is called light simply because his nature agrees with what we know of light. 1. Light is transparent and revealing. It is therefore the fit emblem of knowledge, just as darkness is the emblem of ignorance. God, is light, therefore, because his infinite intelligence embraces all truth, there is no obscurity or doubt in any of his apprehensions. In him is no darkness in the sense of ignorance. And as light manifests immediately, as it reveals instantly, so it properly represents the intuitive nature of God’s knowledge. He sees all things, knows by seeing, not by searching or reasoning.
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Light is pure. It cannot be defiled. So it is the fit emblem of holiness. God is absolute holiness. There is nothing in him of an opposite character. He stands opposed to evil as light does to darkness by an opposition of nature, necessary, immutable, eternal. Darkness cannot exist in the light. The one excludes or is the negative of the other. God and sin are opposed and cannot exist in fellowship. What fellowship hath light with darkness? We therefore, as sinners, cannot have fellowship with God. No possession, no external relations, nothing done for us which leaves us unchanged can bring us into communion with God. Without holiness no man can see God.
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Light is calm. It is not disturbed by any storms. It is therefore the emblem of the harmony and blessedness of the divine nature. There is nothing in him inconsistent with perfect harmony. His blessedness is infinite, immutable, eternal. God is light in all these aspects, in his unclouded intelligence, absolutely holy and infinite in his undisturbed blessedness.
II. In his relation to us God is light.
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Light is the great medium of revelation. Darkness hides, light reveals. So God to us is the only, the infinite and inexhaustible fountain of all knowledge; objective, in what he has revealed, and subjective in his illumination of our understanding. In his light we see light. He only can banish darkness from our minds and bring us to the knowledge of the truth.
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Light in the natural world is the source or necessary condition of life. So God is to us the source of all spiritual life. We can only live, grow, and flourish in his presence and under the light of his countenance. His favor is our life. All holiness springs from reconciliation to him and fellowship with him.
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Light is the source of all beauty, so God is the source of all blessedness. Absence from him is that outer darkness in which the wicked are plunged. What light is to the natural world, therefore, that in a far greater degree God is to us.
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