If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.". Matt. vi. 23.

BY JOHN RUSK.

THE reason of my treating upon this subject, is, there is nothing more trying to God's family, and nothing that Satan perplexes them more with, than by his secretly suggesting to the soul, Yours is a false light-the light which is in you is darkness-it would have been better for you if you never had heard the gospel: none knows but God above how my soul has been tossed up and down in this way; how sorely I have suffered; how my hope has sunk, and I have been upon the brink of black despair. Now what I wish, at this time, is to try, as the Lord shall assist me, to take up some of these stumbling blocks, and therefore we will first of all treat of the true light. Secondly. Point out false light; and show that false light is darkness. The subject is a searching subject. May the Lord help my readers closely to examine to which party they belong, for it is of the utmost importance.

First, then, I am to treat about the
May, 1843.]

true light. Then observe this true light is attended with a cleaving to the family of God. But we may for some time be much mistaken here, and view those to be God's people who are only hypocrites; nevertheless it does not alter matters, as it respects the internal work of God in us; but as far as we conceive them to be partakers of grace, so we cleave to them, and as fast as God discovers them to be what they are, so we shake them off, both preachers and professors. This cleaving you may see in the disciples to Paul; hence it is said, that though some blasphemed, yet others cleaved to him: in Ruth also to Naomi; Ruth cleave to her and again in Elisha to Elijah. This cleaving is love to the image of Christ in the brethren, and is a teaching that comes from God. As concerning brotherly love, ye have no need that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another; for John says, "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him." But an objection naturally arises here and that is this, Though I cannot say that I never found this cleaving or love to the brethren, yet as I go on I feel more enmity than love, so that I am

often ready to conclude I am deceived after all. To this I would answer, Do you not at times feel grieved on account of it, and do you not confess it to God, and pray that whatever you may suffer you may not be left to take an offence at Zion. And again, though you feel so much of this enmity, yet at times you feel this cleaving come again, and you hate and abhor yourself on account of the enmity you are unable to control. Now this shews that grace still reigns; for though it is an unfixed cleaving and love, yet it is not a fixed enmity, but God is teaching you more and more of your own wicked heart, and Satan terrifies and tempts you to believe that you hate God.

2. The true light is discovered, again, by a love to truth, as we find it if we read the Bible, a good book, hear the word preached, or good people talk over their experience: If God blesses you with the true light, directly you see it you will love it: now this is called receiving the love of the truth, or truth in the love of it. Suppose now that you went on a long while in the dark, so that read or hear whatever you may, all seems dark but one day, after all this, go to hear the word, and a light shines on your path; this gives you a lift, and directly you discover it you will love it and it is the same in reading the word of God, which although it may make against you at times, and you may be tempted to run from it, yet you will feel a desire to come to the light, and tremble at hating it or fleeing away: they that do the truth, come to the light, that their deeds may be reproved.

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3. This true light will lay open to your view more and more, as you go on, all your heart and life, and it will agree exactly with the testimony God gives of the human heart. For instance, God says that every imagination of man's heart is evil, only evil, and that continually; and, the heart is deceitful above all things, and des

perately wicked.

Now you will see

that your heart is the very heart that is so, and that the longer you live the worse sinner you will see yourself to be; hence says the prophet Isaiah, "I am undone; I am a man of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." Job says, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes see thee, wherefore I abhor myself. Behold I am vile." And this light will discover to you that sin is rooted in every faculty of your soul, hence David says, Behold I was born in sin and shapen in iniquity."

4. This true light will discover to you the spirituality of God's holy law; hence Paul says, "The law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." Formerly, like Paul, you considered that an outward observance of it would please God, but now you find that it reaches to the thoughts and intents of the heart: that a wanton eye is adultery, hatred is murder, coveteousness is idolatry, and so on, and you will tremble lest he should contend with you for ever.

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5. This true light and reproof will go together; hence reproofs are called reproofs of instruction, and Paul says, All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light which doth appear, for whatsoever maketh manifest is light." This you may see in Paul's conversion, where we read of a light shining, and a reproof coming, which was, Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou me: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."

6. This true light ever will make a man submit to divine revelation, and walk in holy obedience; and if he is ignorant why it is that God contends with him, he will pray with Job, and say, That which I see not, teach thou me." All the holy prophets, called seers, from the light they had, always attended particularly to God's commands and fulfilled them.

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7. This true light shews us the awful state of every sinner out of

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Christ, and the dreadful end they will make, whether professors or profane; hence John says, We are of God, and the whole world lieth in wicked ness:" or, as some render it, "in the wicked one, like a child in the nurse's arms, so are these in the arms of the devil."

8. This true light shows us that there is salvation in no other name but in Christ Jesus. Say you, There are numbers see this that are not enlightened by God's Spirit. I grant that a man may see all these eight things in the letter of God's word, but this is not the true light. Why, may not men see these things in the Bible, and understand the letter of the word as well as any other book? This is seeing but not perceiving; for the true light is called perceiving and discerning between good and evil. But, say you, clear this up a little. Well then, if you discover Jesus Christ to be the only Saviour of sinners, you will first see and feel your lost estate, for it is for none other characters than the lost; "He came to seek and to save that which was lost." The threatening part of God's word will more or less be applied to you, and the cloud will gather thicker and thicker over your head, so that you will expect it to burst, and that destruction awaits you from day to day. Now you will not at such times discover Jesus Christ to be a Saviour to such as you, although you may even then understand that he came to save sinners, but your case will appear out of the common line of elect sinners. But let the true light shine, if only for a few minutes, and you will see that he came to save just such sinners as you feel yourself to be. But as for the other light, a man that has heard the letter of the gospel always has that like a parrot.

9. This true light will show you that there is hope for you in Christ Jesus and no where else; and at length will enable you by faith to

believe that he is your Saviour, so that you will be brought to a full point. But this will be a humble confidence, a child-like spirit.

10. This true light will lead you up to God's eternal election and choice of you in Christ Jesus before the world was made; so that you will rejoice that your name is written in heaven for the light of the righteous rejoiceth," and you will see Jesus Christ undertaking the great work of redemption for you as an individual; that he who knew no sin was made sin for you, that you might be made the righteousness of God in him; that God the Father has accepted him as your Surety, and that he discharged your infinite debt. "The world seeth me no more, but ye see me ;" and, "By faith Moses saw him that is invisible." I remember seeing nineteen things that I had in Christ before the world began some years back; and the next day I saw Jesus Christ as a Substitute for my sins from the cradle to the cross, and that all he did he did for me, from his coming into this world to his ascension to glory. And a blessed sight it was to me, and very blessed effects followed-love to a Triune God and his family, which melted me into nothing.

11. This light will discover two natures in us, an old man and a new man, and the longer we live the more will the old man appear; the more grace we have the viler we shall see ourselves. This is the true light, and the worse we are in our own eyes, the more precious will Jesus Christ be to us every time he visits our souls. Hence the church says "I am black (through the old man) but comely (through the new man), as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains

of Solomon." And the sight of this old man terrified her so that she ran away, concluding that there never could be any good in her; but some who were of longer standing and more established called her back,

saying, Return, return, that we may look on thee:" and she said, What will you see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies." Paul explains it, "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other." But yet at other times the King is held in the galleries, and she says, His mouth is most sweet, yea he is altogether lovely: this is my beloved," &c.

12. This true light discovers God in Three Persons in our experience. We can see the Father's love in choosing us in a sovereign way, while thousands of our fellow creatures are left to perish. Oh, how humbling in the dust is this sight. Again, we can see the love of God the Son in voluntarily engaging to go through the great work for us. This melts the heart, and fills us with love to him for so doing: the love of Christ constraineth me," says Paul. And again we can see the love of God the Holy Ghost in that he convinces us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He convinces us that we are the chief of sinners.

A man may have natural convictions, but these will only have to do with outward things, such as murder, adultery, thieving, lying, whoredom, &c., and a form of godliness will heal this breach, which will be attended with a false peace. But not so when spiritual convictions take place: for such discover that they are nothing but sin from head to foot, every faculty of the soul corrupt. Again, he teaches such that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient to cleanse them, and lead them by faith to him where they get perfectly cleansed: "He shall testify of me.' But again, he convinces us of righ. teousness, shows us that ours is filthy rags, that we are destitute of every branch of righteousness; shows us the unlimited demands of God's law, that it requires love to God, but we

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are enmity; love to our neighbours, and that we are hateful and hating one another; and he testifies to us that Jesus Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. And therefore you read that we are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. Again, he also convinces us of judgment, that we must be judged in this world or in the great day, and therefore we are brought into judgment. Hence Job says, "And dost thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee," &c. And when this is the case we are arraigned at God's bar, and he brings witnesses against us: God is against us, justice pursues us, and we have no rest day nor night. The ungodly world also they condemn us. the blessed Spirit at length reveals Jesus Christ, and we see that he bore our judgment, that he endured the dreadful curse due to us, which when fully believed with application it brings peace, rest and quietness, every accuser goes, and we feel ourselves fully acquitted. He also shews us now that we never shall be judged in the other world: and indeed how can it be, seeing we shall arise from the dead in his glorious image, and shine like the sun for ever and ever! But if we were to be judged in the other world, we must arise with two natures, an old man and a new man, which God's word knows nothing about; for when the body dies, there is an end to the old man in the elect evermore. Again, he shews us that the Saviour we trust in is Jehovah in the strictest sense of the word; that it was Jehovah the Son, the second Person in the Trinity, that took our nature into union with his divine Person, and here we venture our souls on him, the Rock against which the gates of hell can never prevail, God and Man in one Christ. Thus this true light discovers experimen tally a Trinity of Persons in God.

13. This true light does not always shine, but goes and comes. Now by this very thing we may tell the true light; hence the complaints of Zion's family, "He hath brought me into darkness and not into light;" we see not our signs-" Walk in darkness and have no light;" "My way is hid from the Lord," &c. But if this true light always shined it would not be so: nevertheless we never get into such darkness again as we were in by nature, called Egyptian darkness, or gross darkness, for in the worst of times we can see things that no hypocrite or gifted professor destitute of grace ever saw or ever will see; we can see the cunning craft of the devil, our vile and abominable hearts, the malice of the world, and their awful end. These things are not hid from us, so that our path shines more and more, in one way or another "In thy light we see light." This true light in all these things is only to be found in Zion, for out of Zion -the perfection of beauty-God hath shined."

Having therefore according to my ability treated briefly of the true light, let us attempt,

Secondly. To point out this false light, and shew that it is darkness.

1. A man may have much light in the letter of scripture, so as to be able to understand every doctrine of the everlasting gospel, and he may go forth and preach these traths clearly, in a very consistent way; he also may be so well acquainted with scripture as to be able to make a chain of truth hang well together, by bringing in suitable texts to fit: as a good workman, that knows his trade literally, he takes up whatever tool he wants. and we say he knows his business; so does such a preacher. Add to this, he may have great zeal, and contend for the truth which he preaches, and God's children, with others, may get much light on the word by hearing such a man, and be so taken with him as to conclude that he is a good

man, taught by the Holy Spirit; and he may stand in all this for many years, and after all this blazing profession, not have the true light, so that the light which is in him is darkness. But how is all this to be proved? I answer, By the apostle Paul, who says that such in his days were false apostles, and deceitful workers, transforming themselves into Christ's apostles; and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness whose end shall be according to their works (2 Cor. xi. 13, 14, 15). And he tells us, also, that "a man may have all knowledge, and understand all mysteries, and have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but if he has not charity he is nothing." Paul also tells some, that when he came he was determined, not to know the speech of them that are puffed up, as though he should say, You cannot find them out by their speech, but the power; for the kingdom of God stands not in word but in power. It is plain that Judas was sent with the rest to preach the gospel, and yet he never had the true light. Balaam also saw the visions of God, falling into a trance, and having his eyes open; and he saw that the Jews should not be reckoned with the nations, that God had blessed Israel, and he desired to die the death of the righteous. was likewise among the prophets, for the Spirit of God came upon him and he prophesied; he confessed that David was righteous, and knew that he would have the kingdom. The sons of Korah confronted Moses and Aaron, and said that they took too much on them, for, say they, the people are all holy, every one of them: and they burned incense, and offered strange fire, so that they deceived the people. It is to these that the prophet Isaiah alludes, when he says, "Walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks which ye have kindled: this shall ye

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