Our Lord does not limit our bodily wants to one thing; so it cannot be any worldly good he has in view. It must then be a need above, and of vastly more importance than any worldly consideration. On one occasion our Lord uttered a self-evident truth in these words: "He that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth." By darkness in this place ignorance of divine and spiritual things is meant. Again: "The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up." In this passage darkness means ignorance and light means knowledge from teaching. Sitting in the region and shadow of death is a figure so strong in its import that we hardly know how to show forth its full significance. Sitting implies an easy state of mind and feeling. The region of death signifies the place where the love of self and the love of the world bear rule, and find their gratification and satisfaction in worldly enjoyments, and that place is man's depraved and spiritually dead heart. The shadow of death signifies that beclouded state of the understanding which is the inevitable consequence of being satisfied to sit in darkness. Is not this altogether a frightful picture of man's unenlightened and unregenerate state? But it is a true picture, for it is given by the Lord, who knows what man is and what is in man. Have I wandered away from my text? By no means. I have held up this picture to show that man is so deeply sunk in darkness or ignorance regarding himself and God that without instruction in the truths of God's holy Word he does not know and he never would know what he does need. Prior to the discovery of America the native Indian did not know that he needed anything beyond what he then had in a natural way. When the white man came and got acquainted with him he might have addressed him in the exact words of my text as applied to his social, moral and civil state and surroundings: "One thing is needful." That one thing, properly infused and evolved, and in connection with such infusion and evolution therefrom, properly applied to use, would have transformed him from a savage to a civilized state; from temporal misery and wretchedness into the enjoyments of life, liberty and the high pursuits of happiness.