1. The strife of light and darkness. The victory of the rising sun and its surrender at evening to the darkness; the obscuring of the light through eclipse or mist and its recovery--these {197} universal appearances present themselves naturally to human consciences everywhere as being experiences analogous to the moral strife within between good and evil. Light is thus the universal symbol of good, and darkness of evil. The symbolism passes out of early native myths into the spiritual phraseology of many religions; but especially into those of the Persians and the Jews. 'In thy light shall we see light' is the cry of the devout heart towards God. And the whole of Christian language is possessed by the symbolism. Christ is 'the light of the world': His disciples are 'the children of light,' they are to be clothed in 'the armour of light,' bathed in 'the light of the glorious Gospel': they are the children of the God who 'dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto': who 'is light and in whom is no darkness at all.' St. Paul, like St. John, specially loves the metaphor of light. And it is somewhat startling to notice how different is his conception of enlightenment from that common in modern times, or indeed, from that held in the schools of philosophy of his own day or by the Gnostics just after him. This latter class of men, who can be taken as typical of many others at very {198} different epochs, meant by 'the enlightened' a select few who had a special capacity for intellectual abstraction and contemplation, and who by such qualities of the intellect were believed to attain to a knowledge of God which was beyond the reach of the ordinary men of faith. But St. Paul, following his Master, is quite certain that the root of true enlightenment lies in the will and heart. The love of the light is first of all simply the pure desire for goodness; and anything that is not this first of all is a counterfeit and a sham. And the true enlightenment is thus not the privilege of a few, but is open to all who will come to Christ. 'Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure, through the foolishness of the preaching, to save them that believe.' 'If any man thinketh that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God[3].' This language sounds violent; but I doubt if many thinking men could now be found {199} to doubt that the way opened by the 'foolishness of the gospel preaching' was a way of light for the world compared to which the way of the contemporary philosophers was darkness and delusion. The arrogant wisdom of the contemporary 'Heracleitus' would have provided no real light at all for the Ephesians whom he denounced. A fresh