Then come verses which meet the troubles of the heart and conscience of man, as those meet the troubles of his intellect,--which speak to him of himself, as those speak of the world. How simple they are! How entirely they accord with what I have been showing you were the thoughts of old Patriarchs and Prophets! And yet what worlds of speculation they encounter! what theories about the conscience they come in contact with! what webs of mythology they unravel! Above all, how they explain the thoughts of those who cannot reason, and yet are subject to those laws about which all reasoning is conversant! '_In Him was life, and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness does not take it down into itself._' What have not those words been to men, who have been for years trying to reconcile the contradictory phenomena of their own spirits! 'Word of God, thy light has been shining in me, flashing into my heart, discovering the dark places and passages there! The darkness tries to comprehend, to hide, to quench thy light! Thanks be to Thee, it cannot.' The transition appears great from this sentence--so general, yet so individual,--concerning the beginning of the world and the latest days of it--to the words, '_There was a man sent from God, whose name was John_.' No doubt we are reminded by the change that the writer belonged to a particular age--to an age in which there were many disciples of John the Baptist still alive, who were inclined to claim for him the very highest honour that could belong to a divine messenger.[2] The Apostle was especially likely to know what followers of the Baptist would say and feel respecting him, since he had probably been one of them. But he does not forget the subject with which he was occupied before, when he turns to his old master and to those who were paying him an extravagant homage. He introduces John that he may declare what every man sent from God in the former times had done,--what every such man in that time, in all time to come, must do: '_The same came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe_.' 'You who listened to John, if there are any of you yet on earth, what was the effect of his speech, his look, his baptism upon you? I will tell you what it was upon me. As he said "_Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand_," my darkness was revealed to me. That darkness was discovered by the divine light of which he spoke. He came to bear witness of this light, that you and I might believe in it.' Here was one mighty, unspeakable cause of gratitude to him. But, '_He was not that Light, but was sent that he might witness of the Light_.' So was it with John preaching by the side of Jordan. Was the saying less true of Jeremiah preaching beside the temple that was to be desolate, of Ezekiel preaching by the river Chebar? Was it less true of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, of St.