derstood in its simplicity. There was the real thing of light
_that lighteth every man that cometh into the world_. There is a little
group of varied readings into the English here, found in the margin of
the various revisions. But the central statement remains the same.
Whether John is saying that the light, that lighteth every man, was now
coming down into the world in a closer way. Or, that every man is
lighted as _he_ comes into the world, the chief thing being told is the
same. Every man in the world is lighted by this Light.

Through nature, the nightly twinklers in the wondrous blue overhead, the
unfailing freshness of the green out of the brown under foot; through
the never-ceasing wonders of these bodies of ours, so awesomely and
skilfully made, and kept going; through that clear quiet inner voice
that does speak in every human heart amidst all the noises of earth and
of passion; through these the light _is_ shining, noiselessly, softly,
endlessly, by day and night.

It is the same identical light that John is telling us of here that so
shines in upon every man, and always has. There is no light but His. His
later name is Jesus. From the first, and everywhere still, it is the
light that shines from Him that lights men. He was with the Father in
the beginning. He acted for the Father in that creation week. He gave
and sustained all life of every sort everywhere, and does, though only a
third of us know His later, nearer, newer Name--Jesus.

But the light was obscured, terribly beclouded and bedimmed, hindered by
earth-fogs, and swampy clouds rising up, until we are apt to think there
was no light, and is none; only darkness. Then He came closer, and yet
closer. He came in nearer form so as to get the light closer, and let
it shine _through_ fog and cloud, for the sake of the befogged,
beswamped crowd.

And then--ah! hold your heart still--_then_ He let _the_ Light-holder,
the great human Lantern, be _broken_, utterly broken, that so the light
might flash out through broken lantern in its sweet soft wondrous
clearness into our blinded blinking eyes, and show us the real way back
home. It was in that breaking that it got that wondrous exquisite red
tingeing that becomes the unfailing hall-mark, the unmistakable evidence
of the real thing of light.

And it's only as men know of this latest coming of the light, this
tremendous tragic Jesus-coming of the light, that they can come into the
full light. That's the