, however slow and dull in intellect he may be, may indeed
make many mistakes, but he will find his way through life, and issue
from it, in his measure, triumphant.

It is further to be remarked that Jesus does not content Himself with a
place beside other teachers, saying, "I will give you light," but
affirms that the light is inseparable from His own person. "I am the
light." By this He means, as already observed, that it is by receiving
Him as our life that we have light. But His words also mean that He
imparts this light not by oral teaching, but by being what He is, and
living as He does. Teaching by word and precept is well, when nothing
better can be had;[33] but it is the Word made flesh that commands the
attention of all. This is a language universally intelligible. "A life,
the highest conceivable, on almost the lowest conceivable stage, and
recorded in the simplest form, with indifference to all outward
accompaniments attractive whether to the few or to the many, is set
before us as the final and unalterable ideal of human life, amid all
its continual and astonishing changes." It is by this life led here on
earth He becomes our Light. It is by His faith maintained in the utmost
of trial; His calmness and hopefulness amidst all that shrouds human
life in darkness; His constant persuasion that God is in this world,
present, loving, and working. It is by His habitual attitude towards
this life, and towards the unseen, that we receive light to guide us. In
His calmness we take refuge from our own dismay. In His hopefulness we
refresh ourselves in every time of weariness. In His confidence our
timorous anxieties are rebuked. Upon the darkest parts of our life there
falls from Him some clear ray that brightens and directs. Thousands of
His followers, in every age, have verified His words: "I am the light of
the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall
have the light of life."

And as the Teacher taught by living so must the scholar learn by living.
Christ brings light by passing through all human experiences and
situations, and "he that followeth" Him, not he that reads about Him,
"shall have the light of life." There are very few men in the world who
can think to much purpose on truths so abstruse and complicated as the
Divinity of Christ and the Atonement and Miracles; but there is no man
so dull as not to see the difference between Christ's life and His own.
Few men may be able to expla