my text, is full of references to the light as working
in the life; and a couple of verses after it we read about 'the
unfruitful works of darkness' an expression which evidently looks back
to my text.

So please do understand that our text in this sermon is--'The fruit of
the _light_ consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.'

I. Now, first of all, I have just a word to say about this light which
is fruitful.

Note--for it is, I think, not without significance--a minute variation
in the Apostle's language in this verse and in the context. He has been
speaking of 'light,' now he speaks of '_the_ light'; and that, I think,
is not accidental. The expression, 'walk as children of light,' is more
general and vague. The expression, 'the fruit of _the_ light,' points to
some specific source from which all light flows. And observe, also, that
we have in the previous context, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are
ye light _in the Lord_,' which evidently implies that the light of which
my text speaks is not natural to men, but is the result of the entrance
into their darkness of a new element.

Now I do not suppose that we should be entitled to say that Paul here is
formally anticipating the deep teaching of the Apostle John that Jesus
Christ is '_the_ Light of men,' and especially of Christian men. But he
is distinctly asserting, I think, that the light which blesses and
hallows humanity is no diffused glow, but is all gathered and
concentrated into one blazing centre, from which it floods the hearts of
men. Or, to put away the metaphor, he is here asserting that the only
way by which any man can cease to be, in the doleful depths of his
nature, darkness in its saddest sense is by opening his heart through
faith, that into it there may rush, as the light ever does where an
opening--be it only a single tiny cranny--is made, the light which is
Christ, and without whom is darkness.

I know, of course, that, apart altogether from the exercise of faith in
Jesus Christ, there do shine in men's hearts rays of the light of
knowledge and of purity; but if we believe the teaching of Scripture,
these, too, are from Christ, in His universally-diffused work, by which,
apart altogether from individual faith, or from a knowledge of
revelation, He is 'the light that lighteth every man coming into the
world.' And I hold that, wheresoever there is conscience, wheresoever
there is judgment and reason, wheresoever there are sen