h
gladdens the wakeful eye. 'Christ shall give thee light.'

Now, if the words of my text are an allusion to the prophecy to which I
have already referred, it is striking to observe, though I cannot dwell
upon the thought, that Paul here unhesitatingly ascribes to Jesus Christ
an action which, in the source of his quotation, is ascribed to Jehovah.
'Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of _Jehovah_ is
risen upon thee,' says the prophet. 'Arise! thou that sleepest,' says
Paul, 'and _Christ_ shall give thee light.' As always, he regards his
Lord as possessed of fully divine attributes; and he has learned the
depth of the Master's own saying, 'Whatsoever things the Father doeth,
these also doeth the Son _likewise_.' But I turn from that to the main
point to be insisted upon here, that the Apostle is setting forth this
as a certainty, that if a man will open his eyes he will have light
enough. The sunshine is flooding the world. It falls upon the closed
eyelids of the sleepers, and would fain gently lift them, that it might
enter. A man needs nothing more than to shake off the slumber, and bring
himself into the conscious presence of the unseen glories that surround
us, in order to get light enough and to spare--whether you mean by light
knowledge for guidance on the path of life, or whether you mean by it
purity that shall scatter the darkness of evil from the heart, or
whether you mean by it the joy that comes in the morning, radiant and
fresh as the sunrise over the Eastern hills. 'Awake, and Christ _shall_
give thee light.'

The miracle of Goshen is reversed, in the case of many of us, the land
is flashing in the sunshine, but within our houses there is midnight
darkness, not because there is not light around, but because the
shutters are shut. Oh, brethren, it is a solemn thing to choose the
darkness rather than the light. And you do that--though not consciously,
and in so many words, making your election--by indifference, by neglect,
by the direction of the main current of your thoughts and desires and
aims to perishable things, and by the deeds that follow from such a
disposition. These choose for you, and you, in effect, choose by them.

I beseech you, do not let Christ's own trumpet-call fall upon your ears,
as if faint and far away, like the unwelcome summons that comes to a
drowsy man in the morning. You know that if, having been called, he
makes up his mind to lie a little longer, he is almost s