It is an easy and excellent method of conveying instruction, and impressing it upon the heart, to take occasion from natural objects to raise the mind to things spiritual and divine. The day and night, and their alternate changes, may suggest such thoughts as the following, to a serious mind engaged in meditation.
What a glorious creature is light! How beneficial to this world! How useful, nay, how necessary for managing those employments which could not be done in the night! How unwise, then, is he who postpones the necessary business of the day till night overtake him?—So beneficial, so requisite, is the light of life in the important work of human salvation. Does God allow men a day, a gracious season, and the light of his word, for the good of their souls? Of what extreme folly shall they be guilty, if they neglect the necessary business till the night of death come, and they drop into the grave, where there is neither work, nor wisdom, nor device! Now is the day of grace, and God is favoring them with the light of reason and revelation. May he give them wisdom to improve these advantages, to his glory, and their own happiness! They know not how soon their sun may set, and the night of death come upon them. If it should be before their everlasting interest is secured, they will be lost for ever. Oh Lord, teach us so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom!
Night comes on apace; I must soon undress, and lie down to sleep. And it cannot be long before I must put off this body, lie down in the grave and sleep in the dust. What shall I do that my soul may not be found naked, but be clothed and adorned with the glorious robes of righteousness? Jesus, to whom shall I go but to thee, for thou hast the words of eternal life!—How awful, and full of horror, is this approaching darkness! If the imperfection of man did not require the rest of sleep, surely it would be a pleasant thing always to dwell in the light. Will it not then, be unspeakably delightful to abide in the light of God’s countenance, to see the Divine Majesty with a strong and open eye? and to behold his unutterable glories without any fear of being deprived of the beatific vision, or of returning night? But oh! how dismal must that place of darkness be where the light never shines! where the miserable inhabitants never see one beam of Divine light, one ray from God’s reconciled face! where the grossest darkness reigns for ever, without the least hope of returning day! and where nothing remains for them, but a black, a horrible, an eternal night!
“Is light so grateful to the human sense?
Created light? a faint, refracted ray?
One, distant sun? the shadow, but, of God!
Dark adumbration of the Deity?
Oh! what is heav’n! that day of endless light?
Where saints shall from th’ essential fountain drink
Of radiance! in God’s full, paternal shine?