115. To-day I have only time left to press on your thoughts the deeper law of this due joy in colour and light.
On any morning of the year, how many pious supplications, do you suppose, are uttered throughout educated Europe for "light"? How many lips at least pronounce the word, and, perhaps, in the plurality of instances, with some distinct idea attached to it? It is true the speakers employ it only as a metaphor. But why is their language thus metaphorical? If they mean merely to ask for spiritual knowledge or guidance, why not say so plainly, instead of using this jaded figure of speech? No boy goes to his father when he wants to be taught, or helped, and asks his father to give him 'light.' He asks what he wants, advice or protection. Why are not we also content to ask our Father for what we want, in plain English?
The metaphor, you will answer, is put into our mouths, and felt to be a beautiful and necessary one.
I admit it. In your educational series, first of all examples of modern art, is the best engraving I could find of the picture which, founded on that idea of Christ's being the Giver of Light, contains, I believe, the most true and useful piece of religious vision which realistic art has yet embodied. But why is the metaphor so necessary, or, rather, how far is it a metaphor at all? Do you think the words 'Light of the World' mean only 'Teacher or Guide of the World'? When the Sun of Justice is said to rise with health in its wings, do you suppose the image only means the correction of error? Or does it even mean so much? The Light of Heaven is needed to do that perfectly. But what we are to pray for is the Light of the _World_; nay, the Light "that lighteth _every man that cometh into the world_."
116. You will find that it is no metaphor--nor has it ever been so.
To the Persian, the Greek, and the Christian, the sense of the power of the God of Light has been one and the same. That power is not merely in teaching or protecting, but in the enforcement of purity of body, and of equity or justice in the heart; and this, observe, not heavenly purity, nor final justice; but, now, and here, actual purity in the midst of the world's foulness,--practical justice in the midst of the world's iniquity. And the physical strength of the organ of sight,--the physical purity of the flesh, the actual love of sweet light and stainless colour,--are the necessary signs, real, inevitable, and visible, of the prevailing presence, with any nation, or in any house, of the "Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."