THE ACTION OF LIGHT
THE ACTION OF LIGHT
There is hardly any subject more interesting than recognising the way the Lord leads on a soul. Edifying is His great service. Love edifies, and this is real growth. When the work is real, it is ever with the consciousness that He is making more room for Himself in my heart. Sometimes I know what the idol or prepossession which He supplants is, and sometimes I do not; I only know that I have lost interest in things in which I had interest, though I had not felt when they were superseded. Like the queen of Sheba, new sights - His things - have come to engage me so fully that natural things were displaced without my feeling [p. 385] any loss. This is the happier way. But often I am sensible that some taste or gratification which had power over me must not be resumed, because incompatible with the pleasures at His right hand. This is real progress; the dark part is discovered. There is often darkness lurking in a distant corner, when the light is not strong enough to displace all the darkness; and it is blessed progress when the darkness has been displaced; and though at times it is displaced without our feeling the displacement, yet afterwards, the very sense of being perfectly happy without the “wine” - whatever it was, makes one quick to see, that it is mere wine, which seeks to regain its power over one; and I am able not only to see it as that which is not spiritual, but as that without which I can be perfectly happy, because of what I have found in Christ. Nay, I am afraid of it, lest it should divert me from what I know is the best, or weaken my enjoyment of it. It is beautiful when the light so reigns within that the dark part is driven away, and then light like a gilding surrounds me externally. The whole appearance is affected by it; the body is luminous. The external becomes a transcript of the effectual work inside. There is no affectation about it; that is, there is no self-occupation with how I should do this or that, but one is like a leafless tree in early spring, coming into leaf all round. There is a beautiful conformity on every side, in dress, manner, and everything; “it shall be all light as when the lamp lights thee with its brightness” (Luke 11: 36).