The consequence is, that another darkness follows, the darkness of error.
#THOUGH MY SOUL MAY SET IN DARKNESS FULL#
They may have gone to places of worship in this country from their youth up, and have never heard the gospel, for the gospel is a rare thing in some synagogues you shall hear philosophy, you shall hear ceremonialism and sacramentarianism cried up, but the blessed truth, "Believe, and live," is kept in the background, so that men may come to full age, ay, and even to old age, in Christian England, and yet the plan of salvation by the righteousness of Jesus Christ may be an unknown thing to them. So are there many, to whom the gospel, even in the theory of it, is a thing scarcely known. The Galileans were notoriously ignorant: few teachers of the law had been among them they did not know even the letter of the law. In the text, those persons who were more deplorably circumstanced than others are described first as being in darkness"The people that sat in darkness " by which is meant, first, ignorance. God distributeth his grace and privileges even as he wills. Some, from the very circumstances of their birth and parentage, have never attended the worship of God, while others, even before they had the discretion to choose, were carried in their parents' arms to the place where prayer is wont to be made. He does not even distribute the privilege of hearing the gospel to all alike, for some lands are as yet untrodden by the missionary's foot, while here at the corner of all our streets the gospel is preached to us. Divine sovereignty runs through all God's dealings. It appears from the text that it was so in Christ's days, and certainly it is so now. SOME SOULS ARE IN GREATER DARKNESS THAN OTHERS. As aforetime, the Lord preached to Zabulon and Nephthalim, and the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, even so is he this day proclaimed among you.įrom the text it appears that some are in greater darkness than others and that, secondly, for such there is a hope of light but that, thirdly, the light which will come to them lies all in Christ and, fourthly (joyful news!) that light is already sprung up all around them: they have but to open their eyes to delight in it. To you who are not familiar with the gospel sound, to you who count yourselves more unworthy than the rest of mankind, to you desponding and despairing ones who write bitter things against yourselves, to you is the gospel sent. As the casting away of the Jews was the salvation of the Gentiles, so the leaving of these privileged ones shall open a door of mercy and hope to those who have not enjoyed the privilege aforetime. Yet, in turning away from them, he will deal with others in mercy. What if he should now turn away from them I pray he may not have done so already. Even his judgment upon a place is overruled in mercy, and even thus to day there are some in this house who have often had Jesus preached to them from their very childhood, but until this hour they have refused obedience to the gospel's command. The loss of Nazareth shall be the gain of Galilee. He must go for the Nazarenes had proved themselves unworthy, but whither shall he go? He will go to the outcasts, to that part of his country which was most neglected, to that region where the population was mixed and degenerate so as to be called, not Galilee of the Jews, but Galilee of the Gentiles, where from distance from Jerusalem little was known of the worship of the temple, where error was rampant, where men's minds were enveloped in darkness, and their hearts in the gloom of deathshade. "He came unto his own and his own received him not." Expelled the city by violence, the patient one turned his footsteps another way, yet, even when justly angry, love guided his footsteps. ULL OF LOVE to the place where he had been brought up, our Lord had gone to Nazareth, and in the Synagogue he had preached the gladdest tidings but, alas, the greatest of prophets end the Lord of prophets, received no honor in his own country. "The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles the people which sat in darkness saw great light and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up,"Matthew 4:15-16. Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, September 10, 1871, byĪt the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington