Lights darkened.
I. MAN CANNOT DISPENSE WITH LIGHTS OF HEAVEN. He may never look up. Yet he cannot live without the light that comes from over his head. In spiritual experience there are men who ignore the light above and the very existence of the heavenly world. Yet they are not the less largely dependent on those higher influences. If the sun were blotted out, all life on our globe would perish in darkness and cold—the world reduced to a block of silent frozen matter. If God were to withdraw, all being would come to an end.
II. THE LIGHTS OF HEAVEN ARE DARKENED BY SIN. Sin eclipses the soul's sun. It spreads black clouds between the offender and the heavenly regions. It shuts a man out from fellowship with God. This is its worst effect, though men may treat it lightly at first. The process is twofold.
1. Man is blinded. Though the sun shines in noonday splendor the blind man walks in midnight darkness. Now, sin puts out the eyes of the soul. It is like a red-hot iron that burns away the vision of spiritual things; then the bright lights of heaven are made black.
2. God withdraws his brightness. We pray that God may lift up the light of his countenance upon us. But he may do the reverse, and turn his face from us. He will not forever display his graciousness to heedless, rebellious souls.
III. THE DARKENING ON THE LIGHTS OF HEAVEN BRINGS MANY GRIEVOUS CONSEQUENCES.
1. Knowledge is obscured. We cannot see truth when God's light is with- drawn or when our souls are blinded to the perception of it. "In thy light we shall see light" (Psalms 36:9). "Judicial blindness" must be a fearful fate.
2. Joy is extinguished. A gloomy day is depressing. Darkness brings sadness. When heaven is dark all sunshine vanishes from the Soul.
3. Life is threatened. The soul's higher life Trows sickly and threatens to pass away in the darkness of separation from God.
IV. THERE IS A DARKENING OF THE BRIGHT LIGHTS OF HEAVEN WHICH MAY COME IN THE COURSE OF THE SOUL'S DISCIPLINE. There was darkness round the cross when Jesus was dying. Then in mysterious spiritual gloom he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Earnest souls may have times of darkness, during which the vision of heaven is obscured, seasons of deep depression, when all that once seemed most real melts into the blackness of a great doubt.
V. CHRIST BRINGS A NEW LIGHT TO BENIGHTED SOULS. If we are dark now we need not remain in gloom forever. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light" (Isaiah 9:2). Christ came as "the Light that shineth in darkness," as "the Light of the world." Though the bright lights of heaven be made dark over us, they are not annihilated; they are but beclouded or at worst eclipsed. For all dim, bewildered, sorrow-laden souls there is the hope of light in Christ. But as sin brings on the deepest night of darkness, so it is by repentance and after-forgiveness that we can hope to see the darkness clear away and a new light from heaven arise to shine into our Souls.