"The Old Text Again"

One night I had a dream. In it a friend and I were visiting some Yorkshire villages, giving away Gospel tracts and talking to the folk about the great Saviour. A group of women sat round the door of one of the cottages, gossiping in the sunshine. We gave them each a book and they asked what we were after. In telling them I quoted the familiar words, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." The words were no sooner out of my mouth than one of those women, in her Yorkshire dialect, said, "T'owd text agean" — The old text again — and she laughed in her contempt of it, and all the other women joined in her merriment, and I awoke with their scornful laughter ringing in my ears.

It was only a dream, but it saddened me, for I knew well that that is how thousands are treating the greatest thing in heaven and earth — the love of God to sinful men as it was declared in the death of Jesus. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (John 4:10).

Yes, that great love is treated as beneath their notice, and the light in the face of Jesus shines in vain for them, they see no glory in the cross. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 1:5; 3, 19).

Yet, thousands have seen the glory in the face of Jesus, and I am one of them. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." And every one that comes to Him is thus enlightened.

Have you been enlightened, or are you still walking in darkness? What about the great terminus, the end of life's journey?