Lanterns

I do not believe that there is a boy or girl here this morning who could tell me what this thing is, that I hold in my hand. It is a lantern, a very different lantern possibly, from that which any of you have ever seen. This is the kind of lantern that your grandfather and my grandfather used many years ago, in the days when they did not have lamps, and gas, and electric lights, and such things as we enjoy to-day.

When I was a small boy in the country we used only to have candles. Later on in life, I remember when they first had fluid lamps, and then kerosene oil, and then gas, and then, as we have it now, electric lights.

In the second congregation to which I ministered, there was an old gentleman who had one of these lanterns. He lived some distance from the church, and very dark nights you could always see him coming across the hill, carrying this strange lantern. After the candle was lighted and placed inside, the light shone out through these small holes, and if the wind blew very hard, the light was liable to blow out.

Now, here is a better lantern. David says of God’s Word, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” On a dark night in the country, you could not go out of doors and move about without running up against a tree, or the fence, or falling into the ditch, or soon finding yourself involved in serious difficulties; and so people in the country carry a lantern at night. In the Eastern countries where Jesus lived, where they do not have gas and electric lamps to light the streets, when people go out at night they always carry a lantern.

And so David said, “Thy word is a lamp under my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Ps. 119: 105.) Now, when people go out with a lantern they do not hold it way up high, but hold it down near their feet, so that they can see the path, and it enables them to walk with security and safety.

Sometimes there are men who have gone to college, and have learned Latin and Greek, have studied the sciences and philosophy, and they think they have learned a very great deal; perhaps afterwards they have studied medicine and become physicians, or have read law and become lawyers, and they think that they are able with all that they know to find their path through life. They think they have light enough of themselves. They do not seem to know that all about them there is a darkness of great mystery; that sin and death and destruction lurk all along their way through life, and that their pathway is full of snares, and pitfalls, and dangers, but they try to walk with the little light that there is in the human understanding.

There is another class of men who go through college and who may, perchance, study much, and the more they study the more they come to realize how little they know, and how much there is beyond them that they do not understand at all. With the little light of human understanding they comprehend how very dense and dark are the mysteries all about them, and so in order that they may walk safely through life, and come at last to the city of eternal safety, they take God’s Word “as a lamp to their feet,” and just the same as a person in the country carries a lamp in order that he may find his path, so these good people take the Word of God and they make it the lamp unto their feet, and the light unto their path.

If you have ever been in the country upon a dark night and seen the engine come dashing along, with the great headlight that throws the rays of light far down along the track enabling the engineer to see very far ahead of him, you would understand what the Bible purposes to do for us, when God says that he will make it a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path. As you grow older, and sorrow and sickness and trials come to you, you will need God’s Word to be a lamp unto your feet.

And when at last the messenger of death shall come and summon you into God’s presence, and you go through “the valley of the shadow of death,” you will then need this lamp for your feet, and you will need the Lord Jesus Christ with you, that you may lean upon Him, and that you may say as David did: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

May God give you this light through the journey of this life, and bring you to that city of light and life on high.