C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Epiphany (See Missions)
The Bartholdi Statue of Liberty enlightening the world. It is the gospel which enlightens the world, and, placed on the church for a pedestal, holds up Jesus to let all on the stormy sea of life see the light of the world and safely reach the desired haven.
The festival of the Epiphany must be deemed of very high importance by a believing and thoughtful Christian. It does not merely commemorate one of the most beautiful incidents of our Lord’s infant life, it asserts one of the most fundamental and vital features of Christianity: the great distinction, in fact, between Christianity and Judaism. The Jewish revelation of God contained within itself the secret and the reason of its vanishing by absorption into the brighter light which should succeed it.
The Light of the world is not put out. Now have death and the grave been converted into the great testimonies for life and immortality. Now may each man, who has the sentence of Adam upon him, know that he is a kinsman of the Son of God. Now may he follow Him; and so, when the darkness is thickest around him and within, not walk in it, but see the Light of Life.
There is no figure more common in scripture, and none more beautiful, than that by which Christ is likened unto light. Incomprehensible in its nature, itself the first visible, and that by which all things are seen, light represents to us Christ, Whose generation none can declare, but Who must shine upon us ere we can know aught aright, whether of things Divine or human.