November 9, 2019 – Hebrews 10:32

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering.
—Hebrews 10:32

No blessing is nobler than illumination.38 It tells of the benediction of the light, of a life that has arisen from darkness and moved into the sun. After illumination—a great joy? We would have looked for some conclusion such as that. After illumination, liberty and peace that the world cannot take away? Scripture does not deny these blessed consequences, but in its fidelity to all experience it says that after illumination may come battle.
Think, then, of the illumination of the intellect and of all that follows on the light of knowledge. That is not always liberty and power; it is sometimes conflict. When Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, her eyes were opened, and she was illuminated, yet that light did not bring peace to Eve nor gladness nor any rest of the heart, but only the sorrow of struggle. The more we know the more we want to know. The more we know the more we cannot know. And doubts are born and much that once seemed certain grows unstable, until at last, wearied and in perplexity, not through the power of darkness but of light, we realize how grim is the struggle that follows illumination.
There are those here who can recall the struggle that followed the light. Here for instance is a young man, a student, who has been trained in a pious home. There he accepted without questioning the faith of his father and mother. Their character commended it to him—he saw it lived and therefore felt it true—and in a faith that never had been shaken, he joined in worship and in prayer. There are many who never lose that childhood faith. But often, with that light of knowledge that the years bring to most of us today, there falls a different story. Illumination comes by what we read: it flashes on us in our college lectures. And the world is different, and God and humanity are different. And then begins that time of stress and strain, so bitter and yet so infinitely blessed, through which people must fight their way, alone, to faith and peace and character and God. There is a strife that is nobler than repose. There is a battle more blessed than tranquility. There is a stress and strain that comes when God arises and cries to a young heart “Let there be light.” All which, so modern that it seems of yesterday, is yet so old that Scripture understands it.
—George H. Morrison