July 20

PART II. — Malachi 4:2.

CHRIST, as the Sun of Righteousness, is not only the source of light, but also of heat. Of the natural sun it is said, "There is nothing hid from the heat thereof." The heart of man is cold and frozen: all his affections are benumbed by spiritual paralysis. Christ alone can impress, and soften, and melt the spirit. When he speaks, then our hearts burn within us: when he sheds his love abroad in our souls, then its constraining influences fill us with an ardent flame of affection towards him, and, in holy ecstasy, we exclaim, "We love him, because he first loved us." Christ, as the sun, is also the source of life and fruitfulness. The absence of his genial influence produces winter, when the vegetable world falls into a state of sterility and death. The return of his warming rays produces spring, and all nature revives, and the sterile scene buds and blossoms as the rose. Where Christ shines not, it is winter, all is sterility and death. There is no fruit yielded to God. The heart presents one gloomy and fruitless scene, unless it be the briers and thorns of iniquity, which are natural to the soul, and which renders it only fit for destruction. But when Jesus sheds his rays abroad, the soul is resuscitated, the ground of the heart is softened, the fertilising influence is communicated, and the torpid desert spirit, becomes the garden of the Lord, filled with all the growing plants of righteousness, to the glory of his grace. Christ as the Sun, is also the source of beauty. It is only by the diffusion of his rays, that nature is adorned with all her rich variety of shades and hues, and becomes one variegated scene of beauty and loveliness. And the diversity of colors which flowers and plants display, arises from their absorbing a different quantity of the peculiar properties of light. How forcibly this applies to Jesus. All the beauties of righteousness, all the graces and virtues of the christian character are derived from him. He transforms the mind into his own likeness, from one degree of glory unto another, until the soul is adorned with all that loveliness, which will render it meet to be transplanted to the fair and unfading regions of the paradise above.