Divine light

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"The entrance of Your words gives light." Psalm 119:130

The entrance of divine light into the conscience is needed for a man to know himself. He must be experimentally taught and made to feel that he is a poor, needy, naked, guilty, filthy wretch—that he is a complete mass of disease, corruption, and pollution—that by nature he is nothing and has nothing spiritually good—that there is no one thing is his heart that God can look upon with acceptance—but that he is a vile fallen creature, who must be saved by sovereign grace.

No man can know anything of the horrible nature of sin, of the black pollution that lurks in his bosom, of the dreadful condition of his most depraved, diseased nature—no man can know them so as to feel what they really are—no man can shrink, as it were, into the very depths of self-abasement—except him into whose heart light has come—into whose soul there has been an 'entrance of God's words'—and into whose conscience the entrance of that word has communicated light as to who God is, and light as to what he himself is naturally, before Him.

When that heavenly Teacher writes His lesson of convictions in the conscience, the living soul is brought to groan and sigh, to lament and mourn as a polluted sinner before God—as a deeply infected wretch, a vile leper who has to stand with his clothes torn, and his head bare, crying—Unclean, unclean!

It is the entrance of God's words into his conscience, which has given him light upon this inward leprosy.