7 Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun:

Light a perfect balance

It is needful to look at the various aspects of wisdom as they come before us one after the other in our daily readings of the Scriptures. We do well to look earnestly into each as it comes, and not trust to the special tastes that would incline us to attend only to particular things. We are almost all of us more or less lop-sided. That is, our mental organisation leans a little too much one way or other, from which we get a bias that would incline us too much to one particular line of truth.

Some like hard facts; some beautiful sentiments. Some delight in political prophecy while having no taste for personal godliness. Others are all for zeal and devotion, while they have a shrinking, or at least a lack of taste for everything requiring exact thought or reckoning. Some again have a taste for sombre themes; others, for those that are full of brightness and joy.

These preferences come from partial development. For every part of truth there is a time and a place; and every part blended is needful to a perfect result. In this respect, it is like light. Light is a mixture of seven differently coloured elements. When any of them is absent, we have a defective light. Truth is compared to light, and it is like it in this respect - that it is composed of a variety of ingredients, the leaving out of any of which will interfere with the result.

Bro Roberts

This is true in all senses. There are various kinds of light, as there are various kinds of darkness. When we are young, the most oppressive form of darkness is the natural darkness of the night when the sun has set.

When we are old, it is another form of darkness that distresses us the most - the darkness of evil circumstances - the darkness caused by God's averted face and man's unloving and unholy ways - the darkness that broods everywhere in the prevalence of pain and death.

We can mitigate the natural darkness of night by artificial light, and have comfortable times round the pleasant fire. The other darkness that covers all the earth finds its only alleviation in the Bible.

It has been well said that the Bible is lit up from the beginning to end. We find it to be really so when we become acquainted with it. Wherever we dip into it, we find ourselves in the presence of light and comfort. Our methodical reading keeps us in continual contact with it.

The light does not shine for the haphazard or the casual reader. The Bible is so constituted that it requires constant faithful familiarity to make visible and available the light that is in it. To this kind of familiarity, light yields itself everywhere - even in parts where to the uninitiated there seems none.

Seasons 2.22