Low-lying land runs to bog and swamp.  And the air gets thick with heavy vapours.  And strange will-of-the-wisp lights form out of the foul damp gasses, and they flit about in the gloom this way and that.  And people are led astray by them deeper into swamp and bog.  It’s surprising to find how many, that grow up in well-lit neighbourhoods, wander off after the swamp lights, and even follow them so contentedly.  That’s partly due, without doubt, to the false lights borrowing so much of the mere outer incidentals from the true.  And they succeed in producing a make-up that easily deceives the unwary and untaught.

There’s a teaching to-day, for instance, that magnifies bodily healing.  The name of Christ is freely used.  And the old Book of God freely quoted.  And men are really healed.  There can be no question of that.  There are sufficient facts at hand to make that incontestably clear.

But bodily healing does not necessarily argue divine power.  There are results secured through the operation of unfamiliar mental powers that seem miraculous.  And clearly there are devilish miracles as well as divine.  Miracles simply reveal a supernatural power, that is, a power above the ordinary workings of nature.  Then one must apply a touchstone, a test, to learn what that power is.

It is striking that in this teaching I speak of now there is never mention of the atoning blood of Christ.  And this is the sure touchstone by which to detect the real thing of light and the make-believe.  The outstanding thing in the life of Christ is His death, and the tremendous meaning which His own teaching put into that fact of His death.

There is none of the red tinge to this make-believe light.  It has the unwholesome unnatural tingeing of swamp lights.  And those who are healed through this teaching will find themselves in a bondage the more terrible because so subtle.  And only the power of the blood of Christ can ever break that bondage.

There was the real thing of light.  Here is the real thing of light.  There’s a distinct tingeing of red in it.  It’s the only light.  It only is the light.  Every other is a make-pretend light, however subtle its imitations and reflections:  it will lead only into swamp and bog and ditch and worse.

And then John goes on to add a very simple bit that has not always been quite understood in its simplicity.  There was the real thing of light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.  There is a little group of varied readings into the English here, found in the margin of the various revisions.  But the central statement remains the same.  Whether John is saying that the light, that lighteth every man, was now coming down into the world in a closer way.  Or, that every man is lighted as he comes into the world, the chief thing being told is the same.  Every man in the world is lighted by this Light.

Through nature, the nightly twinklers in the wondrous blue overhead, the unfailing freshness of the green out of the brown under foot; through the never-ceasing wonders of these bodies of ours, so awesomely and skilfully made, and kept going; through that clear quiet inner voice that does speak in every human heart amidst all the noises of earth and of passion; through these the light is shining, noiselessly, softly, endlessly, by day and night.