But that is not all, for the sad picture is sketched again with blacker shadows in the next clause, which substitutes for ‘darkness’ the still more tragic words, ‘the region and shadow of death.’  The realm of darkness is the region of death.  That dread figure is the lord of it, and, grimly enough, its very intensity of blackness has power to throw a shadow even there where there is no light, and to deepen the gloom.  The second clause advances on the first in another respect, for while the former spoke only of ‘seeing’ the light, the latter tells of the blessed suddenness with which it ‘sprung up.’  The one clause speaks of the human perception, the other of the divine revelation which precedes it and makes it possible.

But had Matthew any right to see in Jesus’ Galilean ministry the fulfilment of a prophecy which, as spoken, was simply a promise that the northern parts of Israel which, by geographical position, had to bear the first and worst brunt of Assyrian invasion, should have deliverance from the oppressor?  Yes; for Isaiah’s vision of the light rising on Israel, crushed beneath foreign oppression, was based on a distinctly Messianic prediction.  It was because Messiah should come that he expected Assyria to be flung off and Israel to be set free, and he was right in the expectation, for though the Messiah did not come visibly then, His coming was the guarantee, and in some sense the cause, of Israel’s deliverance.  Nor was Matthew less right in seeing in that earlier deliverance but a germinant accomplishment of the prophecy, which, by its very transiency, outwardness, and incompleteness, pointed onwards to a better spring of the Light, and a fuller deliverance from a murkier darkness and a more mortal death.  ’The life was the light of men,’ the teacher of all knowledge of God, the source of all light of true joy, the giver of all light of white purity, and He has risen on a world sitting in darkness that all men may walk in the light, and be children of the light.

THE EARLY WELCOME AND THE FIRST MINISTERS OF THE KING

’From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent:  for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 18.  And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea:  for they were fishers. 19.  And He saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20.  And they straightway left their nets, and followed Him. 21.  And going on from thence, He saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets:  and He called them. 22.  And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed Him. 23.  And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. 24.