Solomon tells us: "The path of the just, as a shining light, goeth forwards and increaseth even to perfect day,"[1] the beginning of a blessed eternity, when God's wisdom and beauty will be revealed to us in all their brightness and power.
This great gift is the portion of the just only, for the wicked are plunged in an ignorance so intense that it was well symbolized by the darkness which covered the land of Egypt. The wicked themselves confess their blindness: "We looked for light, and behold darkness; brightness, and we have walked in the dark. We have groped for the wall, like the blind, and we have groped as if we had no eyes; we have stumbled at noonday as in darkness; we are in dark places as dead men."[2] What can equal the blindness of him who sells eternal happiness for the fleeting and bitter pleasures of this world? How incomprehensible is the ignorance of him who neither fears hell nor strives for Heaven; who feels no horror for sin; who disregards the menaces as well as the promises of God; who makes no preparation for death, which hourly seizes its victims; who does not see that momentary joys here are laying up for him eternal torments hereafter! "They have not known or understood; they walk on in the darkness"[3] of sin through this life, and will pass from it to the eternal darkness of the life to come.
Before concluding this chapter we would make the following suggestion: Notwithstanding the power and efficacy of this wisdom
