Christ the Sun of Righteousness

    The resemblances that are found between things in nature are of great importance, not merely for the enlivening of human speech, but for the illustration of truth. The Spirit of God in revelation avails himself of this advantage, and freely employs figurative language. All adaptation to an end, however accidental it may appear, must have been known to the Author of nature. No relation can be new or unknown to Him. Among the figures employed to represent the Lord Jesus Christ, there are some, the adaptation of which to their end is so striking, so wonderful, and so various, that the likeness cannot be supposed to be accidental. The Creator, it would appear, in giving its constitution to the natural object, had an eye to the spiritual; and the pattern on the mount takes its construction from the true heaven of God. The sun, for instance, is so wonderful a figure of Christ, and the correspondence of the figure with the thing represented is so strong and varied, that nothing but design in the Creator of the figure could secure its adaptation. Light and darkness are adapted to represent the knowledge of God manifested in Jesus Christ, as opposed to the natural blindness and ignorance of fallen man. The sun in the firmament of heaven is a bright image of the Sun of Righteousness announced by the prophet Malachi. How wonderful is the coincidence between the sun enlightening the world, and Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, enlightening all nations by his gradual progress! The nineteenth psalm, representing Christ enlightening the world, finds every thing in the course of the sun. And can it be supposed that the provident Creator had no eye to this in forming the sun, and in giving its peculiar nature to light? He is no philosopher who thinks so. Adaptation proves design. In the symbolic language of the book of Revelation, Jesus is represented as the sun, while the moon and the stars in different points of view represent his people. He is the light of the world. They also are the light of the world. The light which they receive from him they reflect on others. Indeed, it is quite evident, that great and glorious as is the work of creation, it is only as a stage for the performance of the more glorious work of redemption. The glories of creation are only a figure of the Redeemer, as they are all his own work. All creation came into existence for the sake of displaying the glory of Christ and his church. If astronomy is well founded in the most extravagant of her conceptions as to the extent of creation, it is so much more added to the extent of the dominion of the heirs of salvation. Go on, then, you men of science, go on in your discoveries of new worlds! You are mere surveyors of estates which belong to the heirs of salvation.