The break of day.
"Then shall thy light break forth as the morning." The hindrances to progress in God's Church are not in Divine limitations, but in human perversions.
I. THE LIGHT IS THERE. We hide it under the bushel of our formalism and worldliness. Divine revelation gives it—yea, keeps it alive; and it' we remove the obstacles to its glory, it will burst forth. Many blame religion for the faults and formalities of nominally religious men.
II. THE REVELATION OF THIS LIGHT IS A MORNING. Mornings have often come alike in Jewish and Christian history. Isaiah awakened the Hebrew nation to a new life. Mediaevalism with its dark superstitions, the inquisition with its abhorrent cruelties, did not destroy Christianity. What has been well called the "morning of the Reformation" came. Look back now to Savonarola, and you will see what one man can do to herald a better day in darkest times. Then! Not by an accident in history, nor by an arbitrary decree of God; but by obedience to his Word and by the baptism of his Spirit. And beautiful as are all mornings, when the sun touches the clouds with gold, and fills the earth with splendour, and makes dancing sunshine on the sapphire sea, none are so beautiful as the mornings of new moral life for the world.—W.M.S.