Page:The Name Lucifer.djvu/4

 language may refer to the fall of Satan and his angels," and directs us to the words of the Lord, Luke x., 18, "I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven." Fausset, perceiving another allusion still, states that Antichrist shall hereafter assume the title Lucifer, and that "the Antichrist of Daniel, John and Paul alone shall exhaustively fulfill all the lineaments given in the prophet Isaiah's chapter." Barnes, on the other hand, distinctly rejects the mediaeval notion that the fall of the devil is taught in this text in the prophecy of Isaiah. After giving the beautiful Chaldee paraphrase—"How art thou fallen from on high who wert splendid among the sons of men"—he says, "There can be no doubt that the object in the eye of the prophet was the bright morning-star, and his design was to compare this magnificent Oriental monarch (the King of Babylon) with that." This is correct. There is no ground for the application, to the enemy of God and of man, of a name originally bestowed in a figure on a once powerful Babylonian prince, who, together with his empire, passed away when the design of Providence in their existence had been fulfilled. The title Light-bearer, in respect to every particular of the spiritual significance of the metaphor, belongs to Christ because of his inherent dignity, his soul-attracting charms, and his illuminating power in the midst of all moral darkness. To deprive him of that name is to rob him of a ray of his glory. He claims it. "I am the bright and morning star" (Rev. xxii., 16), is the witness which the glorified Redeemer bears to himself. That utterance is only the prolonged echo of the word that fell from the lips of the God-man before his passion had culminated in the awful scene on Calvary—"I am the light of the world"—that word itself, a divine commentary on the promise of old given by the prophet Malachi (iv., 2), "Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

Let the name "Illuminator" be restored to him to whom it properly belongs. Call Satan, Lucifer, as appropriately as Bread of Life, Good Shepherd, or any other title owned by our Lord Jesus in virtue of what he is to the starving, wandering sinner whom he invites to come to him. To everyone who, following Christ, "walks not in darkness but hath the light of life," he is "the day-star who arises in their hearts" (2 Peter i., 19). In the Latin versions of the text in Isaiah which has been considered, and of the above statement of the apostle Peter, the word lucifer, occuring in each, should have been printed with a capital L only in the latter instance, and not, as unfortunately is the case, in the former alone.