But it needs to be said often and earnestly: _these are not the light_.
They are given to point men better to the Light. They're road-signs,
index-fingers. And they are seen at their best when they point to the
Light so clearly that the crowd quite forgets them in hastening to the
Light they point out. They serve their true purpose in being so
forgotten. They are still serving and serving best even while forgotten.



The Real Thing of Light.


And John goes on to intensify yet more what he is thinking and saying:
_there was the true light_, _the real thing of light_. They were
bothered, in John's old age when he is writing, with false lights,
make-pretend lights, that led people astray. Every generation seems to
have been so bothered and confused. And even our own doesn't seem to
have entirely escaped the subtle contagion. The ground is a bit swampy
in places, boggy.

Low-lying land runs to bog and swamp. And the air gets thick with heavy
vapours. And strange will-of-the-wisp lights form out of the foul damp
gasses, and they flit about in the gloom this way and that. And people
are led astray by them deeper into swamp and bog. It's surprising to
find how many, that grow up in well-lit neighbourhoods, wander off after
the swamp lights, and even follow them so contentedly. That's partly
due, without doubt, to the false lights borrowing so much of the mere
outer incidentals from the true. And they succeed in producing a make-up
that easily deceives the unwary and untaught.