one very appropriate on the lips of a priestly prophet---viz.
sacerdotal service by the whole nation 'in holiness and
righteousness all their days.'

But in this latter portion, which is separated from the former by
the pathetic, incidental, and slight reference to the singer's own
child, the national limits are far surpassed. The song soars above
them, and pierces to the very heart and kernel of Christ's work.
'The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them
that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into
the way of peace.' Nothing deeper, nothing wider, nothing truer
about the mission and issue of Christ's coming could be spoken. And
thus we have to look at the three things that lie in this text, as
bearing upon our conceptions of Christ and His work--the darkness,
the dawn, and the directing light.

I. The darkness.

Zacharias, as becomes the last of the prophets, and a man whose
whole religious life was nourished upon the ancient Scriptures,
speaks almost entirely in Old Testament phraseology in this song.
And his description of 'them that sit in darkness and the shadow of
death' is taken almost verbally from the great words from the Book
of the Prophet Isaiah, who speaks, in immediate connection with his
prophecy of the coming of the Christ, of 'the people that walk in
darkness and them that dwell,' or sit, 'in the shadow of death, upon
whom the light hath shined.'

The picture that rises before us is that of a group of travellers
benighted, bewildered, huddled together in the dark, afraid to move