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This splendid figure of speech is taken from the dawn of morning on the night. And in order to understand fully the force of the rhetoric, we must bear in mind one of the natural phenomena of those eastern regions. So pure is the atmosphere there, so far south, that clouds in the sky are not usual save in the rainy season. There seems really nothing to hinder the sun's going down, nothing to get in the way of his rising again. When he sets, he goes abruptly behind the adjacent hill; when he rises, he comes up unannounced, and in a quick moment is altogether on hand for his daily work — that is to say, there is positively no twilight, as we describe it, in those latitudes. The instant the day reaches its natural close, the sun appears to slide down the sky without any leave-taking. Just so when the dawn starts. When yesterday's monarch dismisses himself, and it is time for to-day's to succeed him, there he is, unheralded and serenely unhurried, calmly seated in his shining pavilion of clear Mr. Zacharias seizes this astonishing figure, and turns it to account. For four centuries it had been dark — dark with sin, ignorance, oppression — and now in one excited instant of disclosure, the Sun of Righteousness had risen with healing in His wings. No wonder his heart was full; no wonder his dumbness gave way, and his glad voice lifted such a song! Let us keep singing on, and always singing on about the dayspring from on high which has visited us. The light of the gospel is a gleam of the light of heaven. Oh, what will the full splendour of the noon be by and by? When the Gauls had tasted the wine of Italy, they began to ask where the grapes grew, and they would never be quiet till they came there.

(C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

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KJV: Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

WEB: because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dawn from on high will visit us,