Sermons, English -- 19th century; Theology -- Sermons
To the man who does not try to order his thoughts and feelings and
judgments after the will of the Father, I have nothing to say; he can
have no light to let shine. For to let our light shine is to see that in
every, even the smallest thing, our lives and actions correspond to what
we know of God; that, as the true children of our father in heaven, we
do everything as he would have us do it. Need I say that to let our
light shine is to be just, honourable, true, courteous, more careful
over the claim of our neighbour than our own, as knowing ourselves in
danger of overlooking it, and not bound to insist on every claim of our
own! The man who takes no count of what is fair, friendly, pure,
unselfish, lovely, gracious,--where is his claim to call Jesus his
master? where his claim to Christianity? What saves his claim from being
merest mockery?
The outshining of any human light must be obedience to truth recognized
as such; our first show of light as the Lord's disciples must be in
doing the things he tells us. Naturally thus we declare him our master,
the ruler of our conduct, the enlightener of our souls; and while in
the doing of his will a man is learning the loveliness of righteousness,
he can hardly fail to let some light shine across the dust of his
failures, the exhalations from his faults. Thus will his disciples shine
as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of life.
To shine, we must keep in his light, sunning our souls in it by thinking
of what he said and did, and would have us think and do. So shall we
drink the light like some diamonds, keep it, and shine in the dark.
Doing his will, men will see in us that we count the world his, hold
that his will and not ours must be done in it. Our very faces will then
shine with the hope of seeing him, and being taken home where he is.
Only let us remember that trying to look what we ought to be, is the
beginning of hypocrisy.
If we do indeed expect better things to come, we must let our hope
appear. A Christian who looks gloomy at the mention of death, still
more, one who talks of his friends as if he had lost them, turns the
bushel of his little-faith over the lamp of the Lord's light. Death is
but our visible horizon, and our look ought always to be focussed beyond
it. We should never talk as if death were the end of anything.
To let our light shine, we must take care that we have no respect for
riches: if we have none, there is no fear of our showing any. To treat
the poor man with less attention or cordiality than the rich, is to show
ourselves the servants of Mammon. In like manner we must lay no value on
the praise of men, or in any way seek it. We must honour no man because
of intellect, fame, or success. We must not shrink, in fear of the
judgment of men, from doing openly what we hold right; or at all
acknowledge as a law-giver what calls itself Society, or harbour the
least anxiety for its approval.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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