e particle beyond,
so every one of us, if we have been brought out of darkness into
marvellous light, have been so brought, not only that we may recreate
and bathe our own eyes in the flooding sunshine, but that we may turn to
our brothers and ask them to come too out of the doleful night into the
cheerful, gladsome day. Every man that Jesus Christ conquers on the
field He sends behind Him, and says, 'Take rank in My army. Be My
soldier.' Every yard of line in a new railway when laid down is used to
carry materials to make the next yard; and so the terminus is reached.
Even so, Christian people were formed for Christ that they might show
forth His praise.

Look what a notion that gives us of the dignity of the Christian life,
and of the special manifestation of God which is afforded to the world
in it. You, if you love as you ought to do, are a witness of something
far nobler in God than all the stars in the sky. You, if you set forth
as becomes you His glorious character, have crowned the whole
manifestation that He makes of Himself in Nature and in Providence. What
people learn about God from a true Christian is a better revelation than
has ever been made or can be made elsewhere. So the Bible talks about
principalities and powers in heavenly places who have had nobody knows
how many millenniums of intercourse with God, nobody knows how deep and
intimate, learning from Christian people the manifold wisdom which had
folds and folds in it that they had never unfolded and never could have
done. 'Ye are My witnesses,' saith the Lord. Sun and stars tell of
power, wisdom, and a whole host of majestic attributes. We are witnesses
that 'He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He
increaseth strength.' Who was it that said

''Twas great to speak a world from naught,
'Tis greater to redeem?'

'Ye are saved that ye may show forth the praise of Him who hath called
you out of darkness into His marvellous light.'

III. Lastly, we have here a piece of stringent practical direction.

All that I have been saying thus far refers to the way in which the very
fact of a man's being saved from his sin is a revelation of God's mercy,
love, and restoring power. But there are two sides to the thought of my
text; and the one is that the very existence of Christian people in the
world is a standing witness to the highest glory of God's name; and the
other is that there are characteristics which, as Christian me