but it is
distinctly _secondary._ The great simple plan of God is this: _let the
light shine_. The darkness flees like a whipped cur, tail tightly curled
down and in, before the real thing of light.

Let me ask you a question. Come up a bit closer and listen quietly, for
this is tremendously serious. And it's the quietest spoken word that
reaches the inner cockles of the heart. Listen: is it a bit dark down
where you live? Morally dark? Spiritually? How about that? in commercial
circles and social and fraternal, in church and home and city and
neighbourhood. Is it a bit dark? Or, have I found the Garden of Eden at
last before the serpent entered?

Because if it be a bit dark, softly, please, let me say it very quietly,
for it may sound critical, and I would not have that for anything. We
are talking only to help. Though sometimes the truth itself does have a
merciless edge. If it be a bit dark does it not suggest that _the light
has not been shining as it was meant to_? For where the light shines the
darkness goes.

For, you see, this is still God's plan for treating darkness. It is
meant to be true to-day of each of us,--"_the light shineth in the
darkness_." Of course, _we_ are not the light. He is the Light. But we
are the light-holders. I carry the Light of the world around inside of
me. And so do you, _if you do_. It is not because of the "me," of
course, but because of the great patience and faithfulness of Him who is
the Light. A very rickety cheap lantern may carry a clear light, and the
man in the ditch find good footing in the road again.

You and I are meant to be the human lanterns carrying the Light, and
letting it shine clearly fully out. And you know when some one else is
providing the light the chief thing about the lantern is that the glass
of the lantern be kept dean and clear so the light within can get freely
out. The great thing is that _we shall live clean transparent lives_ so
the Light within may shine clearly out. We may live unselfish clean
Christly lives, by His great grace. And through that kind of lives, the
Light itself shines out, and shines out most, and most clearly.

Over at the mouth of the Hudson, where I call it home, there are some
strange things seen. Sometimes the glass of this human lantern gets
smoky, badly smoked. And sometimes it even gets cobwebby, rather thickly
covered up. And even this has been known to happen up there,--it'll seem
very strange to you people doubtless