ought of glorifying his own self, whose one only possible glory is
to shine with the glory of God. When a man tries to shine from the self
that is not one with God and filled with his light, he is but making
ready for his own gathering contempt. The man who, like his Lord, seeks
not his own, but the will of him who sent him, he alone shines. He who
would shine in the praises of men, will, sooner or later, find himself
but a Gideon's-pitcher left broken on the field.

Let us bestir ourselves then to keep this word of the Lord; and to this
end inquire how we are to let our light shine.

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 wh