His love and goodness! But is that all His purpose? Paul did not think
so when he said, 'God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
hath shined into our hearts that we might give to others the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' And
Christ did not think so when He said, 'Men do not light a candle and put
it under a bushel, but that it may give light to all that are in the
house.' 'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do: not light them for
themselves.' The purpose of God is that we may shine. The lamp is
kindled not to illumine itself, but that it may 'give light to all that
are in the house.'

Consider again, that whilst all these things are true, there is yet a
solemn possibility that men--even good men--may stifle and smother and
shroud their light. You can do, and I am afraid a very large number of
you do do, this; by two ways. You can bury the light of a holy character
under a whole mountain of inconsistencies. If one were to be fanciful,
one might say that the bushel or meal-chest meant material well-being,
and the bed, indolence and love of ease. I wonder how many of us
Christian men and women have buried their light under the flour-bin and
the bed, so interpreted? How many of us have drowned our consecration
and devotion in foul waters of worldly lusts, and have let the love of
earth's goods, of wealth and pleasure and creature love, come like a
poisonous atmosphere round the lamp of our Christian character, making
it burn dim and blue?

And we can bury the light of the Word under cowardly and sheepish and
indifferent silence. I wonder how many of us have done that? Like
blue-ribbon men that button their great-coats over their blue ribbons
when they go into company where they are afraid to show them, there are
many Christian people that are devout Christians at the Communion Table,
but would be ashamed to say they were so in the miscellaneous company of
a railway carriage or a _table d'hote_. There are professing Christians
who have gone through life in their relationships to their fathers,
sisters, wives, children, friends, kindred, their servants and
dependants, and have never spoken a loving word for their Master. That
is a sinful hiding of your light under the bushel and the bed.

IV. And so the last word, into which all this converges, is the plain
duty: If you are light, shine!

'Let your light so shine before men,' nays the text, 'that they may see
you