e groups of
followers banded together here and there. These small groups of Christ's
followers are called _candlesticks_ or lampstands.

There is no suggestion yet of their giving any light. No lighted candles
nor oily wicks are burning and shining. They are only candle_sticks_.
They are of gold, the most precious metal, but they can give no light,
they can only hold the light some one else supplies. The Man standing
amongst them is the light. The whole effect of the sight of Christ here
is that He is the light. The presence within the man shines out through
head and eyes and limbs, as light, intense dazzling light, even as the
sun in his strength.

Here is the distinctive thing. Christ's whole interest centres in the
earth. All heaven is bending over watching the run of events down here.
The intensity of His suffering and death tell the intensity of Christ's
interest in the movement of things on the earth. He has a plan. He has
put His very life into it. It centres wholly in the affairs of us men
down here. And it centres in His Church.

This quite upsets our common ideas about the centre of things down here.
We class London and New York as the great financial centres; Paris and
Berlin as the great fashion and military centres. Rome is the centre of
authority of the Catholic Church, and St. Petersburg of the Greek
Orthodox. The Man who holds all power in His hands, and on whose word
everything depends, quietly brushes all this aside with scarce a move of
His hand. The earth-centre of things is the Church. That is, the groups
of his followers banded together in various parts of the world.

Sometimes it is seen as a magnificent organization intimately connected
with the machinery of government. Sometimes as very small groups of
persons with no social standing, despised and reckoned as not worth
reckoning with. But this is the thing He is depending on for getting out
to His world. All His plans centre here.

He is the light. The light He gave and gives through nature, and within
every man's breast, has been awfully darkened through refusal and
neglect to use it, through stubborn self-will. It is so darkened that
ofttimes it seems to have been quite put out. His coming amongst us as
one of ourselves, living our life, dying on our behalf to free us from
sin, rising again victorious over death, sending His Holy Spirit to make
all this real and living to each of us,--this is the light at its full
shining, the flood-light