ebbed. The light is dimmed. It can't get out through the lamp. The
crowds are standing in the darkness and falling into the ditch by the
side of the road.

Two-sevenths let the light clearly out. The others are an intermingling
of light and light obscured, but with the obscurity overcoming the
other. The net result is an irritating smokiness. And the movement
unhindered would naturally be toward a steady increase of smoky
irritation and obscurity until no light can get through. This is what He
lets us see that He sees.

Now the instinctive thing to do with a smoky lamp irritating nostrils
and eyes is to put it out. That is the first instinct. The second is to
trim the wick and do whatever else it needs to correct the smokiness.
_Yet He waits._ That first natural instinct is restrained. The
candlesticks are not yet moved out of their place. The light still tries
to get out through them. The human candlestick may yet do the needful
trimming and cleaning. With marvellous restraint He _waits_.

It is a tremendous scene that is stretched out here before us,--purity
and authority combined in One who is standing in the midst of impurity
and failure. The purity is more intense than we can grasp. The authority
is greater than any one can realize. The impurity, the failure, are bad
clear beyond what we can take in. The whole natural instinct here would
be a _cleansing_, instant and radical, a correcting of the evil. Yet He
waits. The purity would act through the authority; the authority
restrains the purity. Love quietly, strongly holds both in check. This
restraint, this inaction is tremendous.

Why this inaction? this restraint? And the answer is simple, and as
sweeping as simple. His plan at this stage shall have fullest
opportunity. His followers will be given full opportunity to the last
notch of time and the latest possibility of their being yet true.

All the intensity of His love, all the eagerness of His expectancy,[63]
all the fulness of His plan for the earth, yes all the millions of the
race, all the misery and ignorance, the sin and darkness, the millions
of babies being born into wretchedness, and the millions of
non-Christian women being held in slavery, and the countless numbers in
every land groping along in a darkness that not only can be felt, but
that is felt to the hurting point and then past that to the insensitive
stupor,--all this waits.

With a heart that feels all that any man is feeling and that b