“Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light us for ourselves.”
The illustration is homely, but very suggestive. In the evening, when it began to grow dark and the housekeeper lighted her rude lamp, she did not set it on the floor and turn a bushel over it, but set it on the lamp stand, that its light might fill the apartment. Jesus told His disciples that they were His lamps, and that He wanted their light to shine out clearly. Yet there are many ways in which Christian people hide or obscure the light that is in them.
For example, there is the covering of shyness. There are persons who love Christ, but shrink from a public confession of Him. The very depth and intensity of their love seem to make it impossible for them to express the love. Their feelings are too sacred to be revealed. There must always be an inner chamber of faith and love in a Christian’s heart, where only God may hold tryst with the soul. There are feelings which can be uttered to no human friend. There is a love of which we cannot speak. We are not required to talk with many people about our heart religion. It is a proper reserve which shrinks from laying bare one’s inner spiritual experience. We say it is scarcely less than desecration when a man prates in public of the sacred things of even a tender human affection. Is the heart’s friendship with Christ less sacred, less holy? Surely no one should be expected to expose to public gaze all that belongs to the holy of holies of his communion with Christ.
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