Christ reveals Himself to all His servants in the measure of their desire after Him.  Whatsoever special gifts may belong to a few in His Church, the greatest gift belongs to all.  The servants and the handmaidens have the Spirit, the children prophesy, the youths see visions, the old men dream dreams.  ‘The mobs,’ ‘the masses,’ ‘the plebs,’ or whatever other contemptuous name the heathen aristocratic spirit has for the bulk of men, makes good its standing within the Church, as possessor of Christ’s chiefest gifts.  Redeemed by Him, it can behold His face and be glorified into His likeness.  Not as Judaism with its ignorant mass, and its enlightened and inspired few—­we all behold the glory of the Lord.

Again, this contemplation involves reflection, or giving forth the light which we behold.

They who behold Christ have Christ formed in them, as will appear in my subsequent remarks.  But apart from such considerations, which belong rather to the next part of this sermon, I touch on this thought here for one purpose—­to bring out this idea—­that what we see we shall certainly show.  That will be the inevitable result of all true possession of the glory of Christ.  The necessary accompaniment of vision is reflecting the thing beheld.  Why, if you look closely enough into a man’s eye, you will see in it little pictures of what he beholds at the moment; and if our hearts are beholding Christ, Christ will be mirrored and manifested on our hearts.  Our characters will show what we are looking at, and ought, in the case of Christian people, to bear His image so plainly, that men cannot but take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

This ought to lead all of us who say that we have seen the Lord, to serious self-questioning.  Do beholding and reflecting go together in our cases?  Are our characters like those transparent clocks, where you can see not only the figures and hands, but the wheels and works?  Remember that, consciously and unconsciously, by direct efforts and by insensible influences on our lives, the true secret of our being ought to come, and will come, forth to light.  The convictions which we hold, the emotions that are dominant in our hearts, will mould and shape our lives.  If we have any deep, living perception of Christ, bystanders looking into our faces will be able to tell what it is up yonder that is making them like the faces of the angels—­even vision of the opened heavens and of the exalted Lord.  These two things are inseparable—­the one describes the attitude and action of the Christian man towards Christ; the other the very same attitude and action in relation to men.  And you may be quite sure that, if little light comes from a Christian character, little light comes into it; and if it be swathed in thick veils from men, there must be no less thick veils between it and God.