Cities are the best lighted portions of the world; and perhaps the Lord meant, ‘You are a live city, therefore light up your city.’  Some connection of the city with light seems probably in his thought, seeing the allusion to the city on the hill comes in the midst of what he says about light in relation to his disciples as the light of the world.  Anyhow the city is the best circle in which, and the best centre from which to diffuse moral light.  A man brooding in the desert may find the very light of light, but he must go to the city to let it shine.

From the general idea of light, however, associated with the city as visible to all the country around, the Lord turns at once, in this probably fragmentary representation of his words, to the homelier, the more individual and personally applicable figure of the lamp:  ’Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, and it giveth light to all that are in the house,’

Here let us meditate a moment.  For what is a lamp or a man lighted?  For them that need light, therefore for all.  A candle is not lighted for itself; neither is a man.  The light that serves self only, is no true light; its one virtue is that it will soon go out.  The bushel needs to be lighted, but not by being put over the lamp.  The man’s own soul needs to be lighted, but light for itself only, light covered by the bushel, is darkness whether to soul or bushel.  Light unshared is darkness.  To be light indeed, it must shine out.  It is of the very essence of light, that it is for others.  The thing is true of the spiritual as of the physical light—­of the truth as of its type.

The lights of the world are live lights.  The lamp that the Lord kindles is a lamp that can will to shine, a soul that must shine.  Its true relation to the spirits around it—­to God and its fellows, is its light.  Then only does it fully shine, when its love, which is its light, shows it to all the souls within its scope, and all those souls to each other, and so does its part to bring all together toward one.  In the darkness each soul is alone; in the light the souls are a family.  Men do not light a lamp to kill it with a bushel, but to set it on a stand, that it may give light to all that are in the house.  The Lord seems to say, ’So have I lighted you, not that you may shine for yourselves, but that you may give light unto all.  I have set you like a city on a hill, that the whole earth may see and share in your light.  Shine therefore; so shine before men, that they may see your good things and glorify your father for the light with which he has lighted you.  Take heed to your light that it be such, that it so shine, that in you men may see the Father—­may see your works so good, so plainly his, that they recognize his presence in you, and thank him for you.’  There was the danger always of the shadow of the self-bushel clouding the lamp the Father had lighted; and the moment they ceased to show the Father, the light that was in them