We shall be ‘light’ if we are ‘in the Lord.’  It is by union with Jesus Christ that we partake of His illumination.  A sunbeam has no more power to shine if it be severed from the sun than a man has to give light in this dark world if He be parted from Jesus Christ.  Cut the current and the electric light dies; slacken the engine and the electric arc becomes dim, quicken it and it burns bright.  So the condition of my being light is my keeping unbroken my communication with Jesus Christ; and every variation in the extent to which I receive into my heart the influx of His power and of His love is correctly measured and represented by the greater or the lesser brilliancy of the light with which I reflect His radiance.  Ye were some time darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.’  Keep near to Him, and a firm hold of His hand, and then you will be light.

And now I need not dwell for more than a moment or two upon what I have already said is included in this conception of the Christian man as being light.  There are two sides to it:  one is that all Christian people who have learned to know Jesus Christ and have been truly taught of Him, do possess a certitude and clearness of knowledge which make them the lights of the world.  We advance no claims to any illumination as to other than moral or religious truth.  We leave all the other fields uncontested.  We bow humbly with confessed ignorance and with unfeigned gratitude and admiration before those who have laboured in them, as before our teachers, but if we are true to our Master, and true to the position in which He has placed us, we shall not be ashamed to say that we believe ourselves to know the truth, in so far as men can ever know it, about the all-important subject of God and man, and the bond between them.

To-day there is need, I think, that Christian men and women should not be reasoned or sophisticated or cowed out of their confidence that they have the light because they do know God.  It is proclaimed as the ultimate word of modern thought that we stand in the presence of a power which certainly is, but of which we can know nothing except that it is altogether different from ourselves, and that it ever tempts us to believe that we can know it, and ever repels us into despair.  Our answer is Yes! we could have told you that long ago, though not altogether in your sense; you have got hold of half a truth, and here is the whole of it:—­’No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him!’ (a Gospel of despair, verified by the last words of modern thinkers), ’the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’

Christian men and women, ‘Ye are the light of the world.’  Darkness in yourselves, ignorant about many things, ungifted with lofty talent, you have possession of the deepest truth; do not be ashamed to stand up and say, even in the presence of Mars’ Hill, with all its Stoics and Epicureans:—­’Whom ye ignorantly’—­alas! not ’worship’—­’Whom ye ignorantly speak of, Him declare we unto you.’