LET HIS LIGHT SHINE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 1, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 40.

LET HIS LIGHT SHINE.

[From a sermon in the Philadelphia Temple Review, by Russell H. Conwell, on Mal. 4:2.]

In Jesus Christ is found all the light that there is in religion, and the man that is without that light hath no light—he is in darkness still. Jesus Christ is the great religious Sun, and from Him, we receive every right impulse, and every good thought, every holy motive, and every hope of everlasting life.

And then there is one other thought about it, and that is: Christians receiving this sunlight of Christ within themselves should, as it is often said, reflect it. It is all they can reflect. You have no light unless you have Christ, and if you have that light it should be reflected.

You remember hearing about the keeper of that light at Calais, on the coast of France. He was showing the tower to a visitor, and the visitor said, “What would happen if the light should go out?”

“Go out? Go out? Why it can not go out!”

“O, well, it is possible.”

“No; it can not go out; it never should go out, and it never can; we would not dare to let it go out, because of those we can not see out on the dark ocean. There are hundreds—yea, thousands—in those vessels passing up and down this channel, and even if this light should burn a little dimly we should hear of it from India, and from America and South America, and from the islands of the sea; messages would come back, saying, ‘The light at Calais burned dim, and led us out of our course, and caused us danger and expense.’” Said he, “It must never burn dim.”

And so with a man receiving the light of Jesus Christ. When he takes it into his heart and life, it must “never burn dim,” because, in the night of a sinner’s life he has no other guide but the Christian’s life. There are some here to-night that never have known what it is to love Christ, and they are looking at the Christian. They are guided by Him. They have not seen the Sun, but they are looking at the Christian, the lighthouse, the reflected light of God—trying to see in them what it means. And it often bothers them, and burns dimly; sometimes it seems entirely to go out; sometimes it revolves, and sometimes stands still; and these poor sinners are waiting for you and for me, to be sure that our light is a light that shall guide them to the morning, and when we burn dimly, or quiver, or shake and hesitate in our reflection of the light of God, then they are cast on the shoals and rocks, and they are overcome by the ocean, and cast to its bottom, and there on the sands or rocks of the bottom of the sea their bones are bleaching, because you and I let our light burn dimly or go out.

O, Christians, let your lives reflect the Lord Jesus Christ. You sinners that are now looking at the Christians, and saying, “I would like to be a Christian, but not such as they are”—I say to you, that if you will but look and wait you shall see the glorious morning, when the very Sun itself—not reflected light—shall arise above the gorgeous peaks of the east, and shine over the landscape, and show you a world more beautiful than you ever imagined, and reveal to you the very towers of heaven itself.