The passage: You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its savour, how shall it be salted? It is then good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, where it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. (Matthew v. 3-16.)
The Lord knew these men and had their hearts in his hand; otherwise would he have told them they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world? Though they were in danger of pluming themselves on it and seeing themselves other than God saw them, he does not hesitate to call his few humble disciples the salt of the earth, and every century since has borne witness that he spoke simple fact. Where would the world be now but for their salt and their light! Those who have chosen aspiration over ambition will cry, But for those men, where should we be bound? Their Master set them to be salt against corruption and light against darkness, and our souls answer, Lord, they have been the salt, they have been the light of the world!
The Lord at once supplements the incompleteness of the salt symbol. They were salt that must remember it is salt: must live, choose and be salt. The whole worth of salt is in being salt, and the saltness of moral salt lies in the will to be salt. Salt that loses it ceases to exist, except as a vile thing whose being is unjustifiable. What is to be done with saltless salt, with those who would teach religion and know not God?
Having carried the figure as far as it will serve, the Master changes it for one he can carry farther; salt only keeps things from going bad and makes nothing better, and his disciples are more than that. Having warned the human salt to be salt, he goes on, “You are the light of the world, a city, a candle,” resuming his persuasion: “It is so; therefore make it so.” Be salt; shine; be seen on your hill; let no bushel cover you. Every disciple of the Lord must be a preacher of righteousness.
Cities are the best lighted parts of the world, and perhaps the Lord meant, “You are a live city; light up your city,” since the city on the hill comes in the midst of what he says about light. Anyhow, the city is 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, associated with the city visible to all the country around, the Lord turns at once, in this probably fragmentary report, to the homelier, more personal figure of the lamp: men do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, to give light to all in the house.
Let us meditate here a moment. For whom is a lamp lit, or a man? Not for itself, but for those who need light, and so for all. A light that serves only self is no true light; its one virtue is that it soon goes out. A man’s own soul needs light, but light for itself only, covered by the bushel, is darkness to soul and bushel alike. Light unshared is darkness; it is of the essence of light to be for others, in the spiritual as in the physical.
The lights of the world are live lights. The lamp the Lord kindles is a soul that can will to shine and must shine. Its true relation to the spirits around it, to God and its fellows, is its light. It shines fully only when its love shows it to all the souls within its scope and those souls to each other, and so does its part to bring all toward one. In the darkness each soul is alone; in the light the souls are a family. The Lord seems to say, “I have lit you not to shine for yourselves but to give light to all, and set you like a city on a hill that the whole earth may see and share your light. So shine that men see works so good and so plainly the Father’s that they recognize his presence in you and thank him for you.” The danger was always the self-bushel clouding the lamp: the moment they ceased to show the Father, the light in them was darkness. God alone is the light, and ours is the shining of his will in our lives; nothing is light that does not bear him witness. The man who sees God’s glory would turn sick at the thought of glorifying his own self, whose one possible glory is to shine with God’s. He alone shines who, like his Lord, seeks not his own but the will of him who sent him; whoever would shine in men’s praises will sooner or later find himself a Gideon’s pitcher left broken on the field.
Let us then bestir ourselves to keep this word of the Lord, and ask how we are to let our light shine.
To the man who does not try to order his thoughts, feelings and judgments by the Father’s will I have nothing to say; he has no light to let shine. To let our light shine is to see that in everything, even the smallest, our lives correspond to what we know of God, and to do everything as true children of our father in heaven. It means being just, honourable, true and courteous, more careful of our neighbour’s claim than our own, knowing we are in danger of overlooking it and are not bound to insist on every claim of our own. What claim to call Jesus master, or to Christianity, has the man who takes no count of what is fair, friendly, pure, unselfish, lovely and gracious? Is it not merest mockery?
Any human light must shine out first as obedience to truth recognized as such: our first show of light as disciples is doing what the Lord tells us. So we naturally declare him our master, ruler of our conduct and enlightener of our souls; and while a man learns the loveliness of righteousness by doing his will, he can hardly fail to let some light shine across the dust of his failures. So his disciples will shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of life.
To shine we must keep in his light, sunning our souls in it by thinking of what he said and did and would have us think and do. So we shall drink the light like some diamonds, keep it, and shine in the dark. Doing his will, we show men that we count the world his, and that his will, not ours, must be done in it. Our very faces will shine with the hope of seeing him and being taken home. Only let us remember that trying to look what we ought to be is the beginning of hypocrisy.
If we really expect better things, we must let our hope appear. A Christian who looks gloomy at the mention of death, still more one who talks of his friends as if he had lost them, turns the bushel of his little faith over the Lord’s lamp. Death is only our visible horizon; our look should be focussed beyond it, and we should never talk as if death were the end of anything.
To let our light shine we must have no respect for riches; if we have none, there is no fear of showing any. To treat the poor man with less attention or cordiality than the rich is to serve Mammon. Likewise we must neither value nor seek the praise of men, honour no man for intellect, fame or success, not shrink from openly doing what we hold right for fear of men’s judgment, nor acknowledge as lawgiver what calls itself Society, nor be anxious for its approval.
In business, the custom of the trade must be understood by both parties, or it can have no place, as law or excuse, with the disciple of Jesus. A man to whom business is one thing and religion another is no disciple; if he refuses to make his business religion he has chosen Mammon, and if he thinks not to settle it, it is settled. To serve God and Mammon is the most futile of human endeavours. Whoever tries betrays his Master in the temple and kisses him in the garden, takes advantage of him in the shop and offers him “divine service!” on Sunday; his church-going is further service of Mammon. But let us not waste strength despising such men; let us turn the light on ourselves. Are we in some way denying him? Is our light shining before men so that they glorify God for it? If not, it is darkness, and in the darkness a man takes for light he will thrust at the heart of the Lord himself.
He who goes about his everyday duty as the work the Father has given him lets his light shine. But he will not be content with this; he must share with his neighbour whatever makes his heart glad. The body is a lantern, and must not be a dark one: the glowing heart must show in the shining face. His glad thought may not be one to impart to his neighbour, but he must not quench the vibration of its gladness before it reaches him. What shall we say of him who comes from his closet or mountain-top with such a veil over his face as masks his very humanity? Has he had communion with the Father, whose every movement is self-hampered and in whose eyes dwell no smiles for the people of his house? One who receives the quiet ministrations of wife or son or daughter without a sign of pleasure or gratitude can hardly have been with Jesus, or has left him behind in his closet. If his faith in God takes away a man’s cheerfulness, how shall his face ever shine? And why are they always glad before the Father’s face in heaven? Pain or inward grief may blamelessly banish all smiling, but even heaviness of heart has no right to tumble the bushel over the lamp so that no ray can tell that love still burns within. The man must at least let his dear ones know that something other than displeasure with them clouds his countenance.
What a sweet colour the divine light takes in courtesy, whose perfection is recognizing every man as a temple of the living God. The temple may be sorely ruined and defiled, but if God had left it, it would be a heap and not a house.
Next to love, the light shines out especially in fairness. What light can he have who is always on his own side and never sees reason or right on his adversary’s? And surely he who shows mercy, as well as he who shows justice, ought to do it cheerfully.
But if all our light shines out and none of our darkness, shall we not be in utmost danger of hypocrisy? Yes, if we only hide our darkness and do not strive to slay it with our light; for how do we show it while struggling to destroy it? Hiding evil is hypocrisy only when we cherish it. A man honestly fighting it, giving it no quarter, is already conqueror in Christ, or soon will be, and more than innocent. But our good feelings, those that make for righteousness and unity, we ought to let shine, for they claim to commune with the light in others. Many parents hold back words that would lift hundredweights from their children’s hearts and make them leap for joy; a stern father and a silent mother make mournful, or far worse, hard children. Need I add that if anyone, hearing the injunction to let his light shine, makes himself shine instead, the light is not in him!
But what shall I say of those who in the name of religion let out only their darkness, the darkness of worshipped opinion, lip-honour and disobedience! They tear the body of Christ asunder with the explosives of dispute, pleading a unity they can understand only as paltry uniformity. What have the “good church-man” and the “strong dissenter” not to answer for, who each hide what true light they have under the bushel of party-spirit and radiate only repulsion! There is no schism in using diverse forms of thought or worship; true honesty is never schismatic. The real schismatic withholds love and justice from the neighbour whose religious theories or church constitution differ from his own, denies or avoids his brother because he does not follow with him, and calls him a schismatic for preferring another mode of public worship. The other may be schismatic; he himself certainly is. He walks in the darkness of opinion, not in the light of life, not in the faith that works by love. Worst of all is division in the name of Christ, who came to make one. Neither Paul nor Apollos nor Cephas would lead a party, least of all Christ, except the party of his elect, the party of love: love that suffers long and is kind, does not envy, is not puffed up, does not behave unseemly, seeks not its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but in the truth, bears, believes, hopes and endures all things.
If I have no light, the call to let it shine cannot apply to me; but I must take care lest, in the night I cherish, the Lord come on me like a thief. There may be many, though, who have some light, or imagine they have much, yet not enough to know the duty of letting it shine on their neighbours. The Lord would have his men so alive with his light that it flashes from each to all for ever, and all in eternal response keep glorifying the Father. Friend, do you look for a good time coming when you shall know as you are known? Let the joy of your hope stream out on your neighbours; fold them round in what makes you glad. Let your nature grow more expansive. Look like the man you are, one who knows something very good. You believe yourself on the way to the heart of things: walk so, shine so, that all who see you shall want to go with you.
What light comes from those who make their faces long at the very name of death and look and speak as if it were the end of all things and the worst of evils? Jesus told his men not to fear death, that his friends should go to be with him in his father’s house, and has since risen from the tomb and gone to prepare a place for them. What are these miserable refusers of comfort? Not Christians, surely! Oh yes, they are Christians! “They are gone,” they say, “to be for ever with the Lord,” and then weep and lament and seem more afraid of joining them than of anything under the sun, clinging to what they call life to the last attainable moment. Were there ever such children, hanging crying on their mother’s skirts and refusing to be lifted to her bosom? They are not of Paul’s mind: to be with Him is not better! They worship their physician, and their prayer to the God of their life is to spare them from more life. Where shines their light? Alas for you, poor world, if you had no better lights than these!
You who have light, show yourselves sons and daughters of Light, of God, of Hope, heirs of a great completeness. Let your light shine freely.
Only take heed that you do not do your righteousness before men, to be seen by them.