meant to be true to-day of each of us,--"_the light shineth in the
darkness_." Of course, _we_ are not the light. He is the Light. But we
are the light-holders. I carry the Light of the world around inside of
me. And so do you, _if you do_. It is not because of the "me," of
course, but because of the great patience and faithfulness of Him who is
the Light. A very rickety cheap lantern may carry a clear light, and the
man in the ditch find good footing in the road again.
You and I are meant to be the human lanterns carrying the Light, and
letting it shine clearly fully out. And you know when some one else is
providing the light the chief thing about the lantern is that the glass
of the lantern be kept dean and clear so the light within can get freely
out. The great thing is that _we shall live clean transparent lives_ so
the Light within may shine clearly out. We may live unselfish clean
Christly lives, by His great grace. And through that kind of lives, the
Light itself shines out, and shines out most, and most clearly.
Over at the mouth of the Hudson, where I call it home, there are some
strange things seen. Sometimes the glass of this human lantern gets
smoky, badly smoked. And sometimes it even gets cobwebby, rather thickly
covered up. And even this has been known to happen up there,--it'll seem
very strange to you people doubtless--_this_; they write finely phrased
essays on the delicate shading of grey in the smoke on the glass of the
human lantern.
They meet together and listen to essays, in rarely polished English, on
the exquisite lace-like tracery of the cobwebs on the glass of the human
lantern. But look! Hold your heart still and look! There's the crowd in
the road in the dark, struggling, jostling, stumbling, and falling into
the ditch at the side of the road, ditched and badly mired, because the
light hasn't gotten to them. The Light's there. It's burning itself out
in passionate eagerness to help. But the human lanterns are in bad
shape.
"Rhetoric!" do you say? I wish it were. I wish with my heart it were.
Look at the crowds for yourself. There they go down the street,
pell-mell, bewildered, blinded, some of them by will-o'-the-wisp lights,
ditched and mired many of them. The thing is only too terribly true.
Our Lord's great plan, bearing the stamp of its divinity in its sheer
human simplicity, is this: we who know Jesus are to _live Him_. We're to
let _the whole of a Jesus_, crucified, risen, living, shine out of _the
whole of our lives_.
Is it a bit dark down where you are? _Let the Light shine_. Let the
clear sweet steady Jesus-light shine out through your true clean quiet
Jesus-swayed and Jesus-controlled life. Then the darkness must go. It
can't stand the Light. It can't withstand the purity and insistence of
its clear steady shining. And the darkness _will_ go: slowly,
reluctantly, angrily, doggedly, making hideous growling noises
sometimes, raising the dust sometimes, but it will go. It must go before
the Light. The Light's resistless. This is our Lord's wondrous plan
_through_ His own, and His irresistible plan _for_ the crowd, and His
plan against the prince of darkness.
The Heart-road to the Head.
Then John goes on to say, "_the darkness apprehended it not_." The old
common version says "comprehended"; the revisions, both English and
American, say "apprehended." Both are rather large words, larger in
English than John would use. John loved to use simple talk. Yet there's
help even in these English words. Comprehend is a mental word. It means
to take hold of with your mind; to understand. Apprehend is a physical
word. It means to take hold of with your hand.
You can't _comprehend_ Jesus. That is just the simple plain fact. You
may have a fine mind. It may be well schooled and trained. You may have
dug into all the books on the subject, English and German and the few
French. You may have spent a lifetime at it. But at the end there is
immensely more of Jesus that you don't understand than the part that you
do understand. You've touched the smaller part only, just the edges. You
cannot take Jesus in with your mind simply. The one is too big and the
other too limited for that particular process.
But, listen with your heart, you can _apprehend_ Him. You can _take
hold_ of Him. There isn't one of us here, however poorly equipped
mentally and in training, and too busy with life's common duties to get
much time for reading, not one of us, who may not reach out your hand,
the hand of your heart, the hand of your life, the hand of your simple
childlike trust--if you're great enough in simplicity to be childlike,
to be natural, not one of us, but may reach out the hand and _take in
all there is of Jesus_.
And the striking thing to mark is this, that we don't really begin to
comprehend until we apprehend. Only as we take Him into heart and life
_can_ we really understand. It's as if the heat in the heart made by His
presence there loosens up the grey juices of your brain, and it begins
to work freely and clearly.
Of course, this is a commonplace in the educational world. It is well
understood there that no student does his best work, no matter what
that work may be, in science or philosophy or in mathematics or in
laboratorial research, his mind cannot do its best, or be at its best,
until his heart has been kindled by some noble passion. The key to the
life is in the heart, that is the emotions and purposes tied together.
The approach to the mind is through the heart. The fire of pure emotion
and of noble purpose burning together, works out _through_ the mind
_into_ the life. This is nature's order.
But what John is saying here, put into as simple language as he would
use, is this: "_the darkness wouldn't let the light in, and couldn't
shut it out, and couldn't dull the brightness of its shining_." It
tried. It tried first at Bethlehem. The first spilling of blood came
there. There was the shedding of blood at both ends of Jesus' career,
and innocent blood each time. It tried at the Nazareth precipice, and in
the spirit-racking wilderness. It tried by stones, then in Gethsemane,
then at Calvary.
And there it seemed to have succeeded. At last the light was shut in and
down; the door was shut and barred and bolted. And I suppose there was
great glee in the headquarters of darkness. But the Third Morning came.
And the bars of darkness were broken, as a woman breaks the
sewing-cotton at the end of the seam. The Light could not be held down
by darkness. It broke out more brightly than ever. The darkness couldn't
shut the light out. And it can't.
_Let the light shine._ Let it shine out through the clear clean glass
of an unselfish, Jesus-cleansed Jesus-fired life lived for Him in the
commonplace round, and the shut-away corner. _And the darkness will go_.
The darkness cannot shut out the light, nor keep it down, nor resist the
gentle resistless power of its soft clear flooding. Let the Light shine
down in that corner where you are. And the darkness, darkness that can
be felt, and _is_ felt so sorely deep down in your spirit, in its
uncanny Egyptian blackness, that darkness will break, and more, clear,
and go, go, go, till it's clear gone.
And so ends John's first great paragraph. It is so tremendous in its
simplicity that, Greek-like, men stumble over its simple tremendousness.
Away back in the beginning God revealed Himself in making a home for
man, and in bringing the man, made in His own image, to his home. And
then when the damp unwholesome darkness came stealing in swamping the
home and man He came Himself, flooding in the soft clear pure light of
His presence, to free man from the darkness and woo him out into the
light.
Tarshish or Nineveh?
Then John goes on into his second paragraph. "_There came a man, sent
from God, whose name was John_." Why? Because man was in the dark. He
sent a man to help a man. He used a man to reach a man. He always does.
Run clear through this old Book of God, and then clear through that
other Book of God--the book of life, and note that this is God's habit.
He, Himself, uses the path He had made for human feet. With greatest
reverence let it be said that God _must_ use a human pathway for His
feet.
Even when He would redeem a world He came, He must needs come, as a Man,
one of ourselves. He touches men through men. The pathway of His helping
feet is always a common human pathway. And, will you mark keenly that
_the highest level any life ever reaches_, or _can_ reach, is this: _to
be a pathway for the feet of a wooing winning God_.
And this is still true. It is meant to be true to-day that there came a
man, sent from God, whose name is--_your name_. You put in your own name
in that sentence, then you get God's plan for you. For as surely as this
particular John of the desert and of the plain living, and the burning
speech, was sent by God, so surely is every man of us a man sent by God
on some particular errand. And the greatest achievement of life is to
find and fit into the plan of God for one's life. This is the only great
thing one can do. Anything else is merely _labelled_ "great." And that
label washes off. This is the one thing worth while.
The bother is we don't always get the verbs, the action words, of that
sentence straight. John was a man _sent_ from God. And he _came_. All
men are sent But they don't all come, some _go_; go their own way. There
was a man sent from God whose name was Jonah. But he didn't come. He
went. He was sent to Nineveh on the extreme east. He went towards
Tarshish on the extreme west; just the opposite direction. Every man is
headed either for Nineveh or Tarshish, God's way or his own. Which way
are you headed?
Some of us go to Tarshish _religiously_. We go our own way, and sing
hymns and pray, to make it seem right and keep from hearing the inner
voice. We hold meetings at the boat-wharf, while waiting for the
Tarshish ship to lift anchor. We have services in the steerage and
second-class and distribute tracts and New Testaments; but all the time
we're headed for Tarshish; our way, not God's. It won't do simply to do
good. We must do God's will. Find that and fit into it.
The meetings and tracts are only good but they ought to be on the train
to Nineveh, and in Nineveh where God's sent you. Are you berthed on the
boat for Tarshish? or have you a seat engaged on the train for Nineveh?
going your own way? or God's? John was _sent_ and he _came_. You and I
are sent. Are we coming or going? coming God's way? or, going our own?
Living Martyrs.
This true-hearted burning man of the deserts _came for a witness_. Here
we strike one of John's great words. You remember the three things that
_witness_ means? that you know something; that you tell what you know;
and that you tell it most with your life. And telling it _with your
life_ means, not only by the way you live, but, too, even though the
telling of it _may cost you your life_. It came to mean all of that with
this witness.
It came to mean that with a new fullness of meaning, a peculiar
significance, to _the great Witness_, of whom John told. This was the
very throbbing heart of the wooing errand. This explains the tenderness
and tenacity of the Lover in His wooing in the midst of intensest
opposition, and in spite of it.
The opposition brought about the terrific grouping of circumstances
which the great Lover-witness used as the tremendous climax of both
wooing and witnessing. No one doubts the reality of Jesus' witness to
the Father's love before men. And no one, who has had any touch at all
with Him, doubts the tremendous pull upon one's heart of such a wooing
appeal as that Calvary climax of witnessing made, and makes.
And this, mark it keenly, is still the plan. "The-same-came-for-witness"
is meant to be true of each follower of the Christ. This is to be the
dominant underchording of all our lives. This is to be the never-absent
motive gripping us, and our possessions and our plans. The rest is
incidental in a true life.
It may be a "rest" that takes most of the waking hours with most of us,
most of our strength and thought. But there's an undercurrent in every
life. And the undercurrent is the controlling current. It makes us what
we really are. It may be quite different from the upper current
controlled by the outer necessities of circumstances. And with the true
Jesus-man _this_ is the undercurrent, this thing of witnessing.
Do you know something of Jesus? Do you know the cleansing of His blood?
Do you know the music of His peace in your heart? Do you know a bit of
the subtle fragrance of His presence? Do you know the power of His Name
when temptations come, when the road gets slippery, and your feet go out
from under you--almost. Then His Name, its power, and you hold steady.
Do you know something about such things?
Then _tell_ it. This is the plan--_telling_. It's a Gospel of _telling_.
Tell it with your lips tactfully, gently, boldly, earnestly. But tell it
far more, and most with your life. Let what you are, when you're not
thinking about this sort of thing, let that tell it. That's the greatest
telling, the best.
And, softly, now, when you get to the end of telling what you know,
listen quietly, don't go to digging into books for something to tell
your class or the meeting or the crowd. Don't do that. Books have their
place, good books, but it's always a sharply secondary place, or third,
or lower down yet. Poor crowd that must be fed on retailed books worked
over! Don't do that. _Know more._ Know Jesus better. Trust Him more
fully. Risk more on following where He clearly leads. Then you can tell
more and better.
Sometimes I'm asked, "How can I have more faith?" Well, not by thinking
about your faith. Not by books or definitions chiefly, however they may
help some. I can tell you how: _Follow where the Master's quiet voice is
clearly calling._ Go where it is plain to you that that pierced hand is
leading.
"Ah! but the way is a bit narrow," you think. "And it's steep. There are
sharp-edged stones under foot. And those bushes are growing rank on both
sides narrowing the path. And thorns scratch and hurt and sting. This
other road where I am now--this is a good Christian road. My Christian
brothers are here. I'd rather stay here."
And so you _stay_. You don't _say_ "no" to the calling voice. You simply
_act_ "no." No wonder you get confused and tangled. It's only in the
path of following clear leading that there comes sweetest peace, with no
nagging doubts and mental confusion. There only will you have more
faith, know more of Him, touch with whom is the realest faith. And so
only will the witness be told out to the crowd on the street of your
life, of the power and satisfying peace of this Jesus.
This is the witnessing we're sent to do. And the crowds crowd to listen,
when it's given. This is the way _the_ Witness did. He followed the
clear Father-voice, though the road led straight across the regular
roads through thorn hedges and thick underbrush. Should not the servant
tread it still?
The word that John uses here underneath our English word _witness_ is
the word from which our English word _martyr_ comes. And martyr has
come to mean one who gives his life clear out in a violent way for the
truth he believes. But, do you know, that is easy. "Easy?" You say,
"Surely not, you're certainly wrong there." No, you are right. It is not
easy. To face a storm of lead, or feel the sharp-edged blade, or yield
to the eating flame,--that is never easy.
But this is what I mean. There's the heroic in it, and that helps. You
brace yourself for it. The terrible crisis comes. You pull together and
pray and resolutely, desperately, face it. A little while, and it's
over. You've been true in the sharp crisis. You have taken a place with
the noble army of martyrs. And we who hear of it have a martyr's halo
about your head.
But there's something immensely harder to do. Without making a whit less
than it is the splendid courage of martyrdom, there's something that
takes immensely more courage, and a deeper longer-seasoned heroism, and
that is to be a _living_ martyr, to bear the simple true witness
tactfully but clearly, when it takes the very life of your life to do
it, though it doesn't take your bodily life in a violent way.
You know they don't martyr people these days for their Christian faith.
At least not in the western half of the earth, the Christian hemisphere.
No, that's quite behind the calendar. That's rather crude, quite behind
the cultured advanced Christian progress of _our_ day. Our Christian
civilization has gone long strides beyond that. We have grown much more
refined. Now we kill them _socially_. Many a one who would live true to
the Jesus-ideals in daily life in a simple sane way finds certain social
doors shut and carefully barred.
We kill them _commercially_ now. The man who will quietly hew to the
Jesus-line in business is quite apt to find his income reduced. The bulk
of business shrinks. The thermometer is run down below the living point.
We kill men by _frost_ now. The blockade system is skilfully used;
isolation and insulation from certain circles. We are much more refined.
The great need to-day is of _living_ witnesses to the Christ in home,
and social circle, in the street, and in the market-place.
"So he died for his faith; that is fine,
More than the most of us do.
But stay, can yon add to that line
That he _lived_ for it, too?
"It's easy to die. Men have died
For a wish or a whim--
From bravado or passion or pride.
Was it hard for him?
"But to live: every day to live out
All the truth that he dreamt,
While his friends met his conduct with doubt,
And the world with contempt.
"Was it thus that he plodded ahead,
Never turning aside?
Then we'll talk of the life that he led"
Even more than the death that he died.
The Forgotten Preacher.
With a simplicity in sticking to his main point, John goes quietly on:
"_that he might be a witness of the light_." That's rather interesting.
It was of the _light_ he was to bear witness; not of himself. It was not
the technical accuracy of his work, not its scholarliness and skill that
absorbed him, but that the _crowd got the light_. Rather striking that,
when you break away from the atmosphere round about, and think into it a
bit.
Here's a man walking down a country road. It's a hot day. The road's
dusty. He gets a bit weary and thirsty. He comes across a bit of a
spring by the side of the road. Clear cool water it is. And some one has
thoughtfully left a tin-cup on a ledge of rock near by. And the man
gratefully drinks and goes on his way refreshed. He quite forgets the
tin-cup.
Sometimes the tin-cup seems to require much attention, up in the corner
of the world where my tent is pitched. It has to be handled very
carefully and considerately if one is to get what possible drops of
water it may contain. The human tin-cup seems to bulk very big in the
drinking process, sometimes, in my corner of the planet. It is
silver-plated sometimes; just common tin under the plating. There's some
fine engraving on the silver-plating, noble sentiment, deftly expressed,
and done in the engraver's best style. But the water is apt to be
scanty, the drops rather few, in this sort of tin-cup. It's a bit
droughty.
And sometimes even this has been known to occur: they have associations
of these human tin-cups for self-admiration and other cultural purposes.
And they have highly satisfactory meetings. But meanwhile, ah! look!
hold still your heart, and look here. There's the crowd on the street,
hot dusty street, exhausted, actually fainting for want of water, just
good plain water of life. But there's none to be had; only tin-cups!
John was eager to have men get a good drink. He was content as he
watched them drink, and their eyes lighten. He was discontent and
restless with anything else or less.
Do you remember the greatest compliment ever paid John, John the Herald?
John was a great preacher. He had great drawing power. To-day we
commonly go where people are hoping they'll stay while we talk to them.
But John did otherwise. He went down to the Jordan bottoms, where the
spirit ventilation was better, and called the people to him. And they
came. They came from all over the nation, of every class. Literally
thousands gathered to hear John. He had great drawing power.
And then something happened. Here is John to-day talking earnestly to
great crowds down by the river-road. And here he is again to-morrow; but
where are the crowds? John has lost his crowd. Same pulpit out in the
open air, same preacher, same simple intense message burning in his
heart, but--no congregation! The crowd's gone. Poor John! You must feel
pretty bad. It's hard enough to fail, but how much harder after
succeeding. Poor John, I'm so sorry for you.
But if you get close enough to John to see into his eye you quit talking
like that. And if you get near enough to hear you find your sympathy is
not needed. For John's eye is ablaze with a tender light, and the sound
of an inner heart music reaches your ear as you get near him. And if you
follow, as you instinctively do, the line of the light in his eye you
quickly look down the road.
Oh! There's John's crowd. _They're listening to Jesus._John's crowd has
left him for his Master. And the forgotten preacher is the finest
evidence of the faithfulness of the preacher. The crowd's getting the
water, sweet cool refreshing water of life, direct from the fountain.
They've clean forgotten the faithful common tin-cup. And John's so glad.
John came that he might bear witness of _the light_. And he did. And the
crowd heard. And they flocked to the light.
Here's a man preaching. And the people are listening. The benediction is
pronounced. And they go out. And as they move slowly out they're
talking, always talking. We don't seem yet to have demitted our
privilege of talking after service. Here are two. Listen to them. "Isn't
he a great preacher? so scholarly, so eloquent, so polished; and all
those classical allusions. I didn't understand half he said; he
certainly is a great preacher. We're very fortunate in such a man."
And the preacher, whoever he be, may know this for a bit of the
certainty that occasionally _will_ sift in. He may be a scholar. I
wouldn't question it. And a polished orator. I wouldn't question that.
But in the main thing, the one thing he's for, as a _Jesus-witness_, he
is a splendid scholarly polished failure. Men are talking about _him_.
They've forgotten his Master, if indeed--ah, yes, if indeed he _have_ a
Master! He has a _Saviour_, let us earnestly hope, and willingly
believe. But a _Master_! One that sweeps and sways his mind and culture
and life like the strong wind sweeps the thin young saplings in the
storm--clearly he knows nothing of that. Men are talking of _him_.
And here's another talking a bit It may be just a simple homely talk. Or
he may likewise be scholarly and eloquent. A man should bring his best.
The old classic is beaten oil for the lamps of the sanctuary. But
there's the soft burning fire of the real thing in his message. And the
people feel it. The air seems a-thrill with its quiet tensity. And the
last amen is said. And again they go out.
And here are two walking down the road together, and as they come to the
cross-street, one says to his companion, "Excuse me, please, I have to
go down _this_ way." And the "have-to" is the have-to of an intense
desire to get off alone. And as he goes down the side street he's
talking, but--to himself. Listen to him: "I'm not the man I ought to be,
I wonder if Jesus is really like he said. I wonder if the thing's really
so. I believe--yes, I really think I'll risk it. My life isn't like it
should be. I'll risk trying this Jesus-way. I'll do it."
The man's clean forgotten the speaker. Oh, yes, he remembers the tone of
the voice, and the look of the face, but indistinctly, far away. He's
face-to-face with Jesus! And the forgotten speaker is the finest
evidence of the faithfulness of his speaking. He is holding up the
light. And men run into the light. They've clean forgot the little tin
candlestick, they are so taken up with the light it holds.
The One Thing to Aim At.
And John keeps driving in on the point in his mind: "_that all might
believe through Him_"; that they might listen, stop to think, agree as
to the thing being believable, then trust it; then trust _Him_, the
Light, risk something, risk, _themselves_ to _Him_, then love, love with
a passionate devotion. This was John's objective. It was the bull's-eye
of his target never out of his keen Spirit-opened eye. Nothing else
figured in.