'The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of
thy rising.' If we have the light we shall be light; if we are light we
shall shine, and if we shine we shall attract. Certainly men and women
with the light of Christ in them will draw others to them, just as many
an eye that cannot look undazzled upon the sun can look upon it
mirrored upon some polished surface. A painter will fling upon his
canvas a scene that you and I, with our purblind eyes, have looked at
hundreds of times, and seen no beauty; but when we gaze on the picture,
then we know how fair it is. There is an attractive power in the light
of Christ shining from the face of a man. Of course, we have to
moderate our expectations. We have to remember that whilst it is true
that some men will come to the light, it is also true that some men
'love the darkness, and will not come to the light because their deeds
are evil'; and we have to remember that we have no right to anticipate
rapid results. 'An inheritance may be begotten hastily at the
beginning, but the end thereof shall not be blessed,' said the wise
man; and the history of the Christian Church in many of its missionary
operations is a sad commentary upon the saying. We must remember that
we cannot estimate how long the preparation for a change, which will be
developed swiftly, may be. The sun on autumn mornings shines upon the
fog; and the people below, because there is a fog, do not know that it
is shining; but it is doing its work on the upper layer all the while,
and at length eats its way through the fleecy obstruction, which then
swiftly disappears. That must be a very, very long day of which the
morning twilight has been nineteen hundred years. Therefore, although
the vision tarries, we may fall back with unswerving confidence on
these words of my text--'The Gentiles shall come to the brightness of
thy rising.'
But after all this has been said, are you satisfied with the rate of
progress, are you satisfied with the swiftness of the fulfilment of
such hopes? Whose fault is it that the rate of progress is what it is?
Yours and mine and our predecessors'. There is such a thing as 'hasting
the day of the Lord,' and there is such a thing as protracting the time
of waiting. Dear brethren, the secret of our slow growth at home and
abroad lies in my text. Fulfil the conditions and you will get the
result; but if you are not shining by a light which is Christ's light,
who promised that _it_ would have attraction or draw men to it? A great
deal of the work of the Christian Church--but do not let us hide
ourselves in the generality of that word--a great deal of _our_ work is
artificial light, brewed out of retorts, and smelling sulphureous; and
a great deal more of it is the phosphorescence that glimmers above
decay. If the Christian Church has ceased in any measure, or in any of
its members, to be able to attract by the exhibition of its light, let
the Christian Church sit down and bethink itself of the sort of light
it gives, and perhaps it will find a reason for its failure. It is
Christ, the holy Christ, the loving Christ, the Christ in us making us
wise and gentle, it is the Christ manifested by word and by work, who
will draw the nations to Him.
So, men and brethren, do you keep near your Master and live close by
His side till you are drenched and saturated with His glory, and all
your cold vapours turned into visible divinity and manifested Jesus.
Keep near to Him. As long as a bit of scrap-iron touches a magnet, _it_
is a magnet: as soon as the contact is broken it ceases to attract. If
you live in the full sunshine of Christ and have Him, not merely
playing upon the surface of your mind, but sinking deep down into it
and transforming your whole being, then some men will, as they look at
you, be filled with strange longings, and will say: 'Come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord.' So may you and I live, like the morning
star, which, from its serene altitudes, touched into radiance by the
sun unseen from the darkened plains, prophesies its rising to a
sleeping world, and is content to be lost in the lustre of that
unsetting Light!