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, however, associated with the city as
visible to all the country around, the Lord turns at once, in this
probably fragmentary representation of his words, to the homelier, the
more individual and personally applicable figure of the lamp: 'Neither
do men light a lamp, and put it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, and
it giveth light to all that are in the house,'

Here let us meditate a moment. For what is a lamp or a man lighted? For
them that need light, therefore for all. A candle is not lighted for
itself; neither is a man. The light that serves self only, is no true
light; its one virtue is that it will soon go out. The bushel needs to
be lighted, but not by being put over the lamp. The man's own soul needs
to be lighted, but light for itself only, light covered by the bushel,
is darkness whether to soul or bushel. Light unshared is darkness. To be
light indeed, it must shine out. It is of the very essence of light,
that it is for others. The thing is true of the spiritual as of the
physical light--of the truth as of its type.

The lights of the world are live lights. The lamp that the Lord kindles
is a lamp that can will to shine, a soul that must shine. Its true
relation to the spirits around it--to God and its fellows, is its light.
Then only does it fully shine, when its love, which is its light, shows
it to all the souls within its scope, and all those souls to each other,
and so does its part to bring all together toward one. In the darkness
each soul is alone; in the light the souls are a family. Men do not
light a lamp to kill it with a bushel, but to set it on a stand, that
it may give light to all that are in the house. The Lord seems to say,