God is the fire of this world, its vital principle, a warm pervading presence everywhere. Of this fire the spirit of man is the candle. What does that mean? If, because man is of a nature which corresponds to the nature of God, and just so far as man is obedient to God, the life of God which is spread throughout the universe gathers itself into utterance; and men, aye and all other beings, if such beings there are, capable of watching our humanity, see what God is in gazing at the man whom He has kindled then, is not the figure plain? It is a wondrous thought, but it is clear enough. Here is the universe, full of the diffused fire of divinity. Men feel it in the air, as they feel an intense heat which has not broken into a blaze. Now in the midst of this solemn burdened world there stands up a man, pure, Godlike, and perfectly obedient to God. In an instant it is as if the heated room had found some sensitive inflammable point where it could kindle to a blaze. The fitfulness of the impression of divinity is steadied into permanence. The fire of the Lord has found the candle of the Lord, and burns clear and steady, guiding and cheering instead of bewildering and frightening us, just so soon as a man who is obedient to God has begun to catch and manifest His nature.
I. Man's utterance of God is purely an utterance of quality. It can tell me nothing of the quantities which make up His perfect life. Whoever has in him the human quality, whoever really has the spirit of man, may be a candle of the Lord. A poor, meagre, starved, bruised life, if only it keeps the true human quality, and does not become inhuman; and if it is obedient to God in its blind, dull, half-conscious way; becomes a light. There is no life so meagre that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at all at what sudden moment it may flash forth with the life of God.
II. In this truth of ours we have certainly the key to another mystery which sometimes puzzles us. What shall we make of some man rich in attainments and in generous desires, well-educated, well-behaved, who has trained himself to be a light and help to other men, and who, now that his training is complete, stands in the midst of his fellow-men completely dark and helpless? Such men are unlighted candles; they are the spirit of man elaborated, cultivated, finished, to its very finest, but lacking the last touch of God.
III. There is a multitude of men whose lamps are certainly not dark, and yet who certainly are not the candles of the Lord. A nature richly furnished to the very brim, and yet profane, impure, worldly, and scattering scepticism of all good and truth about him wherever he may go. If it be possible for the human candle, instead of being lifted up to heaven and kindled at the pure being of Him who is eternally and absolutely good, to be plunged down into hell, and lighted at the yellow flames that burn out of the dreadful brimstone of the pit, then we can understand the sight of a man, who is rich in every brilliant human quality, cursing the world with the continual exhibition of the devilish instead of the godlike in his life.
IV. There is still another way in which the spirit of man may fail of its completest function as the candle of the Lord. The lamp may be lighted, and the fire at which it is lighted may be indeed the fire of God, and yet it may not be God alone who shines forth upon the world. Such men cannot get rid of themselves. They are mixed with the God they show. This is the secret of all pious bigotry, of all holy prejudice. It is the candle, putting its own colour into the flame which it has borrowed from the fire of God.
V. Jesus is the true spiritual man who is the candle of the Lord, the light that lighteth every man.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord,p. 1.