Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. As nobody lights a lamp only to cover it up, but places it so conspicuously as to give light to all who need light, so Christians, being the light of the world, instead of hiding their light, are so to hold it forth before men that they may see what a life the disciples of Christ lead, and seeing this, may glorify their Father for so redeeming, transforming, and ennobling earth's sinful children, and opening to themselves the way to like redemption and transformation.
Remarks:
(1) All-precious though the doctrines of the Gospel be, since the proper appreciation and cordial reception of them depends upon a previous, preparation of the heart-especially, on the soul's being thoroughly emptied of its own fancied excellences, and made painfully alive to its spiritual necessities-it will be the wisdom of all Christian preachers to imitate the Great Preacher here, in laying first the foundation of this frame.
(2) The theology of the Old Testament, when stripped of its accidents and reduced to its essence, is one with that of the New Testament-it is spiritual; it is evangelical.
(3) The earthly and the heavenly stages of the kingdom of God are essentially one; the former preparing the way for the latter, and opening naturally into it, as the commencing and consummating stages of the same condition. Thus the connection between them far from being arbitrary, is inherent.
(4) How entirely contrary to the spirit and design of Christianity is that monkish seclusion from society and ascetic solitude which, attractive though it be to a morbid spirituality, is just to do the very thing which our Lord here represents us against the nature of the Christian calling, and rendering observance of His injunctions here impossible. If even a lamp is not lighted to be put under a bushel, but placed conspicuously for the very purpose of giving light to all within reach of its rays, how much less is the sun placed in the heavens in order that men on the earth may walk in darkness? Even so, says our Lord, instead of hiding the light of your Christianity from the dark world around you, bring it out into the view of men, on purpose to let them see it. Much more plainly does this come out in the other figure. As salt must come into actual contact with what is to be seasoned by it, so must Christians, instead of standing at a distance from their fellows, come into contact with them, on purpose to communicate to them their own qualities. Nor does our Lord think it necessary to guard against confounding this with the spirit of religious ostentation, of which He treats sufficiently in the following chapter; because what follows is quite enough to prevent any such perversion of His language: "that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" - not 'see how much superior you are to them,' but 'see what an astonishing change He can Work by the Gospel upon men of every class.' Thus, God is deprived of the testimony He expects from His redeemed and transformed people, when, instead of manifesting before their fellows what He has done for their souls, they shut themselves up-whether systematically or otherwise-or habitually retire within themselves. But:
(5) Not by the preaching or publication of mere truths, are Christians to bear down the opposition and effect the conversion of their fellow-men. Not thus is their light to "shine before men." But it is so to shine that men "may see their good works, and (so) glorify their Father which is in heaven." In order words, Father while it is Christianity which is to carry all before it, it is not the Christianity of books, nor even of mere preaching-much less of an empty profession-but the Christianity of life. "YE (whom I have been pronouncing blessed, as possessors of a blessed character) are the light of the world." Yes: It is humility, not as preached, but as practiced; it is contrition, not us depicted, not as inculcated, but as exemplified; it is meekness manifested; it is spiritual aspiration, not as enjoined, but as beheld in men on whose whole carriage may be seen written Excelsior; it is mercy embodied; it is heart-purity in flesh and blood; it is peace incarnate. This many-sided manifestation of a divine life in men, mixing with their fellows, and of like passions with their fellows, is the divinely ordained specific for arresting the progress of human corruption, diffusing health and sweetness through it, and irradiating it with the fructifying and gladdening beams of heavenly light.