ely enough into a man's eye, you will see in it little
pictures of what he beholds at the moment; and if our hearts are
beholding Christ, Christ will be mirrored and manifested on our
hearts. Our characters will show what we are looking at, and ought,
in the case of Christian people, to bear His image so plainly, that
men cannot but take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

This ought to lead all of us who say that we have seen the Lord, to
serious self-questioning. Do beholding and reflecting go together in
our cases? Are our characters like those transparent clocks, where
you can see not only the figures and hands, but the wheels and works?
Remember that, consciously and unconsciously, by direct efforts and
by insensible influences on our lives, the true secret of our being
ought to come, and will come, forth to light. The convictions which
we hold, the emotions that are dominant in our hearts, will mould and
shape our lives. If we have any deep, living perception of Christ,
bystanders looking into our faces will be able to tell what it is up
yonder that is making them like the faces of the angels--even vision
of the opened heavens and of the exalted Lord. These two things are
inseparable--the one describes the attitude and action of the
Christian man towards Christ; the other the very same attitude and
action in relation to men. And you may be quite sure that, if little
light comes from a Christian character, little light comes into it;
and if it be swathed in thick veils from men, there must be no less
thick veils between it and God.

Nor is it only that our fellowship with Christ will, as a matter of
course, show itself in our characters, and beauty born of that
communion 'shall pass into our face,' but we are also called on, as
Paul puts it here, to make direct conscious efforts for the
communication of the light which we behold. As the context has it,
God hath shined in our hearts, that we might give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Away with
all veils! No reserve, no fear of the consequences of plain speaking,
no diplomatic prudence regulating our frank utterance, no secret
doctrines for the initiated! We are to 'renounce the hidden things of
dishonesty.' Our power and our duty lie in the full exhibition of the
truth. We are only clear from the blood of men when we, for our
parts, make sure that if any light be hid, it is hid not by reason of
obscurity or si