of God and a perishing world." But perhaps you will say,
"My light is so small that I cannot be a help or a witness to any; I
have not light enough to show any the right way." Not so: a glow-worm
in the hedge can tell a man which way to walk, if it will only shine.
We may not all of us have the privilege of saying with John Wesley,
"The world is my parish." Our parish may be small, and we may be
lights indoors, shining for only one neglected soul in the house, or
for young ones who have to be trained for the Lord, or for the men on
our own staircase in college, or with whom we walk in afternoons.

They say the problem about the electric light is the difficulty of its
subdivision, that is, of its multiplication; and in the spiritual world
the corresponding necessity is to multiply and reproduce the image of
God in Jesus Christ. There was a similar difficulty in the early days
of photography; they could take one picture, but did not know how to
produce copies from it. The Christian religion has in it the means of
producing not only one Light of the world but many--a church of men and
women of whom it may be said, as to the disciples at the first, "Ye are
the light of the world." But will something within us object and say,
"Shining means burning up and burning out: the candle will grow
shorter, and the battery weaker"? Now here we get at the root of the
matter. Truly it is impossible to offer any real devotion to God, or
perform any real service to man, unless we are willing to pay the cost.
We are not to offer, either to God or man, of that which costs us
nothing. The noblest thing in God's world is a lavished life; whereof
God has given us plain proof in this--that "He so loved the world that
He gave His Son"; and which Paul confirms as he says to some of those
to whom he had been the means of bringing light, "I will most gladly
spend and be spent for you." "I will burn up for you, and then when I
am burnt out, I will be content with the mere candle-end of a life,
extinct for the love of Jesus." And let us remember, too, that old
proverb, that "You can't burn a candle at both ends." If our life has
been lighted at one end for God, we must not burn it at the other for
selfish enjoyments and ambitions. The work that God has called you to
do is a burner that will take all the gas that you can supply.

Now suppose that every time a candle is lighted here, a star were to
shine out up yonder. How eager we shoul