light is to radiate. It cannot choose but
shine; and in like manner the little village perched upon a hill there,
glittering and twinkling in the sunlight, cannot choose but be seen. So,
says Christ, 'If you have Christian character in you, if you have Me in
you, such is the nature of the Christian life that it will certainly
manifest itself.' Let us dwell upon that for a moment or two. Take two
thoughts: All earnest Christian conviction will demand expression; and
all deep experience of the purifying power of Christ upon character will
show itself in conduct.

All earnest conviction will demand expression. Everything that a man
believes has a tendency to convert its believer into its apostle. That
is not so in regard to common every-day truths, nor in regard even to
truths of science, but it is so in regard to all moral truth. For
example, if a man gets a vivid and intense conviction of the evils of
intemperance and the blessings of abstinence, look what a fiery
vehemence of propagandism is at once set to work. And so all round the
horizon of moral truth which is intended to affect conduct; it is of
such a sort that a man cannot get it into brain and heart without
causing him before long to say--'This thing has mastered me, and turned
me into its slave; and I must speak according to my convictions.'

That experience works most mightily in regard to Christian truth, as the
highest. What shall we say, then, of the condition of Christian men and
women if they have not such an instinctive need of utterance? Do you
ever feel this in your heart:--'Thy word shut up in my bones was like a
fire. I was weary of forbearing, and I could not stay'? Professing
Christians, do you know anything of the longing to speak your deepest
convictions, the feeling that the fire within you is burning through all
envelopings, and will be out? What shall we say of the men that have it
not? God forbid I should say there is no fire, but I do say that if the
fountain never rises into the sunlight above the dead level of the pool,
there can be very little pressure at the main; that if a man has not the
longing to speak his religious convictions, those convictions must be
very hesitating and very feeble; that if you never felt 'I must say to
somebody I have found the Messias,' you have not found Him in any very
deep sense, and that if the light that is in you can be buried under a
bushel, it is not much of a light after all, and needs a great deal of