ing
years. It seems such a waste. Loneliness and depression are hard to
endure; but the consciousness of accomplishing so little, though at
such cost, is very painful. This is your cellar-life, your dungeon
experience. Remember that Joseph and Rutherford, John Bunyan and
Madame Guyon, have been there before you. Probably, because the cellar
is so very dark, God wants to station a candle there, and has placed
you there because you can accomplish a work for Him, and for others, of
priceless importance. Where is the light needed so much as on a dark
landing or a sunken reef? Go on shining, and you will find some day
that God will make that cellar a pedestal out of which your light shall
stream over the world; for it was out of his prison cell that John
illuminated the age in which his lot was cast, quite as much as from
his rock-pulpit beside the Jordan. "I would have you know, brethren,"
said the apostle, "that the things which happened unto me have fallen
out rather unto the progress of the Gospel, so that my bonds became
manifest in Christ throughout the Praetorian guard" (Phil. i. 12, 13,
R.V.).

III. CHRIST'S WARNING AGAINST THE MISUSE OF OPPORTUNITIES.--"Ye were
willing for a season to rejoice in his light." The Greek word rendered
_rejoice_ has in it the idea of moths playing around a candle, or of
children dancing around a torch-light, as it burns lower and lower. It
is as though a light were given to men for an hour, for them to use for
some high and sacred purpose, but they employ it for dancing and
card-playing, instead of girding up their loins to serious tasks. "You
were willing," says the Master, in effect, "to rejoice, to dance and
sing, in his light. You treated his ministry as a pastime. As long as
he spoke to you about the coming Kingdom, you listened and were glad;
but when he began to call you to repentance and warn you of wrath to
come, you left him." He is now like an almost extinguished lamp. His
hour is all but done. The brief space he was sent to occupy has been
fulfilled. "Behold, the night cometh, when no man can work."

The ministry of the Gospel is but for "an hour." The story of man may
be compared to a brief day (1 Cor. iv. 3, _marg._, R.V.); and in that
day the proclamation of the good news from God occupies but a very
limited space. The hour-glass was turned when Jesus ascended, and it
is more than likely that the last grains are running through; then the
cry of the