"In _all_ goodness and righteousness and truth," says the apostle. Let us seek them all. We are apt to become specialists in virtue, as in other departments of life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by extreme efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So they grow out of shape, into oddities and moral malformations. There is a want of balance and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We have sweetness without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken without love, and words of passionate zeal without accuracy and heedfulness.
All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of our religion.
"It is the little rift within the lute That by-and-by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all; The little rift within the lover's lute, Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit, That rotting inward slowly moulders all."
Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one kind will be atoned for by excellencies in another. Our friends may say this, in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins to say so to himself. "May the God of peace sanctify you fully. May your whole spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity be preserved to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. v. 23).
II. The _effect_ upon surrounding darkness of the light of God in Christian lives is described in verses 11-14, in words which it remains for us briefly to examine.
Verse 12 distinguishes "the things secretly done" by the Gentiles, "of which it is a shame even to speak," from the open and manifest forms of evil in which they invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11). Instead of doing this and "having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," they must "rather reprove them." Silent absence, or abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all hazards be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not warrant Christians in prying into the hidden sins of the world around them and playing the moral detective. Publicity is not a remedy for all evils, but a great aggravation of some, and the surest means of disseminating them. "It is a shame"--a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous peril to the young and innocent--to fill the public prints with the nauseous details of crime and to taint the air with its putridities.
"But all things," the apostle says--whether it be those open works of darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their infamy from the light of day--"all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest" (ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of darkness. The daily life of a Christian man amongst men of the world is a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well as against open and unblushing vices.
"This is the condemnation," said Jesus, "that light is come into the world." And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ's steps, and breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on, more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and spontaneous influence is the most real and effective part of it. Life is the light of men--words only as the index of the life from which they spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience of others and reveal the difference between darkness and light, so far do we hold forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit's work in convincing the world of sin. "Let your light so shine."