The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-29
FORCEFUL SERMON OF
 REV. STEWART MCQUEEN

Ye are the light of the world. St. Matthews V, 14.
 Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. St. Matthews V. 16.
 Preached in the Church of the Holy Comforter, May 2s. by the rector. Stew art Mcqueen.
 These words are from the lips of our the first passage He proclaims a truth, a principle which applies to His fol- lowers always and everywhere, In every age and in every land. "Ye are the light of the world" In the second passage He makes application of this principle in the form of a command and the reason therefor.
 The command Is, Let your light so shine before men," The reason is, That they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven" Light! There Is no more significant word in the whole range of Holy Scripture. It Is used scores of times by our Savior and His apostles. As applied to Christ St. John makes 1t the same thing as life: 'In Him was life and the life was the light of men" In the world of nature, light and life are practically equivalent. Certainly. there can be no life without light. See what a mighty power is light. Every thing that hath life depends upon it. If 1t were withdrawn from the uni- verse vegetation would speedily decay. Tn turn, all animal life which is abso- lutely dependent upon vegetation would soon disappear. Next we, too, would be swept away in the general destruc- ton, for we depend upon both vege- table and animal life, which themselves cannot exist without light Is It too much, therefore. to say. light is life?
 In the moral and spiritual world we find the same state of things. Only as light shines can there be moral and spiritual life, that Is, only as we shine, for we are the light of the world' so Christ teaches. What we do and what we say (and they show what we are. indeed they make us) goes forth in the shape of light
 Now, suppose we call this light influ- ence, for that Is the nature of the ef- feet, the nature of the impression, we make upon the world about us, that Is what light means and Is. Our charac- ters stream forth from us in living rays of light in the form of influence. It serves to mould the people with whom we associate, for 1t affects their ideas, their views, their ways of looking at things, acts upon their wills. has it's outcome in conduct which. in turn, makes character. Of course, the light Christ bids us let shine is holy and good and pure influence, for that alone can be light or give light. And what a truly wonderful factor in human af- fairs (social, intellectual, religious) is influence.
 Like light itself. it is imperishable. We die, but 1t lives on. We are laid away in the grave, but 1t cannot be gathered up and buried with us. It will operate and manifest itself throughout unnumbered generations Like force set in motion 1t never stops. but perpetually passes on from individual to individual. Liloe matter 1t is indestructible, disappears and re- appears, assuming thousand forms with the passage of the years.N We can- not put forth our dying hands and arr rest it's progress. Our bodies may be shrouded, buried out of sight and we forgotten, but our influence moves on with the march of time itself.
 Yes, 1t will rise with us on the resur- rection morn and stand beside us at the judgment seat of the son of man. Are we surprised, therefore, that Christ should say to us. Let your light (your infiuence) so shine before men that they may see your good works and glo- rify your Father which Is in heaven?"
 How shall our light shine? What means shall we make use of to keap on shining? That is the thing which chiefly concerns us. The Master says: "Ye are the light of the world!' That is, each of us Christians Is a light, a lamp, to shine out into the darkness, shine in rays of living light to make plain to others the way of life. Now, there are certain facts about the use- fulness of a lamp which are exceeding