Divine glory shines for us in Christ. It is the glory of the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, but a glory which now shines out for us from the face of a Man passed into the heavens. In Him we are brought near to God. In Him we know God. He has descended into the darkness which hid from us the face of God; He has dispelled it forever. He has revealed the holiness and the tenderness of divine love. We know God, and are known of Him. We are His, and He is ours.

We carry this knowledge with us through the world. It is our competency for testimony in the world. It is not a testimony to ourselves, but to Him. We are the epistle of Christ read and known of all men. And this is not responsibility only, but competency, for the epistle is not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshy tablets of the heart. The light that has shone in shines out again. No matter what it shines on, it is easy enough to tell where the light is shining. The moon, as a type of us, is a ruin; but bathed in the sun’s brilliance, she can reflect it to us.

“You are an epistle of Christ,” says the apostle not “epistles.” Individually I could be an epistle of Christ, but it takes the whole Church to make the “epistle of Christ.” Then, as little as the world could contain all the sun rays, or the moon reflect the full brightness of the sun, so little could even this fitly represent Him. Yet a warm and bright spot can be made, nevertheless, with but a few of His beams.