that work may be, in science or philosophy or in mathematics or in
laboratorial research, his mind cannot do its best, or be at its best,
until his heart has been kindled by some noble passion. The key to the
life is in the heart, that is the emotions and purposes tied together.
The approach to the mind is through the heart. The fire of pure emotion
and of noble purpose burning together, works out _through_ the mind
_into_ the life. This is nature's order.

But what John is saying here, put into as simple language as he would
use, is this: "_the darkness wouldn't let the light in, and couldn't
shut it out, and couldn't dull the brightness of its shining_." It
tried. It tried first at Bethlehem. The first spilling of blood came
there. There was the shedding of blood at both ends of Jesus' career,
and innocent blood each time. It tried at the Nazareth precipice, and in
the spirit-racking wilderness. It tried by stones, then in Gethsemane,
then at Calvary.

And there it seemed to have succeeded. At last the light was shut in and
down; the door was shut and barred and bolted. And I suppose there was
great glee in the headquarters of darkness. But the Third Morning came.
And the bars of darkness were broken, as a woman breaks the
sewing-cotton at the end of the seam. The Light could not be held down
by darkness. It broke out more brightly than ever. The darkness couldn't
shut the light out. And it can't.

_Let the light shine._ Let it shine out through the clear clean glass
of an unselfish, Jesus-cleansed Jesus-fired life lived for Him in the
commonplace round, and the shut-away corner. _And the darkness will go_.
The darkness cannot shut out the light, nor keep it down, nor resist the
gentle resistless power of its soft clear flooding. Let the Light shine