The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” John 1:5
I say that Christ, the sinless Son of God, might be living now in the world as our next door neighbor, and perhaps we not find it out…
True Christians look just the same to the world as the great mass of what are called respectable people. But in their hearts they are very different. They make no great show. They go on in the same quiet ordinary way as the others, but they are really training to be saints in Heaven. They do all they can to change themselves, to become like God, to obey God, to discipline themselves, to renounce the world; but they do it in secret, both because God tells them to do so, and because they do not like it to be known. Moreover, there are a number of others between these two with more or less worldliness and more or less faith. Yet they all look about the same to common eyes, because true religion is a hidden thing in the heart: though it cannot exist without deeds, yet these for the most part are secret deeds, secret charities, secret prayers, secret self denials, secret struggles, secret victories…
And yet, though we have no right to judge others, but must leave this to God, it is very certain that a really holy person, a true saint, though he looks like other people, still has a sort of secret power in him to attract others to himself who are like-minded. To influence all who have anything in them like him. And thus it often becomes the test; whether we are like minded with the saints of God, whether they have an influence over us. And though we seldom have means of knowing at the time who are God’s own saints, yet when all is over we have; and then on looking back at the past, perhaps after they are dead and gone, if we knew them we may ask ourselves what power they had over us, whether they attracted us, influenced us, humbled us, whether they made our hearts burn within us. And alas! too often we shall find that we were close to them, had means of knowing them and knew them not, and that is a heavy condemnation upon us, indeed…
The holier a man is the less he is understood by the men of the world. All who have a spark of living faith will understand him in a measure. The holier he is they will for the most part be attracted the more; but those who serve the world will be blind to him, scorn and dislike him, the holier he is….
Parochial and Plain Sermons, pp. 880-1
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