One summer evening, as I sat musing studiously and restfully in the open air outside the door of the room where I lodged and studied, a stranger approached. I noticed that he carried a satchel. He was affable and entertaining. I brought another chair from within, and we chatted together till the twilight had deepened into darkness. Then he said, "You're a student, and doubtless have much work to do at night. What kind of lamp do you use?" And without waiting for a reply he continued, "I have a superior kind of lamp I should like to show you--a lamp designed and constructed according to the latest achievements of science, far surpassing anything heretofore produced in the world."

I replied with confidence, "My friend, I have a lamp, one that has been tested and proven. It has been a companion and friend through many a long night. I have trimmed and cleaned it today; it is ready for lighting." We entered my room, and I put a match to my well-trimmed lamp. My visitor was high in his praise. It was the best lamp of its kind, he said, and he had never seen a lamp in better trim. He turned the wick up and down and pronounced the judgment perfect. "Now," he said, "with your permission I'II light my lamp." He took it from his satchel. It had a chimney which compared to mine was a factory smokestack alongside a house flue. Its hollow wick was wide enough to admit my four fingers. Its light made a glow to bring out the remotest corner of my room. Its brilliant blaze made the flame in my lamp weak and pale. Until that time of convincing demonstration, I had never known the dim obscurity that I had lived, labored, studied, and struggled under. "I'll buy your lamp," I said, "You need not explain or argue further." That same night I took the lamp to the laboratory and found that it burned with fully four times the intensity of my student lamp.

Two days later I met the lamp peddler on the street about noon. He answered my question that business was good. But I asked, "You are not working today?"

His rejoinder was a lesson. "Do you think I would be foolish as to go around trying to sell lamps in the daytime? Would you have bought one if I had lighted it for you when the sun was shining? I chose the time to show the superiority of my lamp over yours, and you were eager to buy a better one."

Such is the story. Now consider the application of a very small part of it. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven." (Mathew 5:16)

The man who would sell a lamp did not disparage mine. He placed his greater light alongside my feebler flame, and I hastened to obtain it. The missionary servants of the Church of Jesus Christ today are sent forth, not to assail nor to ridicule the beliefs of men, but to set forth before the world a superior light by which the smoky dimness of the flickering flames of man-made creeds shall be apparent. The work of the church is constructive, not destructive....