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If you were to take this church, as it is in ordinary daylight, and seek to inspect the secret impurities with which its atmosphere abounds, your sight would be unable to detect them. It would be the same if in broad daylight you were to examine the cleanest drawing-room in the cleanest house in this city; the sight would detect no uncleanliness in its atmosphere, it would appear perfectly pure. But now let a bright ray of sunlight stream through the church or through the drawing-room. Look into the beam! What do you see? Why, a new world: a multitude of motes, innumerable particles of dust, vast quantities of impure matter all floating about in the atmosphere which seemed so clean! In the broad, common light they lay concealed, but in the bright, sunny beam the secret things are discovered, and live and move before our gaze. Are there any secret things in our worship which need to be revealed? Do we worship in the light of God's countenance, or in the light of mere tradition and custom? What more sweet and beautiful than the bringing of a gift to place upon God's altar! It seems so spiritually pure and sound. We often regard it as a sign of moral and spiritual health. But worship is not so superficial a thing that it can be so superficially judged. Worship which may pass muster in a worldly light reveals its impurities in a more searching spiritual light. Every worshipper who passes into the light of God's countenance is met by this bold challenge, "Has thy brother aught against thee?" and that is a challenge which searches us through and through. "First, be reconciled to thy brother." Our secret relationships are held up in vivid clearness before us, and their rectification is an essential condition in all acceptable worship. Now let us pass from our worship to our social fellowship. Look at the dim, thick light in which social life is lived. The darkness is sufficiently tempered to enable us to detect prominent crimes, presumptuous sins — outrage, murder, and obtrusive forms of lust. But in this dim, thick light how much can be concealed, how many deformities, how many crooked dispositions, how many perverse purposes, how many malicious designs, how many revengeful spirits! Social life is poor because social light is dim. If we water a stronger social life we must have an intenser light, in which secret uncleanness will rise up to be judged. Here is a ray from God's countenance (Matthew 5:39). Flash that through social life, let that light play on our relationships; would any horrible crookedness be revealed? It is not a business motto. It is not a social maxim. Here is rather the maxim of the world, "Pay a man back in his own coin." A man can do that and not violate the current standard of social morality. He may do it and yet live up to social light. But if such action will satisfy society, it does not satisfy God. "Pay a man back in his own coin!" That is not how the great God pays us! (Psalm 103:10). That was not the way of Christ (1 Peter 2:23). That was not Paul's way (1 Corinthians 4:12). The Lord purposes for us a clean, sweet, wholesome, social life, free from all secret foulnesses, and we can only obtain it by permitting the light of His countenance to fall upon us, and bringing our life into conformity with its great requirements. There is a bright side to all this, and I want to close with a gentle and encouraging word. The light which thus brings into prominence the secret sins also brings into prominence the secret virtue. The good Lord takes the candle and sweeps the house, not just to find the dust, but find the piece of silver! No bit of silver is lost. Every bit of secret goodness is seen in the light of His countenance.

(J. H. Jowett, M.A.)

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KJV: Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

WEB: You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.