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I have heard of the lighting of the torches in the holy sepulcher at Easter time. The building is very dark in the morning. The patriarch comes. Through the darkness he passes within a curtain, and is in the place where they say the body of Jesus lay. No a word, not a sound breaks the silence in the great building. At last there is a movement – the patriarch comes out bearing one burning torch. Instantly a dark torch touches this lighted one and blazes out, and then another and another, and soon a thousand torches are blazing, all lighted from the one torch that came out from the empty tomb of Christ. Out into the streets of the city they are borne, and along the highways everywhere other torches are lighted from these, until the whole land glows with fire that came from Christ’s grave.
What an illustration this is of the spreading forth of that fire of Pentecost! From the cross of Christ and from his emptied grave comes the fire of the Holy Ghost. Your life and mine are like candles unlighted, or, at the best, burning very dimly. But if we will hold them up to this one flame that blazes before us, they will be lighted too; we shall become burning lights. Then as we go out into the world, other lives will touch ours, and they will burn too, and light others, also, until thousands of burning hearts shall glow in earth’s darkness.