“The church is God’s appointed light-bearer in this dark world. She is not the originator of the light she gives; she gives light only by preserving, holding forth, and disseminating the light entrusted to her. That light is gospel truth and influences. Her great, and indeed her only business, is to hold fast this truth and hold it forth, until its light penetrates into the darkest corners of the earth. She is not only utterly destitute of all elements of light in herself, and of all power to make it; but she cannot in any way improve the light entrusted to her. All she can do is to steadily support it, in its right and true position, so that it may be in a condition to burn and to shine into the darkness around. She can neither make truth, nor improve truth; but she has a vast work to do in receiving fully and holding forth clearly what has been committed to her care in the lively oracles of God. Whenever she attempts anything more than this, when she seeks to improve or modify the light itself, when she would become a political power, or a teacher of philosophy, she is no longer the golden candlestick of God’s appointment; she is unfaithful to her simple, spiritual mission, and her light becomes darkness, or a lurid glare that burns only to deceive.

In fulfilling this mission, she is not a mere passive and involuntary instrument. What the candlestick does as passive, unconscious matter, the church, composed of living souls, can do only by the active employment of all her energies — her intelligence, her gifts and her graces. To hold forth the light of God’s salvation is to be the sole end of her being and its activities. To use her powers and gifts for any other purpose is a mal-appropriation of the most important and solemn trust ever confided to human beings. To use them for any selfish or worldly end, is as if the priest in the tabernacle had taken the golden candlestick and melted it down into money for his private use.” — James B. Ramsey, The Spiritual Kingdom: An Exposition of Revelation 1-11 (1873), pp. 79-80