SERMONS.

I.

THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT.

Advent Sunday.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.'—Rom. xiii. 12.

THE

prayer

which is recommended to our con

tinual use during the present season contains a petition which is founded upon the words of the text; and therefore I invite you to consider them, in order that we may have a distincter idea, both of what the Apostle meant by 'the night' and 'the day;' also, what we intend to pray for ourselves in this continued use of his expressions.

St. Paul was here writing to persons well acquainted with the Old Testament, and therefore he freely used images which those books would help them to understand. When, therefore, he says, 'The night is far spent, and the day

B

is at hand,' we have to begin by thinking that it is some 'night' and some day' which had been spoken of by Moses and the Prophets.

We must look back a little to their words, and see which amongst them will picture to us these ideas of the Apostle. And we readily meet with passages which will help our inquiry. For Isaiah spake about that night as a time of spiritual ignorance which overspread the whole world; even that nation-the Jews-who had received God's commandments, but read them wrongly. He said of the days when the Son of God should come, 'Behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people : but the Lord shall arise upon thee [that is, upon the Christian Church], and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.'-Isa. lx. 2, 3.

Here, then, the night meant that state of ignorance about God and His will, and those habits of sin which should be prevailing in the world when our Divine Redeemer came to instruct it. Guilt, sorrow, hopelessness about a better existence, would be hanging in gloom over mankind, when Jesus would come with words peace and hope from our Creator, teaching us a heavenly life, and shining in all the beauty of a holy, innocent example, such as had not been seen since Adam fell. Isaiah intimated God's

of

merciful intention to let this light rise upon whole countries and races of mankind. The prophet Malachi uses the same figures of, 'light' and 'darkness'; only he uses them to show that many will set themselves against these mercies of God, and never be touched in heart or changed by them his promises are confined to the humble. He says (as the messenger of his Maker), Unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings' (Mal. iv. 2); by which he means, that humble believers in Christ shall be forgiven and sanctified, made righteous, and delivered from the evil passions and habits which would unfit the rest for heaven.

When, therefore, St. Paul declares to the Romans that 'the night is far spent and the day is at hand,' he partly signifies that the call of God was so quickly extending itself over the different countries (with which the Romans were acquainted), that the return of Jesus might happen speedily; and that those who received the Gospel must hasten to fit themselves for that great day.

Instead of brooding upon death, it seems to have been the will of God that believers should daily live as if their Saviour might be at once expected in the clouds of heaven; and therefore the Holy Spirit left the Apostles to discourse

according to their own impressions, and refrained from telling them, as He had done to Daniel, that the time would be long.

And thus we learn that God desires us also so to think; to say to ourselves every day-Now if the Lord were to come before this night, how should I wish to have spent the hours that are between ?

When St. Paul said 'the night is far spent, the day is at hand,' this probably was the nature of his ideas. But when we turn his words into a prayer for ourselves, it is better not to think of whole nations and the darkness of many ages and generations, but simply the lifetime of a single soul like our own, and its gradual change from darkness unto light; just as the Apostle says in another place, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, (i.e., from a wicked life), and Christ shall give thee light' (Eph. v. 14).

Then, if he tells Christians that the night is far spent, he means that we have already much escaped from those vices which even shrink from human observation, and habits which we dare not think about ourselves; that we are trying to be sincere and single-minded, and not to deceive ourselves about right and wrong: but still that we must take fresh pains before we can discern our own conduct at all in the light by which it will at last appear to us.