Thracian perhaps or Illyrian, the companion, perforce, of his prayers and his exhortationshe has dictated thus far to his amanuensis these words of life and godliness and now the 'Finally' is come. From his prison at Rome he will equip the soldier of all time. How far he is influenced in the choice of his figures by the neighbourhood of the camp or the presence of the soldier, we presume not to say; remembering that in earlier days and other scenes he had (more lightly and briefly) sketched the same parallel in writing to Thessalonica. The passage has been read to-day throughout Christendom as the Epistle for the one and twentieth Sunday after Trinity; and I have chosen from it one clause for your meditation on this opening Sunday, full of hopes and responsibilities, of

the Academical Year, earnestly praying that God may write it upon many of these hearts, and make it the motto from this day forth of many a young life, here taking its decisive colour and impress for a manhood of action and an immortality of consequence.

'And your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.'

The girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, all would be incomplete without the sandal of preparation. We read in Scripture of 'rough places;' we read in Scripture of 'slippery places:' there are both of these on the great battle-field, which is the world. If we would 'withstand in the evil day,'

if we would 'stand, having done all,' we must

B

complete the equipment with the sandal of

preparation.

The word 'preparation' is ambiguous: the
It occurs only

ἑτοιμασία of the Greek is not so.

here in the New Testament, and has some slight varieties of sense in the Old. But there is ample authority for the interpretation which I would give to it to-day. 'Preparation' is 'readiness.' The charge is, that we have the feet shod with the 'preparedness,' the 'readiness,' of the Gospel

of peace.

Ethelred the Unready' is the well-remembered title of one chapter of English story. It might be the title of many lives as God and man read them. It was not that there was a conscious deliberate purpose to betray the cause of patriotism or religion, of truth or right, of the

Church or the Gospel. The Ethelreds are of course against the Dane. In one sense, it is the worse. A thirty-five years' reign was just the mischievousness of the Unready. When he dies, there will be a better man. He stops the way. And yet he is there. He has a right to his life, and he has a right to his throne. It is scarcely a parable, brethren-it is the very case itself still. The illustrations would be endless, if we were

not helped by the context to narrow them. The scene is laid, not in still life, but in a battle. We have but to think, then, of our own lives in their aspect of conflict. And we speak, of course, of spiritual conflict; of that sort of struggle which we only incur by being Christians. What is this but the very life to which we were pledged at our Baptism-man

fully to fight under Christ's banner '-'to continue Christ's faithful soldier unto the life's end?'

I know how easy it is to evade this warfare. I know how far smoother it seems to render a man's life, to forget altogether this pledge, this 'sacramentum,' and believe himself only, always, everywhere, among friends. I know how courtesy, and complaisance, and charity, and even humility, may be turned to account in this direction; how it may be made almost a duty to gloss over differences, and round off angularities, and presuppose agreement, and make allowance for imperfections, and hope the good and refuse to see the evil-till at last the very idea of conflict is exterminated and eradicated from the life. And God forbid that we should be quick-sighted to a brother's failings, and blind