ample
of Him, who at almost the last moment of His earthly course said, 'Be
of good cheer: I have overcome the world.' Jesus seeks to conquer
evil in us all, and counts that He has conquered it when He has
changed it into love.

LOVE AND THE DAY

'Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that
loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 9. For this, Thou
shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt
not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not
covet; and if there be any other commandment it is briefly
comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. 10. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour:
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. 11. And that,
knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of
sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
12. 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, 13. Let us walk honestly, as in
the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and envying: 14. But put ye
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the
flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.'--ROMANS xiii. 8-14.

The two paragraphs of this passage are but slightly connected. The
first inculcates the obligation of universal love; and the second
begins by suggesting, as a motive for the discharge of that duty, the
near approach of 'the day.' The light of that dawn draws Paul's eyes
and leads him to wider exhortations on Christian purity as befitting
the children of light.

I. Verses 8-10 set forth the obligation of a love which embraces all
men, and comprehends all duties to them. The Apostle has just been
laying down the general exhortation, 'Pay every man his due' and
applying it especially to the Christian's relation to civic rulers.
He repeats it in a negative form, and bases on it the obligation of
loving every man. That love is further represented as the sum and
substance of the law. Thus Paul brings together two thoughts which
are often dealt with as mutually exclusive,--namely, love and law. He
does not talk sentimentalisms about the beauty of charity and the
like, but lays it down, as a 'hard and fast rule,' that we are bound
to love every man with whom we come in contact; or, as the Greek has
it, 'the other.'

That is the first plain t