ill to others, will find it positive enough. We harm men when we
fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do it not, we do
them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for evil. Surely, nothing
can be plainer than the bearing of this teaching on the Christian
duty as to intoxicants. If by using these a Christian puts a
stumbling-block in the way of a weak will, then he is working ill to
his neighbour, and that argues absence of love, and that is
dishonest, shirking payment of a plain debt.

II. The great stimulus to love and to all purity is set forth as
being the near approach--of the day (verses 11-14). 'The day,' in
Paul's writing, has usually the sense of the great day of the Lord's
return, and may have that meaning here; for, as Jesus has told us,
'it is not for' even inspired Apostles 'to know the times or the
seasons,' and it is no dishonour to apostolic inspiration to assign
to it the limits which the Lord has assigned.

But, whether we take this as the meaning of the phrase, or regard it
simply as pointing to the time of death as the dawning of heaven's
day, the weight of the motive is unaffected. The language is vividly
picturesque. The darkness is thinning, and the blackness turning
grey. Light begins to stir and whisper. A band of soldiers lies
asleep, and, as the twilight begins to dawn, the bugle call summons
them to awake, to throw off their night-gear,--namely, the works
congenial to darkness,--and to brace on their armour of light. Light
may here be regarded as the material of which the glistering armour
is made; but, more probably, the expression means weapons appropriate
to the light.

Such being the general picture, we note the fact which underlies the
whole representation; namely, that every life is a definite whole
which has a fixed end. Jesus said, 'We must work the works of Him
that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh.' Paul uses the
opposite metaphors in these verses. But, though the two sayings are
opposite in form, they are identical in substance. In both, the
predominant thought is that of the rapidly diminishing space of
earthly life, and the complete unlikeness to it of the future. We
stand like men on a sandbank with an incoming tide, and every wash of
the waves eats away its edges, and presently it will yield below our
feet. We forget this for the most part, and perhaps it is not well
that it should be ever present; but that it should never be present
is madness and