radiant arrows against the pythons and 'dragons of the slime.' The sons
of light have the same office--by their light of life to make the
darkness aware of itself, and ashamed of itself; and to change it into
light.

But silent reproving is not all our duty. The Christian Church has
wofully fallen beneath its duty, not only in regard to its complicity
with the social crimes of each generation, but in regard to its cowardly
silence towards them; especially when they flaunt and boast themselves
in high places. What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to
war? What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to impurity?
What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to drunkenness? What
has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to the social vices that
are honeycombing society and this city to-day? If you are the sons of
light, walk as the sons of light, and have 'no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness'; but set the trumpet to your lips, and
'declare unto My people their transgressions, and to the house of Israel
their sin.'

THE FRUIT OF THE LIGHT

'The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and
truth.'--Eph. v. 9 (R.V.).

This is one of the cases in which the Revised Version has done service
by giving currency to an unmistakably accurate and improved reading.
That which stands in our Authorised Version, 'the fruit of the Spirit'
seems to have been a correction made by some one who took offence at the
violent metaphor, as he conceived it, that 'light' should bear 'fruit'
and desired to tinker the text so as to bring it into verbal
correspondence with another passage in the Epistle to the Galatians,
where 'the fruits of the Spirit' are enumerated. But the reading, 'the
fruit of the _light_,' has not only the preponderance of manuscript
authority in its favour, but is preferable because it preserves a
striking image, and is in harmony with the whole context.

The Apostle has just been exhorting his Ephesian friends to walk as
'children of the light' and before he goes on to expand and explain that
injunction he interjects this parenthetical remark, as if he would say,
To be true to the light that is in you is the sum of duty, and the
condition of perfectness, '_for_ the fruit of the light is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth' That connection is entirely
destroyed by the substitution of 'spirit.' The whole context, both
before and after