d associated with it will
never be accomplished without it. The lamps will not be burning unless
the loins are girt. The men who scatter their loves and thoughts over a
wide space, and to whom the discipline which confines their energies
within definite channels is distasteful, are destined to be failures in
the struggle of life. It is better to have our lives running between
narrow banks, and so to have a scour in the stream, than to have them
spreading wide and shallow, with no driving force in all the useless
expanse. Such concentration and bracing of oneself up is needful, if any
of the rest of the great exhortations which follow are to be fulfilled.

It may be that Paul here has haunting his memory our Lord's words which
we have just quoted; and, in any case, he is in beautiful accord with
his brother Peter, who begins all the exhortations of his epistle with
the words, 'Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
set your minds perfectly upon the grace that is to be brought unto you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Peter, indeed, is not thinking of
the soldier's belt, but he is, no doubt, remembering many a time when,
in the toils of the fishing-boat, he had to tighten his robes round his
waist to prepare for tugging at the oar, and he feels that such
concentration is needful if a Christian life is ever to be sober, and to
have its hope set perfectly on Christ and His grace.

II. The girdle is to be truth.

The question immediately arises as to whether truth here means objective
truth--the truth of the Gospel, or subjective truth, or, as we are
accustomed to say, truthfulness. It would seem that the former
signification is rather included in the sword of the Spirit, which is
the word of God, and it is best to regard the phrase 'with (literally
"in") truth' here as having its ordinary meaning, of which we may take
as examples the phrases, 'the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth';
'love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth';
'whom I love in truth.' Absolute sincerity and transparent truthfulness
may well be regarded as the girdle which encloses and keeps secure every
other Christian grace and virtue.

We do not need to go far to find a slight tinge of unreality marring the
Christian life: we have only to scrutinise our own experiences to detect
some tendency to affectation, to saying a little more than is quite
true, even in our sincerest worship. And we cannot bu