ppose that I need to dwell on
that thought at any length. We belong to another order of things, says
Paul; we carry a day with us in the midst of the night. What follows
from that? Do not let us pursue the wandering lights and treacherous
will-o'-the-wisps that lure men into bottomless bogs where they are
lost. If we have light in our dwellings whilst Egypt lies in darkness,
let it teach us to eat our meat with our loins girded, and our staves
in our hands, not without bitter herbs, and ready to go forth into the
wilderness. You do not belong to the world in which you live, if you are
Christian men and women; you are only camped here. Your purposes,
thoughts, hopes, aspirations, treasures, desires, delights, go up
higher. And so, if you are children of the day, be self-restrained in
your dealings with the darkness.

III. And, last of all, my text points out for us a method by which this
great precept may be fulfilled:--'Putting on the breastplate of faith
and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation.'

That, of course, is the first rough draft occurring in Paul's earliest
Epistle, of an image which recurs at intervals, and in more or less
expanded form in other of his letters, and is so splendidly worked out
in detail in the grand picture of the Christian armour in the Epistle to
the Ephesians.

I need not do more than just remind you of the difference between that
finished picture and this outline sketch. Here we have only defensive
and not offensive armour, here the Christian graces are somewhat
differently allocated to the different parts of the armour. Here we have
only the great triad of Christian graces, so familiar on our
lips--faith, hope, charity. Here we have faith and love in the closest
possible juxtaposition, and hope somewhat more apart. The breastplate,
like some of the ancient hauberks, made of steel and gold, is framed and
forged out of faith and love blended together, and faith and love are
more closely identified in fact than faith and hope, or than love and
hope. For faith and love have the same object--and are all but
contemporaneous. Wherever a man lays hold of Jesus Christ by faith,
there cannot but spring up in his heart love to Christ; and there is no
love without faith. So that we may almost say that faith and love are
but the two throws of the shuttle, the one in the one direction and the
other in the other; whereas hope comes somewhat later in a somewhat
remoter connection with faith,