to be ready, and, though the darkness of the alienated and godless
world is all around us, to live as children of the light eagerly
expecting the dawning of the day[2].

And to meet Christ we must be like Christ. And to be like Christ we
must be in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, invested with His
new nature, fighting with the weapons of His victorious manhood. The
'evil' which is in ourselves, the unregulated flesh, we can only
'overcome with good'--the good which is Jesus Himself: for it is no
longer we that live in our bare selves, but Christ that liveth in us.
We are baptized into Him, we possess His spirit, we eat His flesh and
drink His blood. What remains is practically to clothe ourselves in
{136} Him[3], appropriating and drawing out into ourselves by acts of
our will His very present help in trouble. So can we become like Him,
and be fitted to see Him as He is[4].

This passage played a memorable part in St. Augustine's life; for when
the child's voice had bidden him 'open and read,' these were the words
upon which he opened, and which sealed his conversion to the faith he
served so nobly--'not in rioting and drunkenness, ... but put ye on the
Lord Jesus Christ.' 'I had no wish,' he tells us, 'to read any
further, nor was there any need. For immediately at the end of this
sentence, as if a light of certainty had been poured into my heart, all
the shadows of doubt were scattered[5].'

[1] 1 Thess. v. 1: 'The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the
night.' To know this is to have answer enough to questions about the
times and seasons of the coming (v. 1).

[2] It is interesting to compare this passage with the closely similar
one of Thess. v. 1-4. Cf. Eph. v. 14 ff.; vi. 11.

[3] Christ is 'put on' in baptism by all, Gal. iii. 27; but we all
still need to appropriate what we have received, and so 'put Him on'
for ourselves; cf. Eph. iv. 24; Col. iii. 12.

[4] See app. note G, p. 238, for an admirable prayer by Jeremy Taylor
based on this thought.

[5] _Conf._ viii. 12.

{137}

DIVISION V. Sec. 6. CHAPTER XIV. 1-23.

_Mutual toleration._

St. Paul's practical exhortations show no definite scheme, but flow out
of one another in a natural sequence. He began with the fundamental
moral disposition required by life in the Christian community (xii).
He proceeded to the relation between the Christian community and the
government of the world outside (xiii. 1-7). This led