2. Now, our Lord plainly did not mean His disciples to know
when His judgment was to be made manifest, and St. Paul
apparently recognized this (1 Thess. v. 2 : " The day of the Lord
so Cometh as a thief in the night"), so that his immediate
anticipation of the end can never have been part of his faith —
never more than the reflection of the eager desire which filled
the heart of the Church. On the other hand, our Lord did mean
His disciples to go on expecting Him. Thus St. Paul's admonition
is as applicable as ever. The future of the world and of each
nation and institution is precarious : things which seem solid
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384 READY FOR THE DAWNING
and strong may crumble and melt; how soon God is to make plain His judgments, in part or in whole, we do not know; when each one of us is to pass by death to the great account we do not know. There is no reasonable attitude towards the unknown coming of judgment except 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.
^ The Apostles lived in anticipation of an immediate end of the world, no doubt ; but I cannot see that this, on the whole, was anything but good. It was this which drew the Christians so closely together — made their union so remarkable, and startled the world, to which, otherwise, the new religion would have appeared merely a Philosophy, and not a Life. Besides, are we sure that aught less strong than this hope could have detached men so instantly and entirely from the habits of long sin ; or that, on natural principles and without a miracle, even the Apostles could have been induced to crowd so much superhuman energy into so small a compass ? ^
3. But 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 un- regulated 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 — Christ is "put on" in baptism by all (Gal. iii. 27) — we possess His spirit, we eat His flesh and drink His blood. What remains is practically to clothe ourselves in Him, 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.
^ This passage of which the text is a part had an important influence on 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 revelling 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
* F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 398.
ROMANS XIII. 12 385
the end of this sentence, as if a light of certainty had been poured into my heart, all the shadows of doubt were scattered." ^
The text falls into two main divisions — I. The Approach of the Day. II. The Preparation for it.
I.
The Approach of the Day. " The night is far spent, and the day is at hand."
St. Paul here uses a material illustration to set forth a spiritual fact. It is a picture of the morning with which he presents us ; and, if we draw the idea out, we find that it con- sists of three stages. FLrst, there is the night; that portion of the twenty-four hours during which the sun is below the horizon; that ever-recurring period, when the only light avail- able comes from the faint shining of the stars, or at best from the pale reflected beams of the moon ; that succession of hours, which we ordinarily describe as the time of darkness. Next, there is tlie dawn. In this, the night is far spent ; the obscurity begins to pass off. The sun, indeed, is not yet above the horizon, but the stars fade and disappear, and the moon loses her lustre ; there is an increasing brightness in the eastern sky ; clear rays shoot up towards the zenith, and at length the shining disc of the great light-bearer becomes visible over the dark shoulder of the earth. The day is at hand ! And, lastly, after the dawn comes the day itself. There is no longer a contest between light and darkness ; the sun is risen in his power ; the shadows have been dispelled and light prevails triumphantly throughout the whole hemisphere. The Night, the Dawn, the Day. St. Paul would be sensible of the poetic fascination of these, but he presents them with a definite object in view — to commend to his readers' attention the spiritual analogies bodied forth by them.