We hear a great deal to-day about being ‘sanctified by faith.’  I believe that as much as any man, but the office of faith is to bring us the power that cleanses, and the application of that power requires our work, and it requires our fighting.  So it is not enough to say, ’Trust for your sanctifying as you have trusted for your justifying and acceptance,’ but you have to work out what you get by your faith, and you will never work it out unless you fight against your unworthy self, and the temptations of the world.  The garb of the candidate for the day is armour.

And there is another side to that same thought, and that is, the more vivid our expectations of that blessed dawn the more complete should be our bracing on of the armour.  The anticipation of that future, in very many instances, in the Christian Church, has led to precisely the opposite state of mind.  It has induced people to drop into mere fantastic sentiment, or to ignore this contemptible present, and think that they have nothing to do with it, and are only ’waiting for the coming of the Lord,’ and the like.  Paul says, ’Just because, on your eastern horizon, you can see the pink flush that tells that the night is gone, and the day is coming, therefore do not be a sentimentalist, do not be idle, do not be negligent or contemptuous of the daily tasks; but because you see it, put on the armour of light, and whether the time between the rising of the whole orb of the sun on the horizon be long or short, fill the hours with triumphant conflict.  Put on the whole armour of light.’

Again, note here what the armour is.  Of course that phrase, ’the armour of light,’ may be nothing more than a little bit of colour put in by a picturesque imagination, and may suggest simply how the burnished steel would shine and glitter when the sunbeams smote it, and the glistening armour, like that of Spenser’s Red Cross Knight, would make a kind of light in the dark cave, into which he went.  Or it may mean ‘the armour that befits the light’; as is perhaps suggested by the antithesis ‘the works of darkness,’ which are to be ‘put off.’  These are works that match the darkness, and similarly the armour is to be the armour that befits the light, and that can flash back its beams.  But I think there is more than that in the expression.  I would rather take the phrase to be parallel to another of this Apostle’s, who speaks in 2nd Corinthians of the ’armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.’  ‘Light’ makes the armour, ‘righteousness’ makes the armour.  The two phrases say the same thing, the one in plain English, the other in figure, which being brought down to daily life is just this, that the true armour and weapon of a Christian man is Christian character.  ’Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,’ these are the pieces of armour, and these are the weapons which we are to wield.  A Christian man fights against evil