---

It is a merciful arrangement that we live by days, and are able to begin afresh every twenty-four hours. The Christian life is an awaking — a dressing; and each morning's waking and dressing may recall to us its nature. Look at these verses carefully and you will see the writer's meaning, though, with a true delicacy, he only hints at it. When we rise from our beds we are dishevelled, unpresentable: we cannot get about the duties of the day until we have put off the dress of the night, until we have washed and combed ourselves, and put on a more suitable attire. Thus there is a surprising difference, in any nice and well-regulated person, between the night and the day appearance. The word "honestly" should rather be "decently," for it just expresses this difference. Here are certain specimen words which describe that nocturnal condition of the soul. The question hits us hard when we attempt to interpret them fairly. First, revellings and drunkenness. This is not the boozing of the poor, who drink to forget their poverty and benumb their pain. It is the self-indulgence of the well-to-do, of good food, the hours spent over the pot or the decanter. It is the unhealthy occupation with gaieties which prevent us from putting on Christ Jesus. Then chamberings and wantonness. These are the thoughts of our chambers, the wanton imagination on our beds, the loose fancies, the rein flung on the neck of passion. They are more important to mention than the overt acts of vice, for they are the letting-out of waters. Given these, the rest will follow. These are "the provision of the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof"; they are the steps down to the gates of death. The last pair, strife and jealousy, are as fatal to the reclothing in the Divine garment, Christ Jesus — as truly the unseemly dress of the night — as those more scandalous faults which are called vices. These are poisons at the springs of life. They prohibit the indwelling of the Spirit. These three couplets of evil are but specimen-words — evil is manifold, ubiquitous — but they help us to answer the question, Have we put off this "garment spotted by the flesh"? It was this searching passage that proved the turning-point in the life of . By the grace of God it may fetch any of us off our unhallowed couch and clothe us in the raiment of the day. It was at Milan where the troubled spirit had come to seek help of the saintly . He was with the brother Alypius in the garden. They had been reading the Epistles of Paul. Augustine rose in agitation and paced up and down, when he heard a clear child's voice singing from a house in the vicinity, "Take and read, take and read." As if commanded from heaven he hastened back to the seat, and took up the book which they had been reading together. There was this verse staring him in the face. The Latin is "Not in feasts and tipplings, not in chambers and immodesties, not in contention and emulation; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not make provision for the flesh in concupiscence." The entrance of the Word gave light. Presently, Alypius brought Augustine to Monica to tell her that the mother's prayer was answered. But assuming that we are in the great cardinal sense awakened and reclothed, still there remains the daily renewal of it, the parable of our diurnal round. Christ is a perfect garment, but it is necessary to put Him on afresh, readjust, and with loving care fit Him on, as the mornings come round. But I can tell you better about this if I draw the portraits of two friends of mine. Their names are Desidia and Alacritas. The one dreams she is awake; the other is awake. Desidia is not at all uncomely, but for a certain lethargic look in her eye and a drag in her gait. She begins the day with a very ample attention to her person. The time she spends on her hair-dressing and her toilet would make three of her devotions, Sundays included. And her heart is in it, which I can hardly say about her devotions. Desidia has nothing particular to do, which is fortunate, for she never has time to do anything. I asked her once to undertake some work for her Saviour, which she refused so flatly that I ventured to inquire if He were her Saviour. Alacritas, on the other hand, always fills me with admiration; and I would gladly change my sex to be like her. She is never in a hurry, and yet is always moving. She has so much merriment and gaiety of heart, that grave, religious folk at first take exception to her, and question whether a true Christian could ever have so exchanged the spirit of heaviness for the garment of praise. But I chance to know that this sunshine comes from prayer, and it is like a good medicine in the house. I should have thought it would take twice as long to get oneself up so charmingly as Alacritas does, I mean as compared with the artificial fripperies of Desidia. Yet Alacritas gets a good hour for prayer before breakfast; she does a great deal of household work, she visits the poor, and her needle is busy for them; she never seems to miss a service at the church. And yet she reads more good literature in a month than Desidia does in a year. Desidia and others of her family pity Alacritas because she has little or nothing to do with plays and dances. How dull it must he for her, they say!

(R. F. Horton, D.D.)

---

---

KJV: And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

WEB: Do this, knowing the time, that it is already time for you to awaken out of sleep, for salvation is now nearer to us than when we first believed.