“It is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." The night of this world is the absence of the Sun of Righteousness. Let us clearly conceive this. In the busy and pleasure-seeking course of this world, for him who has understanding and to whom Christ is known, it is still night. The gloom of night is over it, but the day has dawned to his faith. The Morning Star has arisen in his heart, but the world is asleep in the still-continuing darkness of night, for indeed the night is far spent, but the world is asleep in the night. The waking soul sees in the horizon, the Morning Star— the dawn along its edge, and waits for day. The heart is in the day, and walks as in the day. As Christians we have done with works of darkness. We are still in conflict, but our armor against evil, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, is the light in which we walk.
The power of light, and truth, and godliness, and judgment of evil, which belongs to that day, is in our heart, and the weapons and snares of darkness are foiled and detected, getting no entrance into, no hold on, the soul. We walk honestly as in the day; we put on in our ways and heart the walk and character of Him who is the true light of it, the Lord Jesus Christ. Having the hope of being like Him there, we purify ourselves as He is pure. We do not provide for the lusts of the nature which belongs to the darkness to satisfy it, but walk as Christ walked. Such is the Christian in view of Christ's coming, and bringing on this dark and benighted world the light and day of God in His effectual power, and are the two springs and characters of Christian conduct—recognition of, and acting up to, every relative duty in love, and knowing the time, the near approach of day to which he belongs. (Compare 1 Thess. 5.) "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Rom. 13:1212The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. (Romans 13:12).
Remembrance