Full in face of the realities of sin--of Roman sin, in Nero's days; but let us just now forget Rome and Nero; they were only dark accidents of a darker essence--St Paul here writes down, across them all, these words, this spell, this Name; "_Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ_." Take first a steady look, he seems to say, at your sore need, in the light of God; but then, at once, look off, look _here_. Here is the more than Antithesis to it all. Here is that by which you can be "more than conqueror." Take your iniquities at the worst; this can subdue them. Take your surroundings at the worst; this can emancipate you from their power. It is "the Lord Jesus Christ," and the "putting on" of Him. Let us remember, as if it were a new thing, that He, the Christ of Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, is a Fact. Sure as the existence now of His universal Church, as the observance of the historic Sacrament of His Death, as the impossibility of Galilean or Pharisaic imagination having _composed_, instead of _photographed_, the portrait of the Incarnate Son, the Immaculate Lamb; sure as is the glad verification in ten thousand blessed lives to-day of all, of all, that the Christ of Scripture undertakes to be to the soul that will take Him at His own terms--so sure, across all oldest and all newest doubts, across all _gnosis_ and all _agnosia_, lies the present Fact of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then let us remember that it is a fact that man, in the mercy of God, _can_ "put Him on." He is not far off. He presents Himself to our touch, our possession. He says to us, "Come to Me." He unveils Himself as literal partaker of our nature; as our Sacrifice; our Righteousness, "through faith in His blood"; as the Head and Life-spring, in an indescribable union, of a deep calm tide of life spiritual and eternal, ready to circulate through our being. He invites Himself to "make His abode _with_ us" (John xiv. 23); yea more, "I will come _in_ to him; I will dwell _in_ his heart by faith" (Rev. iii. 20; Eph. iii. 17). In that ungovernable heart of ours, that interminably self-deceptive heart (Jerem. xvii. 9), He engages to reside, to be permanent Occupant, the Master always at home. He is prepared thus to take, with regard to our will, a place of power nearer than all circumstances, and deep in the midst of all possible inward traitors; to keep His eye on their plots, His foot, not ours, upon their necks. Yes, He invites us thus to embrace Him into a full contact; to "put Him on." May we not say of Him what the great Poet says of Duty, and glorify the verse by a yet nobler application?-- "Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe, From vain temptations dost set free, And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!"