“You are light in the Lord,” the apostle said; “walk as children of the light.” But his readers might ask: “What does this mean? It is poetry: let us have it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as children of the light? Show us the path.”--“I will tell you,” the apostle answers: “the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living, you will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is to please Him (ver. 10). Your life will then be free from all complicity with the works of darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear, bidding them awake from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of life.” Such is the setting in which this delightful definition stands. But it is more than a definition. While this sentence declares what Christian virtue is, it signifies also whence it comes, how it is generated and maintained. It asserts the connexion that exists between Christian character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be grown without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without yielding its proper fruit. _Right is the fruit of light._ The principle that religion is the basis of moral virtue, is one that many moralists disputed in St Paul’s time; and it has fallen into some discredit in our own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent in popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith and morals, character and creed, are not only distinct but independent things and that there is no necessary connexion between the two. Christians are themselves to blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not seldom visible between their creed and life. Our narrowness of view and the harshness of our ethical judgements have helped to foster this grave error. Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues of the heathen as “splendid sins.” But Christ and His apostles never said so. He said: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.” And they said: “In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted of Him.” The Christian creed has no jealousy in regard to human excellence. “Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just and pure,” wherever and in whomsoever they are found, our faith honours and delights in them, and accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But then it claims them all for its own,--as the fruit of the one “true light which lighteth every man.” Wherever this fruit appears, we know that that light has been, though its ways are past finding out. Through secret crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections, the true light reaches many a life lying far outside its visible course.