Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/176

 And our heavenly Father has provided "many mansions" in His kingdom for the reception of the blessed, who dwell and are to dwell therein. It is further necessary that man should believe in the sun of heaven, because He who is in the midst of it is life itself, and sends forth, through its medium, a constant efflux of life, without which all creation would be annihilated. Hence God is life itself, and love itself, and light itself. "The Lord our God is a sun."

And the Lord our God is a shield. The use of the shield in warfare is to protect the more vital parts against the missiles of the assailants, and was generally buckled on the left arm, thus serving readily as a covering to the heart and lungs, which are, of course, the vital parts of the internal organism. Now, the heart has correspondence with the will and its affections, and the lungs with the understanding and its thoughts; hence a shield, to defend these, would represent the protecting power of Divine Truth to these two receptacles, into which God originally breathed the breath of lives. Here the Lord Himself is called the shield. "The Lord our God is a shield,"

The Lord, then, by His divine truth, is our defender. He is not only the giver of life—he is the continual protector and preserver of it. Exposed as we are to hosts of spiritual enemies—to enemies unseen—whose power is most malignant, as well as to those more open assailants which press upon us from without, and to enemies of our own household, which are the evils lurking within, and enticing us to indulge our sensual gratifications—how could we resist all these attacks if left to ourselves? We should soon give way, and our end would be eternal death. But the Lord graciously