The Whole Armour of God — A Reader’s Guide

The Rhetoric of Vigilance

Jowett's central exhortation, drawn from the apostle Paul's command to 'watch ye,' is developed through a series of escalating questions that reveal his homiletic method. He asks whether the real enemy is militarism, racial animosity, or 'a faithless church, muttering many shibboleths.' Each query is met with the refrain 'Then Watch ye!'—a device that builds rhetorical momentum while narrowing the field of moral concern. The sermons do not offer abstract theology; they press for concrete self-examination. Jowett insists that wakefulness is not passive but an act of will: 'Bring the stream of vital thought to bear upon the field. Exercise the imagination. Nourish the sympathies.' This language of effort and discipline pervades the collection, treating spiritual life as a form of strenuous attention.

The Soldier's Double Vision

Jowett complicates the martial metaphor by insisting that the Christian soldier must watch not only for enemies but also for 'all the bright and wonderful things of the hour.' He criticizes a sentinel who 'could not distinguish between enemy and friend,' and lists signs of hope: growing seriousness in the world, 'unsealing of multitudinous springs of human sympathy,' and 'magnificent courage' purging families of indolence. This dual focus—on both threat and promise—gives the sermons a distinctive tension. Jowett compares the watchman to a Moslem priest who appears on the tower 'half an hour before sunrise,' looking for 'fair jewels of hope' on 'the dark robe of the night.' The imagery is deliberately poetic, softening the militaristic frame with a pastoral insistence on discernment.

Pace and the Shape of Exhortation

The sermons vary in pace from rapid, almost breathless lists of dangers to slower, meditative passages. In the excerpt on vigilance, Jowett uses short imperative sentences—'Keep awake!' 'Watch ye!'—that create a staccato urgency. But he then shifts to longer, more lyrical sentences when describing hopeful signs: 'Watch ye, and behold the growing seriousness of the world; frivolity has almost begun to apologize for itself.' This alternation between command and reflection structures the reader's experience, moving from alarm to reassurance. Jowett also employs rhetorical questions to engage the congregation directly, as when he asks, 'What are the real enemies behind all the appalling desolation and sorrow of our time?' The effect is to make the sermon feel like a conversation, albeit one with a clear pastoral authority.

Readers approaching The Whole Armour of God will find a work that is both historically situated—its references to 'the horrors and agonies of our day' point unmistakably to 1914-1918—and deliberately inward. Jowett rarely mentions specific battles or political figures; his concern is the state of the soul under pressure. The sermons reward attention to their structural rhythms: the way Jowett builds tension through repetition, then releases it with images of dawn and renewal. For those interested in early twentieth-century homiletics or the spiritual literature of the Great War, this collection offers a concentrated example of how one preacher tried to make ancient texts speak to immediate crisis.

This Sunday, my grandfather’s old Bible fell open to Ephesians, and I thought of Jowett’s wartime call for moral armor—how the weight of that imagery settles differently now. It reminded me suddenly of a fragile sermon on a boy’s death, where The Glory of Grace Effected by Weak Means Being the Substance of a Sermon, Preached on the Death of Samuel Church, Aged Twelve Years. On Sunday Evening, April 14, 1822 — Themes and Context whispered that even a child’s brief life could be God’s shield. Both books asked me to find strength in what seems insufficient.