at else does it suggest? It suggests the wonderful struggle and
victory of weaponless love. As was said about the first Christian
emperor, so it may be said about the great Emperor in the heavens,
'_In hoc signo vinces!_' By this sign thou shalt conquer. For
His only weapon is the Cross of His Son, and He fights only by the
manifestation of infinite love, sacrifice, suffering, and pity. He
conquers as the sun conquers the thick-ribbed ice by raying down its
heat upon it, and melting it into sweet water. So God in Christ
fights against the mountains of man's cold, hard sinfulness and
alienation, and by the warmth of His own radiation turns them all
into rivers that flow in love and praise. He conquers simply by
forbearance and pity and love.

And what more does this first part of my text say to us? It tells us,
too, of the true submission of the conquered captive; how we are
conquered when we perceive and receive His love; how there is nothing
else needed to win us all for Him except only that we shall recognise
His great love to us.

This picture of the triumph comes with a solemn appeal and
commandment to every one of us professing Christians. Think of these
men, dragged at the conqueror's chariot-wheels, abject, with their
weapons broken, with their resistance quelled, chained, yoked,
haled away from their own land, dependant for life or death on the
caprice of the general who rode before them there. It is a picture of
what you Christian men and women are bound to be if you believe that
God in Christ has loved you as we have been saying that He does. For
abject submission, unconditional surrender, the yielding up of our
whole will to Him, the yielding of all our possessions as His
vassals--these are the duties that are correspondent to the facts of
the case.

If we are thus won by infinite love, and not our own, but bought with
a price, no conquered king, dragged at an emperor's chariot-wheels,
was ever half as absolutely and abjectly bound to be his slave, and
to live or die by his breath, as you are bound to your Master. You
are Christians in the measure in which you are the captives of His
spear and of His bow; in the measure in which you hold your
territories as vassal kings, in the measure in which you say,
stretching out your willing hands for the fetters, 'Lord! here am I,
do with me as Thou wilt.' 'I am not mine own; be Thou my will, my
Emperor, my Commander, my all.' Loyola used to say, as the law of his