things, 'we are more than
conquerors through Him that loved us.' Brethren, that is the
Christian way of looking at all externals, not only at the dark and
the sorrowful, but at the bright and the gladsome. If the withdrawal
of external blessings does not touch the central sanctities and
sweetness of a life in communion with Jesus, the bestowal of external
blessedness does not much brighten or gladden it. We can face the
withdrawal of them all, we need not covet the possession of them all,
for we have all in Christ; and the world without His love contributes
less to our blessedness and our peace than the absence of all its
joys with His love does. So let us feel that earth, in its givings
and in its withholdings, is equally impotent to touch the one thing
that we need, the conscious possession of the love of Christ.

All these foes, as I have said, have no power over the fact of
Christ's love to us, but they have power, and a very terrible power,
over our consciousness of that love; and we may so kick against the
pricks as to lose, in the pain of our sorrows, the assurance of His
presence, or be so fascinated by the false and vulgar sweetnesses and
promises of the world as, in the eagerness of our chase after them,
to lose our sense of the all-sufficing certitude of His love.
Tribulation does not strip us of His love, but tribulation may so
darken our perceptions that we cannot see the sun. Joys need not rob
us of His heart, but joys may so fill ours, as that there shall be no
longing for His presence within us. Therefore let us not exaggerate
the impotence of these foes, but feel that there are real dangers, as
in the sorrows so in the blessings of our outward life, and that the
evil to be dreaded is that outward things, whether in their bright or
in their dark aspects, may come between us and the home of our
hearts, the love of the loving Christ.

II. So then, note next, the abundant victory of love.

Mark how the Apostle, in his lofty and enthusiastic way, is not
content here with simply saying that he and his fellows conquer. It
would be a poor thing, he seems to think, if the balance barely
inclined to our side, if the victory were but just won by a hair's
breadth and triumph were snatched, as it were, out of the very jaws
of defeat. There must be something more than that to correspond to
the power of the victorious Christ that is in us. And so, he says, we
very abundantly conquer; we not only hinder these things