which he has
been enumerating from doing that which it is their aim apparently to
do, but we actually convert them into helpers or allies. The '_more_
than conquerors' seems to mean, if there is any definite idea to be
attached to it, the conversion of the enemy conquered into a friend
and a helper. The American Indians had a superstition that every foe
tomahawked sent fresh strength into the warrior's arm. And so all
afflictions and trials rightly borne, and therefore overcome, make a
man stronger, and bring him nearer to Jesus Christ.

Note then, further, that not only is this victory more than bare
victory, being the conversion of the enemy into allies, but that it
is a victory which is won even whilst we are in the midst of the
strife. It is not that we shall be conquerors in some far-off heaven,
when the noise of battle has ceased and they hang the trumpet in the
hall, but it is here now, in the hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot
death-grapple that we do overcome. No ultimate victory, in some
far-off and blessed heaven, will be ours unless moment by moment,
here, to-day,' we _are_ more than conquerors through Him that
loved us.'

So, then, about this abundant victory there are these things to
say:--You conquer the world only, then, when you make it contribute
to your conscious possession of the love of Christ. That is the real
victory, the only real victory in life. Men talk about overcoming
here on earth, and they mean thereby the accomplishment of their
designs. A man has 'victory,' as it is phrased, in the world's
strife, when he secures for himself the world's goods at which he has
aimed, but that is not the Christian idea of the conquest of
calamity. Everything that makes me feel more thrillingly in my
inmost heart the verity and the sweetness of the love of Jesus Christ
as my very own, is conquered by me and compelled to subserve my
highest good, and everything which slips a film between me and Him,
which obscures the light of His face to me, which makes me less
desirous of, and less sure of, and less happy in, and less satisfied
with, His love, is an enemy that has conquered me. And all these
evils as the world calls them, and as our bleeding hearts have often
felt them to be, are converted into allies and friends when they
drive us to Christ, and keep us close to Him, in the conscious
possession of His sweet and changeless love. That is the victory, and
the only victory. Has the world helped me to lay hold o