ent of an
unchanging love.

Further, that great love of Christ helps us to conquer, because in
His sufferings and death He becomes the Companion of all the weary.
The rough, dark, lonely road changes its look when we see His
footprints there, not without specks of blood in them,
where the thorns tore His feet. We conquer our afflictions if we
recognise that 'in all our afflictions He was afflicted,' and that
Himself has drunk to its bitterest dregs the cup which He commends to
our lips. He has left a kiss upon its margin, and we need not shrink
when He holds it out to us and says 'Drink ye all of it.' That one
thought of the companionship of the Christ in our sorrows makes us
more than conquerors.

And lastly, this dying Lover of our souls communicates to us all, if
we will, the strength whereby we may coerce all outward things into
being helps to the fuller participation of His perfect love. Our
sorrows and all the other distracting externals do seek to drag us
away from Him. Is all that happens in counteraction to that pull of
the world, that we tighten our grasp upon Him, and will not let Him
go; as some poor wretch might the horns of the altar that did not
respond to his grasp? Nay what we lay hold of is no dead thing, but
a living hand, and it grasps us more tightly than we can ever grasp
it. So because He holds us, and not because we hold Him, we shall
not be dragged away, by anything outside of our own weak and wavering
souls, and all these embattled foes may come against us, they may
shear off everything else, they cannot sever Christ from us unless
we ourselves throw Him away. 'In this thou shalt conquer.' 'They
overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His testimony.'

LOVE'S TRIUMPH

'Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able
to separate us from the love of God.'--ROMANS viii. 38, 39.

These rapturous words are the climax of the Apostle's long
demonstration that the Gospel is the revelation of 'the righteousness
of God from faith to faith,' and is thereby 'the power of God unto
salvation.' What a contrast there is between the beginning and the
end of his argument! It started with sombre, sad words about man's
sinfulness and aversion from the knowledge of God. It closes with
this sunny outburst of triumph; like some stream rising among black
and