rd, the only giver; and it is therefore to be used in His
service and for His ends. The Psalmist had sung of the divine king of
Israel mounting as an earthly conqueror unto his sanctuary throne in
Zion after making captives and receiving gifts from among his enemies
without exception.

'Thou hast gone up into the heights,
Thou hast led captives captive;
Thou hast received gifts among men, yea from the rebellious also[4].'

It stands to reason that to St. Paul's mind this {146} conception is
realized nowhere but in Christ. Its application to Christ is in fact
assumed--'therefore,' i.e. with a view to Christ, 'he' or rather 'it,'
the Scripture 'saith'--and the passage is given free interpretation,
and, more than this, free modification, on the basis of this
assumption. For (1) the ascension of the conquering king is spoken of
as the result of a previous descent to the 'lower regions of this earth
of ours[5].' No man, as St. John says, hath ascended up to heaven but
He that came down from heaven. The person who 'beggared himself' to
come down to our earth and who subsequently mounted into the divine
glory is one and the same person, Christ the incarnate Son; and He thus
descended and re-ascended in order that He might, through the atonement
wrought by Him in the flesh and through the exaltation which rewarded
it, restore to the universe that unity of which sin and rebellion had
robbed it, and 'fill all things' once again with the divine bounty and
presence[6].

{147}

(2) The sense of the psalm is--possibly not without Jewish
precedent[7]--altered in expression so that, instead of the conqueror
receiving gifts from men, his conquered enemies, we have him
represented as 'giving gifts to men.' This modification, whether
original in St. Paul or accepted by him, is no doubt due to the fact
that his mind is full of the idea of Christ as conquering only to
bless, receiving homage only to be enabled to bestow on them who offer
it the fulness of the divine bounty. And the 'captives' of Christ, to
St. Paul's mind, are no doubt not men, but the hosts of Satan reduced
to impotence. The exalted Christ, then, is the source of all gifts in
His Church, and He bestows on men various endowments in such a way as
to maintain among them a necessary relation. 'No member of the body of
Christ is endued with such perfection as to be able, without the
assistance of others, to supply his own necessities. A certain
proportio