I.
The Conquerok.
1. God Himself is the great Conqueror, It was God who in the Person of Christ had entered into conflict with the enemies of man, and having spoiled principalities and powers, had made a show of them openly. Our triumphs only begin after God has triumphed over us, after He has brought us to follow in the order of His progress, and so to testify to the riches of His grace. He had begun His triumph over the Apostle when He changed him at Damascus from a bitter foe into a faithful servant, and there also the triumphs of St. Paul himself had commenced. Every service he had rendered since, every hardship he had suffered, every deed he had dared, had only attested how thorough and complete that victory had been. And so it must be with us all. So long as we prevail and carry everything before us, so long are we really suffering defeat. We are straining our efforts to win inferior and worthless prizes, while we allow the only good ones to remain unsought. And attainment in such a case is worse than failure. It confirms the soul in its false pursuit, hardens it into a habit of selfishness, and, while deceiving our hearts with the plaudits of a triumph, rivets upon us the fetters of the slave. Only when God checks us in our wilful course and shows us the folly of our doings, only when He baffles us and brings us to see, through the ruin and dim perplexity of our defeated aims, the nobler purposes He has * J. T, L, Maggs, The Spiritual Experience of St. Paul, 45.
52 THE TRIUMPH OF THE VANQUISHED
called us to embrace, do we begin to master our worst foes and win our truest victories.
2. How does God gain the victory over us? 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 ! " Eor 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 iweet water. So God in Christ fights against the mountains of man's cold, hard sinfulness and alienation, and turns them all into rivers that flow in love and praise, by the warmth of His own radiation. He conquers simply by forbearance and pity and love.
^ Petrus Venerabilis approached the Moslem, as he says, " not with arms but with words, not by force but by reason, not in hatred but in love " ; and in so far he was the first to breathe the true missionary spirit toward the Saracens. But he did not go out to them. It was reserved for the Spanish knight to take up the challenge and go out single-handed against the Saracens, " not by force but by reason, not in hatred but in love." It was Eaymund Lull who wrote : " I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms ; but in the end all are destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought not to be attempted except in the way in which Thou and Thine apostles acquired it, namely, by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears and of blood," ^
IL
The Captives.
1. St. Paul thinks of himself and of his coadjutors in Christian work as being conquered captives, made to follow the Conqueror and to swell His triumph. He is thankful to be so overcome. What was deepest degradation ia to him supreme honour. The image implies a prior state of hostility and alienation. St. Paul was one who had resolutely kicked against the pricks. He had stood out against the claims of the new faith and allegiance to the ^ S. M. Zwemer, Eaymund Lull, 52.
2 COR. II. 14-16 53
sway of Christ. " I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." This rebel heart Jesus would win. As there have been men whose defeat has seemed essential to the extension of the Kingdom of God, foemen whose boldness or strength of character has marked them as heroes in the ranks of wickedness, so was this enthusiast for Judaism a foe whom Christ would vanquish and bind, and then win over to Himself. As Captain of our salvation He entered upon the campaign, and in the broad plain outside the gates of Damascus there was struck the decisive blow that broke down the persecutor's resistance, vanquished him in the struggle, and led him away a conquered man. Yet learning that this loss was gain, that in his defeat by Christ it was as though he had won a splendid victory, he cries : " I thank Him who leadeth me in triumph."
St. Paul rejoices that he is led in the train of his conquering Lord. This, he declares, is the real significance of his apostolic ministry. Across rivers and seas, over mountains and across plains, into cities and through wildernesses, among cultured yet degenerate men, among hardy highlanders is he led, the trophy of Divine grace. Yet in that service he never wearies, but loses him- self in the joy of the victorious Lord. His wanderings are not self-chosen; he is but a captive following the Conqueror's car. Men gaze at him spending his life, sacrificing his comfort and all else to dififuse a faith he once resolutely opposed; they see the unshrinking, unmeasured devotion which dedicates his very being to his apostolic work. Well, he is but a vanquished man, whose whole work now is to adorn, as best he may, his Conqueror's triumph. If men would know the invincible power of the Lord of armies, let them mark him who now attends His triumph, the former champion of Judaism, of old the persecutor of the Church ; and let them listen to his boast, " I thank Him who always leadeth me in triumph." For the hand of Jesus bound up the wound, assuaged the aching smart of his discomfiture; the victory of Divine might became the victory of Divine love; and the sub- mission of defeat grew into the allegiance of devotion.