And then he passes on to another of the parts of the ceremonial.  As the wreathing incense appealed at once to two senses, and was visible in its curling clouds of smoke, and likewise fragrant to the nostrils, so says Paul, with a singular combination of expression, ‘He maketh manifest,’ that is visible, the savour of His knowledge.  From a heart kindled by the flame of the divine love there will go up the odour of a holy life visible and fragrant, sweet and fair.

And thus all Christians, and not Christian workers only in the narrower sense of the word, who may be doing evangelistic work, have set before them in these great words the very ideal and secret of their lives.

There are three things here, on each of which I touch as belonging to the true notion of a Christian life—­the conquered captive; that captive partaking in the triumph of his Conqueror; and the conquered captive led as a trophy and a witness to the Conqueror’s power.  These three things, I think, explain the Apostle’s thoughts here.  Let me deal with them now.

I. First then, let us look at that thought of all Christians being in the truest sense conquered captives, bound to the chariot wheels of One who has overcome them.

The image implies a prior state of hostility and alienation.  Now, do not let us exaggerate, let us take Paul’s own experience.  He is speaking about himself here; he is not talking doctrine, he is giving us autobiography, and he says, ’I was an enemy, and I have been conquered.’

What sort of an enemy was he?  Well!  He says that before he became a Christian he lived a pure, virtuous, respectable life.  He was a man ‘as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.’  Observant of all relative duties, sober, temperate, chaste; no man could say a word against him; he knew nothing against himself.  His conscience acquitted him of wrong:  ’I thought I ought to do many things,’ as I did them.  And yet, looking back from his present point of view upon a life thus adorned with many virtues, pure from all manifest corruption, to a large extent regulated by conscientious and religious motives of a kind, he says, ’Notwithstanding all that, I was an enemy.’  Why?  Because the retrospect let him see that his life was barren of the deepest faith and the purest love.  And so I come to some of my friends here now, and I say to you, ’Change the name, and the story is true about you,’ respectable people, who are trying to live pure and righteous lives, doing all duties that present themselves to you with a very tolerable measure of completeness and abominating and trying to keep yourselves from the things that your consciences tell you are wrong, yet needing to be conquered, in the deepest recesses of your wills and your hearts, before you become the true subjects of the true King.  I do not want to exaggerate, nor to say of the ordinary run of people who listen to us preachers, that they commit manifest sins, ‘gross as a mountain, open,