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T h e •December 1927 fer not to take my salary. That, I think, would be legiti mate and right and honest. Outside the churches many sneer at Bethlehem. “O-ho!” they say, “do you still hold to that fable?” Yes, we hold to it because it is not a fable. It is too late, to speak thus o f Bethlehem. The myriads who have lived and died on what Bethlehem represents have proved that it is no idle dream, no fantasy, no beautiful illusion. It is the grandest fact of history. Then mind you defend it, my friends. Follow on the track of Reho- boam. His track was often an unworthy one, but it was a worthy one there. Look again and see if there is not something else for us. We are all consciously or unconsciously working for the future. He built Bethlehem, and little knew what he did. Oh, the eternal results of a good deed! Rehoboam did not know he was rebuilding the place where the incar nate God was To be born; that he was, restoring the foun tain of salvation. Oh, my friends, if you are building, what you build will have its effects in eternity. You tell ,N his letter to Titus, the Apostle Paul writes: “For the Grace of God hath appeared, bringing •salvation to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present age; looking for the Blessed Hope and Appearing of the Glory of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ; Who gave Himself for us; that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works” (Titus 2 :11-14, R. V.). We are living in days when it is easy to adulterate such a message. For this reason we rejoice in the clear exposi tion of this great passage contained in The Expositor’s Bible from the pen of Dr. Plummer. “The passage before us,” writes Dr. Plummer, “might almost serve as a sum mary of St. Paul’s teaching. In it he once more insists upon the inseparable connection between creed and char acter, doctrine arid life, and intimates the close relations between the past, the present, and the future, in the Chris tian scheme of Salvation. Two Epiphanies or Appearances of Jesus Christ in this world are stated as the two great limits of the Christian dispensation. There is the Epiphany of Grace, when the Christ appeared in humility, bringing salvation and instruction to all men; and there is the Epiph any of Glory, when He will appear again in power, that - He may claim as His own possession the people whom He has redeemed. And between these two there is the Chris tian life with its Blessed Hope, the Hope of the Lord’s return in glory to complete the Kingdom which His First Advent began.” It is of these two Epiphanies of our Lord that I write. Let us see, first, what the word means. A beautiful word derived from the Greek, EPIPHANY is best translated by the word APPEARING. It is twice used by the Apostle in this passage, and it is the same word which occurs in both places: (1) “the Grace of God hath ap “Nor do we adulterate God’s Message.” 2 Cor. 4:2 (Weymouth’s translation ). .
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a foul story to a ^oung fellow, and fifty years after he may curse you for telling it, for putting pollution into his soul. There is a brighter side. You who are praying are doing a greater work than you know. Some of you are building Bethlehems for Jesus, and building better than you know. Once again. The good we do is infallibly recorded. No one goes without his credit. It is all written in the Book. My dear friend, what is written of you? Every thing is Divinely recorded. How do we stand ? Are you building Bethlehem or taking down a stone here and a stone there? Is Bethlehem everything to you? No, not quite everything. There is one place more—Calvary. Dr. Handley Moule, that beautiful, saintly Christian, says in one of his later sermons: “We must not let even the roofs of Bethlehem obscure Calvary.” Is that what is being done in modern theology ? We must not let it be done. Oh, at Calvary Christ died to redeem every one of us here—man, woman and child. Again I ask, How do we stand? How much does it mean to us? ■ peared”; (2) “looking for the Blessed Hope and Appear ing of the Glory of our Great God and .Savior Jesus Christ.” The same word, I repeat, is Used in both places to set forth these wonderful but strangely different manifesta tions or revelations or appearances or self-expressions in time and place of our Great God and Savior. T h e E piphany of G race Now, we owe Christmas of course to the First Advent or Appearing upon earth of our Lord. “The Grace of God hath appeared,” writes the Apostle, and we celebrate it in the Festival of the Holy Nativity, possibly the glad dest of all the Feasts of the Church throughout the world. “Let us now go,” as the Shepherds said one to another, “even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing that is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us” (Luke •2:15). Such was the First Advent—the Epiphany of Grace— which brought in the Day of Salvation, the Day of Sal vation in which we are still living, but which may be set for all of us ere sunset! In the mercy of God this Day of Salvation has stretched over hundreds of years, but like every Day— even a Scripture Day—it will close (thousands believe very shortly), and the Epiphany of Glory succeed to the Epiphany of Grace. We cannot-hear too much of this Epiphany of Grace; we hear far too little of the Epiphany of Glory. But I cannot escápe it (and I would not if I could), for it is plainly here in my text —“looking for the blessed hope and appearing o f the Glory o f our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” Now, ere the First Advent, great hopes and fears, as we know, stirred the thoughts and hearts of people. There were not a few in the Holy Land like Simeon' áíid.‘Anna, and there were the Wise Men of course, and there was Herod, and people like Herod. Quite possibly (as the late Bishop of Durham sug gests), quite possibly, a while before the Incarnation,
jMfc. m m m The Two Advents B y R ev . R. L. L acey
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