December 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
777
Jttrarttaip (Ehrtat R. DIXON once told the story of an agnostic who was studying a colony of ants con fined beneath a glass cover. The tiny creatures did such remarkable things that the man could not help but think them intelligent. The thought occurred to him—“How could a human being in fluence such creatures for: good or impart knowledge to them ?” There seemed but one answer. Somehow man would have to be come an ant and go among them. Human intel ligence would have to become incarnate in the body of an ant or there could be no approach. Suddenly he saw the reasonableness of the incar nation of the Christ. How else could God communicate with the creatures He had created, reveal His love to them or instruct in His ways those who were living in sin and defeat? He took up the New Testament, to realize for the first time the necessity of the incarnation and to find Christ as his Savior. '"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Christ came with no majesty or terror, to fill the imagi nation with excitement or awe ; with no visible pomp which could interfere with the full effect of the moral revelation He came to make. He simply shadowed the light of deity with a veil of flesh. Yet He was not so absolutely concealed under His humanity but that occa sionally beams of His divine nature appeared, so that the apostle says : “We. saw His glory as the glory of the only begotten Son of God.” How could union of God and man be accomplished ? That redemption should come through the seed of the woman only, was made known to Adam. Men say they do not understand how the Christ could have been con ceived without a human father. The Word tells us that He was conceived of the Holy Ghost,” and was it not as easy to frame this second Adam in the womb as the first Adam out of the soil? Who understands the conjunction of spirit and body in man? Do we refuse to believe such mysteries because we are not able to comprehend how they were effected? At first sight it seems incredible that the incarnation took place in such a simple, ordinary way, yet on second thought this is God’s method in working His greatest wonders, whether in the forming of an oak or the building of a planet. The Son of God was born among men as gently and quietly as the sunlight paints the morning sky or the dew waters the thirsty earth. ^ How simple it all was. The angel said unto Mary, Fear not, for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest. That holy One,which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” An old writer says: “If we should imagine that a great prince should put his most beloved son into rags, should
dismiss him from his court, should yield him up into the hardest slavery, merely to the intent that he thereby might redeem from captivity the meanest and basest of his subjects, how faint a resemblance would this be .of that immense goodness, of that incomparable mercy, which in this instance the King of all the world has declared toward us, His poor vassals, His indeed unworthy rebels!” Ü? The Bethlehem Mystics T HE world was all astir, for a decree from Caesar Augtistus commanded it to be enrolled. The highways were crowded with pilgrims seeking the ancestral home, that there they might record their names as in some way belonging to the great empire. The great mass of men were conscious of the machinery of church and state and the orders of emperors and governors, and thought of them as the cause of the restléss surging of the tides of humanity. They saw the world of sense, and in it they thought they found the final meanings of the marching of men. But back in the hills of Bethlehem were quiet, con templative souls who kept watch over their flocks and prayed for the consolation of Israel. In the hush of the night watches they broke through the apparent and super ficial and tuned in on a greater world, in the depths of which they caught the deeper harmonies and learned the real meanings of an awakened world. They learned that the real cause of world movements was not Caesar’s decree, but the eternal decree of God carried out in the fulness of time in a purpose of world redemption. The great glory of these movements was not for Augustus, but for God in the highest, and the final purpose of them was not the establishment of a material and military empire, but the establishment on earth of peace among men, and goodwill. The regal center of these stirring times was not the king’s palace but Bethlehem’s manger. The praying mystics of the hills discovered this, and only those who shared their mystic insights understood the glorious sig nificance and value of what was happening in their day. The final meanings of life are always discovered by the quiet souls who, in the stillness of the night watches, enter into fellowship with the eternal and break in upon the spiritual world which, after all, is the real world in which are determined all the final issues of life. The most real things in that great historical moment were not the trappings of Augustus’s court and his cohorts, but the throne of God and angel choir that sang with gladness because there was born to us in the City of David “a Sav ior who is Christ the Lord.” That was the thing that was least noticed by the leaders and masses of the people, but for heaven it was the event for which the ages waited. The mystics knew this and they came to the manger wor shiping. To the ordinary man the child was only another peasant babe, but they recognized Him as Christ the Lord. That was the first Christmas day. That same-choir is still singing its prophetic anthems, and only they who catch
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