December 1925
540
T H E K I N Gy? S B U S I N E S S
And those shepherds who saw the gleam and heard the melody and said, “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this great thing,” and who saw the child in the manger; and the Magi who journeyed from afar that' they might give, their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus Christ; they are all there. And John the Baptist, man of thunder and flames, who went before Jesus Christ as forerunner and prepared the people to receive Him, the leonine man who contemptuously rebuked a king and called the ecclesiastics of his day hypo crites, and bade the soldiers do the right thing and not oppress the people, he is there. And the anonymous folks by the thousand who loved, Jesus Christ and ministered to Him and enabled Him to pursue His strange wandering life; the men who defended Him in the fishing boats and at the carpenter’s bench, out on the street, in the market places and in the synagogues, are there. And Thomas, another misunderstood man, the world remembering his doubt but forgetting that it was he who said, “The Master is going down to Bethany, where He will be killed; but let us go and die with Him,” is there. And Peter who stood on the dusty roadway one day and said, “We know Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” and who so greatly cheered and heartened the Sav iour, is there.;»,. , And that other thief who said, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom,” and to whom JeSus said, “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise,” is there. And Nicodemus and Joseph, who came out into the open and begged the dead body of Jesus Christ and laid it away tenderly in the borrowed tomb of the rich man of Arima- thaea, are there. And the deacon, Stephen, who looked up in the midst of the stoning and said, “I see Jesus standing at the right hand of God,” and who has borne the reputation for two millen niums of being the first Christian martyr, is there. And those men who were led Out to the lions in old Rome, who were crucified, and whom Nero smeared with tar and lighted in his garden and. by the light of those human torches pursued his orgies of sin, they are there. And the fifty million mutilated martyrs of old Rome, they are all there. And the great confessors of the faith who declared their trust in Him in spite of hostile worlds are there. And those old time heroes of the cross, like Carey, Moffat, Livingstone and Brainard, and ty men who mused on the mighty Saviour until their hear and the great Christ of God, value of about nineteen dol lars, is there. And the great throngs of Palestine who dogged the foot steps of Jesus, caught at His words, sought to misrepresent them, picked up stones to stone Him, sought to entangle Him in His-speech, and hated Him, are there. And the dying thief who hushed the death rattle in his throat for a moment that he might curse the Christ, is there. There too is Julian, Emperor of Rome, who boasted,*“I am building a coffin in which I will bury the Galilean,” but who on battlefield, bleeding to death, said, “O, Galilean, Thou hast conquered;” he too is-there. And Hume, of England, who said, “I have gone with my little axe through God’s Garden of Eden and cut down all His trees,” is there. And Paine, oft’Alherica, who dated cast reproach on the fair name of the Virgin Mary and the holy white brow of Jesus Christ by speaking of illegitimacy in connection with the manger, he is there. And Ingersoll, who had no use for the Son of God, and Mrs. Eddy, who would make the Son of God an arch hypo crite, they are there. And all the black hosts who have lived since Mary put Jesus in that manger, but have had no use for the holy Book, the holy day, the holy Christ, the holy Church, and the holy heaven, are there. 1 Yes, and your tricky politician who would climb on a lad der of human bodies and human hopes is there. And your profiteering doctor who would indeed squeeze blood out of a stone, or attempt it, is there. And your shyster lawyer is there; And the hypocritical preacher using the livery of heaven in which to serve the devil, is there. And they are all doomed, every one of those standing on the left side of that manger. For back of that little rounded arm of the new born babe, there slumbers omnipotence. And one of these days He will arise, will that great Christ, and break all His enemies asunder, and having put down all rule, authority and power, He will reign, the only supreme King in the universe. I once thought as I' read that story of Luke, how unequal was this contest between all these foes of Jesus and the littlq child. But then I thought of the other side, and I said, How unequal is the contest between all the hosts who are antagonistic to Jesus, and the slumbering omnipotence of the Christ. The foes of Jesus are by the'manger. God grant to us that’ Ve may not be standing among them. The Friends of Jesus But then the friends of Jesus are there; I know Roman ism makes too much of the Virgin Mary, but I know Protes tantism makes too little. And always my heart has gone out to that woman of the dark hair and eyes, and the per plexed brain and troubled heart, unto whom the great mystery of Godliness was revealed, and on whom the awful responsibility of being the unwedded mother of a child, and that child the Son of God, was placed. And I tell you while, in grace, she was only as one of the sisters of Jesus—- according to His own speech—yet I bear in mind that while that is true of rank in glory, He in His death agony thought of His mother and commended her to His loving disciple John. She is there, knowing what these modern fools can not perceive, that in that Child lying on the hay, there was a Child the like of whom had never been born before and would never be born again. And patient Joseph is there, the man of quietude, of few words, of perplexed mind until at last convinced that this strange mystery is the mystery of Godliness; and then tak ing up his strange burden and bearing it manfully, taking care of the mother, of the baby, and of the boy Jesus.
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