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rumLs /romTHE K ING ’S TABLE . . . By T he E ditor
staggered at giving it our confidence ? To turn from it can not make the mystery less— it only increases our discom fort and perplexities the more—and if for our humble faith, we must encounter ridicule and scorn, we may still console ourselves by the example of many blessed spirits who, in the same holy confidence, have bowed and shone and suffered. Let us, with the shepherds, pay our early visits to Beth lehem’s manger on Christmas Day, to establish ourselves in the blessed story of salvation, and to refresh our souls with new visions of God manifest in the flesh—His won derful person and His unspeakable grace. A Sign Spoken Against ^ 5 uch was Christ in His nature, His office, His teach ings, His works, His appointments, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and the cause He has set up in the world; yet in all these particulars He was to be unsatisfactory to the taste, persuasion, prejudices, and pre possessions of men. He was to be “ spoken against.” Christ was an offense to the Jew. There was nothing that He did or said, or left undone, but they perverted it and reviled Him for it, and nursed their antagonism until it culminated in His crucifixion. They did the same with reference to His apostles and the story of their testimony concerning Him, and in all nations and ages, neither Christ nor His cause has ever failed to meet with like treatment. Though He is the very pledge, proof, and demonstration of God’s prodigious and everlasting compassion, around which men and people might rally in comfort, peace, righteousness, salvation, and eternal life, it has been the order of the day everywhere and always for the great body of mankind to make this Son of Mary the mark and butt of their vilest antagonism, vitu peration, and abuse. No cause has ever suffered at the hands of the world as the Christian cause, and no people have ever innocently had to bear what Christian people have been made to bear for their very goodness and devo tion to the truest interests of humanity. Nor to this day has the offense ceased. There is nothing now on earth that is hated with a more intense hatred than pure Christianity. Most men, even in the most Christian communities, are ready to become anything sooner than meek and earnest Christians, and there are people who would as soon see Satan himself come into their houses, if he came in re spectable form, as a faithful Christian minister. It is sad that it is so, but such are the facts, foreannounced already by the holy Simeon when Jesus was as yet but a few days old. Nevertheless Simeon thought it the crowning day of his life—an ample reward for all his longing, waiting, praying, and preparing—which brought to his aged eyes the sight, and to his venerable arms the charge of this blessed Babe. Now he could depart in peace, for his eyes had seen God’s salvation. “ Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, ac cording to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
Faith in the Incarnation “ O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker.” he M agi from the east did neither an idolatrous, an ignoble, nor an idle deed when they worshiped the Babe of Bethlehem. Promises and prophecies, histories written be fore and histories written after, signs in the heavens and signs in the earth—all unite in attestation that, in that filthy grotto, we find the radiant center of the world. Have we come to give adoration to that lowly Babe ? It is not alone we come; glorious angels as well as simple shepherds have been there before us. The glorious company of the apos tles, and the noble army of the martyrs have preceded us in the selfsame service. The church of God throughout the world worships with us. With one mouth she confesses, and with one heart she believes; as we on Christmas Day confess and believe “ in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God o f very God, begotten, not made, made of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made ac cording to our gospel,” Nor was He less worthy of wor ship while He lay as a babe in Bethlehem’s manger, wrap ped in rags, than when He set His compass on the face of the waters and spoke creation into life. With prophets and evangelists, and the great company of saints that have passed on, let us have faith, and comfort ourselves in the great fact wrapped in those humble sur roundings. Let it be for skepticism and the sullen-hearted to sneer at the mystery of the holy incarnation. Let it be for this world’s narrowness and vainglory to ask, “ How can I believe that the almighty Creator of all things should become a wailing infant, and submit to the weaknesses of our nature ?” Viewing things in the abstract, and following the suggestions o f our own evil heart, we might be dis posed to doubtfulness, but disbelief in this point can only augment our difficulties. It is a fact that that humble Babe, in after years, untaught even in the feeble learning of His native land, put forth truths beyond all range of human knowledge, and by His quiet teachings here and there, on the hillsides and seashores of Galilee and Judaea, created the one grand revolution in the history of our race. From Him came forth ideas and moral influences which have shaken the mightiest kingdoms, overthrown all preceding forms of philosophy and faith, and cast into a new mold the most distant countries and generations o f the earth. And from that dark cavern, where the cattle fed and slept, there has come a light before which the old, miscalled religions have one by one died out, and whose genial rays have ever since been felt in all the paths of life as the highest, chief- est, gladdest, and most hopeful treasure in possession of Adam’s race. How could this have been done had not Deity been conjoined with that lowly infancy? The thought may be confounding to our feeble reason, but inspiration asserts it, history has added its seal to it, the best and holiest of men devoutly hold and confess it. Why should we be
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