THE REDEEMER AND REDEMPTION ARE WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST PRAISE.
Let us bend the head, and, in company of the shepherds, enter the stable. Heard above the champing of bits, the stroke of hoofs, the rattling of chains, and the lowing of oxen, the feeble wail of an infant turns our steps to a particular stall: here a woman lies stretched on a bed of straw, and her new-born child, hastily wrapped in some part of her dress, finds a cradle in the manger. A pitiful sight!—such a fortune as occasionally befalls the Arabs of society—such an incident as may occur in the history of one of those vagrant, vagabond, outcast families who, their country’s shame, tent in woods and sleep under hedges, when no barn or stable offers a covering to their houseless heads. Yet princes on their way to the crown, brides on their way to the marriage, bannered armies on their way to the battle, and highest angels in their flight from star to star, might stop to say of this sight, as Moses of the burning bush, “Let me turn aside, and see this great sight!”
The prophet foretells a time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and, bound in the same stall, and fed at the same manger, the lion shall eat straw with the ox. Here is a greater wonder! This stable is the house of God, the very gate of heaven: under this dusty roof, inside those narrow walls, He lodges whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain: the tenant of this manger is the Son, who, leaving the bosom of His Father to save us, here pillows His head on straw; of this feeble babe the hands are to hurl Satan from his throne, and wrench asunder the strong bars of death; this one tender life, this single corn-seed is to become the prolific parent of a thousand harvests, and fill the garners of glory with the fruits of salvation. Mean as it looks, yet more splendid than marble palaces,—more sacred than the most venerable and hallowed temples, here the Son of God was born, and with Him were born Faith, Hope, and Charity—our Peace, our Liberty, and our Eternal Life. Had He not been born, we had never been born again; had He not lain in a manger, we had never lain in Abraham’s bosom; had He not been wrapped in swaddling-clothes, we had been wrapped in everlasting flames; had His head in infancy not been pillowed on straw, and in death on thorns, ours had never been crowned in glory. But that He was born, better we had never been; life had been a misfortune to which time had brought no change, and death no relief, and the grave no rest. “Glory to God in the highest” that He was born: we had otherwise been lifting up our eyes in torment with this unavailing, endless cry, “O that my mother had been my grave! Cursed be the day wherein I was born?”
If language cannot express the love and gratitude we owe to the Saviour, let our lives do so. Shallow streams run brawling over their pebbly beds, but the broad, deep river pursues its course in silence to the sea; and so is it with our strongest, deepest feelings. Great joy like great sorrow, great gladness like great grief, great admiration like great detestation, take breath and speech away. On first seeing Mont Blanc as the sun rose to light up his summit and irradiate another and another snow-clad pinnacle, I remember the silent group who had left their couches to witness and watch the glorious scene: before its majesty and magnificence all were for awhile dumb, opening not the mouth. I have read, when travellers reached the crest of the hill, and first looked down on Jerusalem,—the scene of our Saviour’s sorrow, the garden that heard His groans, the city that led Him out to die, the soil that was bedewed with His tears and crimsoned with His blood,—how their hearts were too full for utterance. If a sight of the city where He died so affects Christians, as the scenes of His last hours rush on their memory and rise vividly to their imagination, how will they look on that scene where, surrounded by ten times ten thousand saints and thousands of angels, He reigns in glory! I can fancy the saint who has shut his eyes on earth to open them in heaven, standing speechless; and as the flood of music fills his ear, and the blaze of glory his eye, and the thought of what he owes to Jesus his heart,—I can fancy him laying the crown, which he has received from his Saviour’s hands, in silent gratitude at His feet; and as he recovers speech, and sees hell and its torments beneath him, earth and its sorrows behind him, an eternity of unchequered, unchanging bliss, before him,—I can fancy the first words that break from his grateful lips will be, “Glory to God, glory to God in the highest!” Never till then, nowhere but there, will our praise be worthy of Jesus and His redemption. Meanwhile, let Him who demonstrates God’s highest glory and fills heaven’s highest throne, hold the highest place in our hearts. Let us surround His name with the highest honours; and, laying our time and talents, our faculties and our affections, our wealth, and fame, and fortunes at His feet, crown Him Lord of all.
PART III.
Some years ago the question which agitated the heart of Europe was, Peace or War? The interests of commerce, the lives of thousands, the fate of kingdoms, trembled in the balance. Navies rode at anchor, and opposing armies, like two black thunder-clouds, waited for statesmen to issue from the council-chamber, bearing the sword or the olive-branch. Esteeming the arbitrament of battle one which necessity only could justify, Britain longed for peace; but, with ships ready to slip their cables, and soldiers standing by their guns, she was grimly prepared for war. Had ambassadors from the nation with which we were ready to join issue approached our shores at this crisis, what eager crowds would have attended their advent, and how impatiently would they have waited the course of events! And had peace been the result of the conference, how would the tidings, as they passed from mouth to mouth, and were flashed by the telegraph from town to town, have filled and moved the land! The pale student would have forgot his books, the anxious merchant his speculations, the trader his shop, the tradesman his craft, tired labour her toils, happy children their toys, and even the bereaved their griefs; and like the whirlpool, which sucks straws and sea-weed, boats and gallant ships—all things, big or small—into its mighty vortex, the news would have absorbed all other subjects. The one topic of conversation at churches and theatres, at marriages and funerals, in halls and cottages, in crowded cities and in lonely glens; ministers had carried it in their sermons to the pulpit, and devout Christians in their thanksgivings to the Throne of Grace.
In a much greater crisis, where the stakes were deeper, the question being not one of peace or war between man and man, but between man and God, an embassy from heaven reached the borders of our world. Unlike Elijah, rough in dress, of aspect stern and speech severe, whose appearance struck Ahab with terror, and wrung from the pale lips of the conscience-stricken king the cry, “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?”—unlike Jonah as he walked the wondering streets, and woke their echoes with his doleful cry, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed,”—the ambassadors were “a multitude of shining angels.” Leaving the gates of heaven, they winged their flight down the starry sky to descend and hover above the fields of Bethlehem, and in the form of a song, as became such joyful tidings, to proclaim news of Peace—their song, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will toward men.” Nothing presents a more remarkable example of “much in little” than these few but weighty words. In small crystals, that coat, as with shining frost-work, the sides of a vessel, we have all the salts which give perpetual freshness to the ocean, their life to the weeds that clothe its rocks, and to the fish that swim its depths and shallows. In some drops of oil distilled from rose-leaves of Indian lands, and valued at many times their weight in gold, we have enclosed within one small phial the perfume of a whole field of roses—that which, diffused through ten thousand leaves, gave every flower its fragrance. Essences, as they are called, present, in a concentrated form, the peculiar properties of leaves or flowers or fruits, of the animal, vegetable, or earthly bodies from which they are extracted; and, like these, this hymn presents the whole gospel in a single sentence. Here is the Bible, the scheme of redeeming love, that grand work which saved a lost world, gladdened angels in heaven, confounded devils in hell, and engaged the highest attributes of the Godhead, summed up in one short, glorious, glowing paragraph. For what so much as the gospel, what, indeed, but the gospel, yields Jehovah the highest glory, blesses our earth with peace, and expresses Heaven’s good-will to the sons of men? Such were the ambassadors, and such the embassage!
When the king of Babylon, hearing how the shadow had travelled back ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz, sent ambassadors to Hezekiah to inquire about this strange phenomenon, Hezekiah received them with the greatest respect; paid them honours, indeed, which cost both him and his country dear. The news of an embassy having come to Joshua spread like wildfire among the Israelites, moving the whole camp. Seized with eager curiosity, all ran to hear what the strangers had to say, and gaze with wonder on their soiled and ragged dress, their clouted shoes and mouldy bread. The herald angels, though arrayed in heavenly splendours, and bringing glad tidings of peace, were received with no such honours, excited no such interest. Strange and sad omen of the indifference with which many would hear the gospel! While angels sung, the world slept; and none but some wakeful watchers heard their voices or beheld this splendid vision. They were humble shepherds, to whom the ambassadors of heaven delivered their message; and it may be well to pause and look at those who were privileged and honoured to hear it. We do not pretend to know certainly the reasons why God, who giveth no account of His ways, conferred an honour so distinguished on them rather than on others. But we may guess; and in any case may find the employment profitable and instructive, if we are wise enough to find “sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything.”