Micah the prophet witnessed of Him who was to be born in Bethlehem, that "His goings forth have been of old, from everlasting." Zechariah, in a passage, part of which our Lord Himself quoted, exclaims: "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against 'the Man that is My Fellow,' saith the Lord of hosts smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." This is He who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a Servant,—" yea, even that of a feeble Infant, lying in a manger, in an obscure corner of the world which He Himself had created.
Such a mystery as this the understanding of man cannot grasp; but faith meekly receives it, and reason bids us acknowledge, that He whose sacrifice was to be of "infinite" merit must needs Himself be infinite; that no created being could possibly have made satisfaction for the sins of a whole world, the redemption of which is a work as marvellous as was its first creation.
But nowhere do the marvels of that creation strike us with more overpowering force than when we muse on them beside the manger of Bethlehem. Let us consider Him who deigned to become a mortal Babe in the single attribute of power, as displayed in launching into space this globe in which we live, on which He stooped for a while to dwell, and which, as compared with the heavenly bodies around it, is but as a grain of dust in the universe created by Him by whom "all things were made."
Though the giving motion to our world was but a comparatively "small" exercise of such power, how overwhelmingly great it appears when set before us in the scientific page! Let us make an extract from "The Christian Philosopher": *
"However rapidly a ball flies from the mouth of a cannon, it is the flight of a body only a 'few inches' in diameter . . . The earth contains a mass of matter equal in weight to at least 2,200,000,000,000,000,000,000, or more than two thousand trillions of tons, supposing its mean density to be only about two and a half times greater than water. To move this ponderous mass a single inch beyond its position were it fixed in a quiescent state, would require a mechanical force almost beyond the power of numbers to express. The physical force of all the myriads of intelligences within the bounds of the planetary system, though their powers were far superior to those of men, would be altogether inadequate to the production of such a motion. How much more must be the force requisite to impel it with a velocity 'one hundred and forty times swifter than a cannon-ball, or sixty-eight thousand miles an hour,' the actual rate of its motion in its course round the sun! . . . The ideas of 'strength' and 'power' implied in the impulsion of such enormous masses of matter through the illimitable tracts of space are forced upon the mind with irresistible energy far surpassing what any abstract propositions or reasonings can convey, and constrain us to exclaim, 'Who is a strong Lord like unto Thee? Thy right hand is become glorious in power! The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!'"
* By T. Dick, L. L. D.
And it was He whose Word could thus launch forth, and for thousands of years keep the world and the other planets whirling round the sun at a speed that baffles thought to conceive, it was He who deigned to inhabit a human form so helpless that a woman's weak arms were needed even to lift Him out of the manger in which that woman had laid Him! The thought is overpowering, we can but prostrate our souls in silent adoration. Well might the angels, bending over the manger, desire to look into such a mystery; "God was manifest in the flesh"!
O blessed Redeemer, when even a faint glimpse of the riches of Thy glory falls on the mental eye, it seems to dazzle and blind; and yet, for our sakes, Thou didst become poor, so poor that the stable was Thy first earthly dwelling-place, and Thy cradle this manger! Grant unto us, feeble worms, the grace of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may be able to comprehend, at least in part, "what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge;" that love which is infinite as Thy power, and everlasting as Thy existence!
