For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; even the Babe of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ the Lord. The government shall indeed be upon His shoulder; for it has been there always. For the Father has committed all things to the Son, that he may be King of kings and Lord of lords for ever. His name is indeed Wonderful; for what more wondrous thing was ever seen in heaven or in earth, than that great love with which He loved us? He is not merely called “The might of God,” as Hezekiah was,—for a sign and a prophecy; for He is the mighty God Himself. He is indeed the Counsellor; for He is the light who lighteth every man who comes into the world. He is “the Father of an everlasting age.” There were hopes that Hezekiah would be so; that he would raise the nation of the Jews again to a reform from which it would never fall away: but these hopes were disappointed; and the only one who fulfilled the prophecy is He who has founded His Church for ever on the rock of everlasting ages, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Hezekiah was to be the prince of peace for a few short years only. But the Child who is born to us, the Son who is given to us, is He who gave eternal peace to all who will accept it; peace which this world can neither give nor take away; and who will make that peace grow and spread over the whole earth, till men shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and the nations shall not learn war any more. Of the increase of His government and of His peace there shall be no end, till the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea, and the spirit of God be poured out on all flesh, to teach kings to reign in righteousness, after the pattern of the King of kings, the Babe of Bethlehem; to make the rich and powerful do justice, to teach the ignorant, to give the rich wisdom, to free the oppressed, to comfort the afflicted, to proclaim to all mankind the good news of Christmas Day, the good news that there was a man born into the world on this day who will be a hiding-place from the storm, a covert from the tempest, like rivers of water in a dry place, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land; even the man Christ Jesus, who is able and willing to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, seeing that he has been tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin.
Yes, my friends, on that holy table stands the everlasting sign that Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled to the uttermost. That bread and that wine declare to us, that to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given. They declare to us, in a word, that on this blessed day God was made man, and dwelt among men, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Oh, come to that table this day, and there claim your share in the most precious body and blood of the Divine Child of Bethlehem. Come and ask Him to pour out on you His Spirit, the Spirit which He poured on Hezekiah of old, “that he might fulfil his own name and live in the might of God.” So will you live in the might of God. So you will be able to govern yourselves, and your own appetites, in righteousness and freedom, and rule your own households, or whatsoever God has set you to do, in judgment. So you will see things in their true light, as God sees them, and be ready and willing to hear good advice, and understand your way in this life, and be able to speak your hearts out in prayer to God, as to a loving and merciful Father. And in all your afflictions, let them be what they will, you will have a comfort, and a sure hope, and a wellspring of peace, and a hiding-place from the tempest, even The Man Christ Jesus, who said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you; let not your heart be troubled, neither be ye afraid.” The Man Christ Jesus, at whose birth the angels sang: “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”
Now to Him who on this day was born of the blessed virgin, man of the substance of His mother, yet God the Son of God, be ascribed, with the Father and the Spirit, all power, glory, majesty, and dominion, both now and for ever. Amen.
XXXV.
NEW YEAR’S DAY.
(1853.)
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.—Isaiah xliii. 1–4.
The New Year has now begun; and I am bound to wish you all a happy New Year. But I am sent here to do more than that; to teach you how you may make your own New Year a happy one; or, if not altogether a happy one—for sorrows may and must come in their turn—yet still something better than a happy year, namely, a blessed year; a year on which you will be able to look back this day twelvemonths, and thank God for it; thank God for the tears which you have shed in it, as well as for the joy which you have felt; thank God for the dark days as well as for the light; thank God for what you have lost, as well as what you have found; and be able to say, “Well, this last year, if it has not been a happy year for me, at least it has been a blessed one for me. It has left me a stronger, soberer, wiser, godlier, better man than it found me.”
How, then, can you make the New Year a blessed one for yourselves? I know but one way, my friends. The ancient way. The Bible way. The way by which Abraham, and Jacob, and David, and all the holy men of old, and all the saints, and martyrs, and righteous and godly among men, made their lives blessed among themselves, in spite of sorrow, and misfortune, and distress, and persecution, and torture, and death itself; the one only old way of being blessed, which was from the beginning, and will last for ever and ever, through all worlds and eternities; the way of the old saints, which St. Paul sets forth in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews; and that is, faith. Faith, which is the substance of what we hope for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith, of which it is written, that the just shall live by his faith.
But how can faith give you a blessed New Year? In the same way in which it gave the old saints blessed years all their lives through, and is giving them a blessed eternity now and for ever before the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, to which may God in His mercy bring us all likewise.