Brethren, as we think of these things, and of all we owe to Him in and for His abasement and humiliation in His Incarnation, should not “our hearts burn within us?” Oh, let them do so, with a reverent, loving, grateful, joyful sense of His goodness; Who, “though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor;” Who has gladdened and cheered this otherwise dark and gloomy World by His presence in it in human form and nature; Who, since He came to it thus, has (though absent so far as the eye of sense discerns) yet never left it to be as it was before, but, by the very means of His Incarnation, dwelleth in it still,—dwelleth, aye, in us, and we in Him, if we be His by the Spirit. And all this, though He be so wonderful, high, and mighty—nay, because He is so,—the very and eternal God, born as on this day in the stable at Bethlehem! In Whom, lying there, in all appearance, a mere helpless, unknowing, human babe, in Whom were still “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;” and “in Whom,” then as always, “dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
Oh, my brethren, believe that He sees and knows every one of us; and how we think of Him this day, and how we love and honour Him. He loves and longs for every one of us. He wills us to rejoice (and “again I say rejoice”) at the “good tidings of great joy which should be to all people” from that day at Bethlehem. Let our joy be, then, such as He sanctions, such as leads us nearer and nearer to Him, both in the exercise of dear and holy home affections, and in love to Him Himself; and then we may hope we shall indeed bless Him, not only now but for ever, that He has again brought us to this great and happy day.
When we gather, then, our families around us and see the aged, whom we love, still permitted to be with us, (though, it may be, now infirm and feeble,) let us rejoice in that hope, and the object of their faith, which gilds and cheers their old age. When we meet our fellows and companions of our own time of life, knit with us in the tenderest bonds of human affection, and enjoy with them some of that good which God’s bounty allows us, let us rejoice in the thought that they and we have a mutual share in things better than all which this world has to give, and are heirs together of the same common salvation. When we gather round us our little ones, and thank God for the blessing He has given us in them, and look forward not without anxious expectation to the future of their life, yet let us not forget to bless and praise His name that, by the Incarnation of His Son, He has permitted us to make our children His children, and has made sure to them all the privileges of their adoption and the promises of His covenant. So may we, whichever way we look and whatever meets our eyes, ever overflow with thankful joy that unto us “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” [156]
Printed by James Parker and Co., Crown-yard, Oxford.
FOOTNOTES.
[1] 2 St. Matt. xii. 29.
[2a] 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[2b] Gen. ii. 7.
[3a] 2 Cor. iii. 5, 6–9.
[3b] 2 Cor. iv. 1.