SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 6273, 24 December 1881, Page 3

SUNDAY READING.

THE ANGEL'S MESSAGE. BY THE KEV. C. J. VAUGHAS, D.D.

" And this shall be a sign unto you : ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a manger."—Luke ii. 12.

It is a part of the well-known angel's message on the first Christmas Day to the shepherds ol Bethlehem. He briugs them good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. " Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be the sign unto you : this shall be your token : by this ye shall know that the desire of all nations is at last come ; ye shall find the babe wrapped, like any other babe, in swaddling clothes, and lying, in more than common humbleness of a ba''C, in a manger upon his cradle. Christ the Lord is born, and you might expect signs in heaven and earth to proclaim such an incarnation ; but God's ways are not our ways ; God's thoughts are not our thoughts; and tho signal of that more than royal birth is a helpless ) abe and a manger cradle." Thus the angel of Christmas Day make 3 outward meanness the deep token of a divine presence—bids us look for God just where there is least appearance of it, and, when we are expecting the arrival of a prince and a conqueror, points to an exceptionally poor and makeshift cradle, and says, "You have jour signal. God is come ; the Lord is come ; and this is the sL'n."

Let us think what is the connection here. A sign—a signal; how so? In what sense did the mode and circumstance of the birth make it typical of the thing which Christ comes to do ? What is that thing which Christ comes to do 1 He has come to be the God-man, the Redeemer, and the .Emmanuel, and the Saviour—the God for us, and God with us, and God in us—of the fallen, the sinful, the erring, and the straying man. Now, to be this, He must first incorporate Himself with men—take the flesh and blood —take the nature and body and spirit of the race which He comes to save. He must first of all incorporate Himself—not with a man, or a few men, but with humanity—not with a select portion of mankind, but with the whole of mankind—with man as man, r.nd not with certain privileged specimens and choice individuals of the race. He has come to bear the sins—to wipe away the tears — to take the stii,g out of the deaths of the Adam race as a whole; therefore He must not only take flesh and blood—become one of us and live our very life ; that is not enough. He must go down to the very rock from which we are hewn, and he must put on our nature—not in its ornamental, but in its fair form—not as it may deck itself in the embellishments of rank or wealth, of social distinction or philosophical culture, but as it is in itself and in the commonest experiences of its humblest children. If the divine Saviour had appeared in any other form than this He would have misled men as to the thing which He came to do, and as to the relation in which He desired to stand as to the lower and the lowest portions of the human family.

The sign of the Helpless babe and the manger cradle was 110 capricious or accidental idea ; for, inasmuch as it is Christ the Lord, therefore ye shall find Him— not in the miraculous strength of an instantaneous maturity, and not in the guest chambers of a king's palace, but as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and a babe lying in the manger. There was a connection and a congruity between the sign and the reality ; for thus it was that Christ became, not the faith of a few, but the Saviour of all. None are poorer, none are humbler, none are less learned, none are less noble after the flesh than He. None can say now, *' His is the religion of the educated—of the philosophical—of kings and princes—His the religion which admits or which favours a position of comfort and respectability, and I am none of these, so Christ is not for me." And when, at this Christmas season, wealth surrounds itself with all its luxuries of mind and body, and thinks it much if, for a moment—if, in the most perfunctory way, it remembers the poor, we feel how slight must be the hold of these sali-indulgenccs upon the faith which they profess to honour. We feel that the part in the desire of nations as to a real and spiritual character, would not cost that kind of ceremonial one tear, or make one void spot in its satisfactions. Wealth and luxury arc but keeping, at this season, the saturnalia ot an outward heathenism. Jesus is to them the supplement and complement of this world, making it religious to be merry, because Ho has made it superfluous to be serious. If we would know the mystery of Christmas ; if we would read the riddle of the angel ; if we would know why he said, "The Saviour is born, and the sign is the manger," we should tare our steps on the birthday of the great King to some poor man's chamber with its high-backed chair and its open Bible. We shall hear that man say, "Oh, I love both to be abased and to abound. lam instructed both to be full and to be hungry, for Christ the Lord was born this day for our salvation, and his first earthly restingplace was a yard and a manger." Or shall we go into some home of recent bereavement, and mark the wife or the daughter, for whom Christmas this year, in its earthly idea, is utterly desolated, yet who finds in the incarnation the unchanging reality of our Emmanuel, God with us, who has once for all irradiated car Hi with the light ot a heaven open to all believers.

Thus it is that we shall enter into the true festivity of Christmas as that event in the world's history which makes it good for any one of us to have been born. True humility is the sign. Now can even want console itself, and sorrow rejoice. The words of the pious ruler can be taken upon any lips ami under any circumstances.

" This day is holy; mourn not nor weep, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." Light and gladness, joy, and a good day— this is the Christmas over which earth has to rejoice ; for to you is born a Saviour, and His cradle is your sign.

But may we not now take a somewhat wider range, ami sec how everywhere and in all things the divine veils and even hides itself in the outward. This shall be your sign—not the march of a conqueror, not the splendour of a king, but the babe wrapped in its swaddling hands, and the babe lying in a manger. Wherever God is, the presence is secret. What, for example, is the Book of God—the Bible—but an example of this sanctity in commonness—a heap of leaves, marked with ink and hand, stamped with signs for sounds, multiplied bv print-ing-press and steam-engine, conveyed hither and thither by railways, bought and sold in shops, tossed from hand to hand in schools and homes, lost and dissipated by vulgar wear and tear. But go back to its composition. What was the Bible as it came forth originally, book by book, and chapter by chapter, from the mind which thought, and from the hand which wrote it? Was it not written, after all, both in composition and dictation, like any other work of poetry and philosophy—or history or fiction—by tins brain and nerve-power of common human beings 'i Was it not given forth line by line from the lips of a Paul sitting at the tent-making, or some other evangelist, alternating between preaching and handicraft—by the utterance of sounds in an imperfect human language to some obscure Persian or other amanuensis reporting? Vet in that book of books, thus material, thus earthly, thus human in its circumstances, there lies concealed the very breath and spirit of God Himself, mighty to stir hearts, and mighty to regenerate souls. The. swathing bands of sense and time enclose the living and moving power which is of eternity, which is divine. Nay, the sign of the true deity is the fact that the form is human.

.Just so it is, to take another example of another of God's instruments of communication. What is that vessel for holding common water which is the appendage of every Christian place of worship ? Is there anything in that laver —that font—but what is of the earth, and of the very commonest of all earth's gifts for refreshing and purifying ? " What can be the use,'" some might inquire, "of bringing that earthly water into the house of (.soil's worship, as though wc had forgotten our Master's own word's, * God is a spirit?' What significance can there be— certainly what virtue—in sprinkling those few drops of common water upon the forehead of a child, with or without a particular form of sacred words accompanying ? What, again, can be less intelligible than the sight of that little frugal table of common bread and common wine, standing there in iront of the congregation? How can eating and drinking in God's house affect, in any degree, for good the soul of the worshipper ?" We can but answer that Christ our Master commanded the one sacrament as the appointed way of dedicating anew life to His service; Christ our Master appointed the other sacrament as commemorative of His own death and passion—as instrumental, also, in nourishing the soul that in it feeds upon Him by faith. And though it would be presumptuous, indeed, to attach any value to a form of man's invention, we feel that the presumption would be all the other I way if we neglected an ordinance of Jesus I

Christ, because it was cither too mysterious for us or too carnal. Nay, we can almost read in the very simplicity a signal of His working, who, when He came on earth, came as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and made it a sign of His presence that He was lying in a manner.

lint th« same thing that is true of the Bible and true of the sacraments, is true also of the Church and of tiie Christian. Where is it, we ask, ih.it God in Christ dwells most certainly—most personally on this earth ? It is no word of man's invention which answers to the Church, "Ye collectively are the temple of God ; and,'' to to the Christian, "your body is the shrine of the Holy Ghost which is in you." Yet if we look at the men and the women and the children thus spoken to. we see nothing but human beinjf3, frail and fallen, occupied for a large part of their life in the employments and the relaxations—in the talk and in the seeking—which are common alike to the rightejus anil the wicked, and which would equally be theirs if they had neither faith nor heaven. The treasure of the divine light is always held in earthen vessels : not uutil the pitcher is broken at the fountain shall the full radiance shine out so as to lie reyd of all men. Meanwhile the sign of God is the commonness. Christ came not to take men out of the world, but to consecrate and keep them in it. To call them into a smaller inner circle of isolated peculiarity—to mark them openly before men as Nazarites of cell and cloister—to translate them suddenly, their enemies looking on, into .in unapproachable heaven—all this might have been our way, but it is not God's way, for all this would contradict the very teaching of the text and the incarnation, which is, that where God is, there is deep humility, there is commonness, there is even, as man might speak, meanness of the thing seen. Coming to redeem earth, He takes earth as it is—not the ideal, but the real: and makes this the very token of His being amongst us, that we find a helpless babe and a manger cradle.

And was it not exactly thus with our Lord Jesus Christ Himself—not only in the circumstances of His birth, hut throughout His human life and His earthly ministry ? For thirty years He was a man like other men, even in His occupation, so that friends as well as foes would ask the question, so "rand when it is understood, "Is not this Joseph's son ? Is not tin's the carpenter ?" And even afterwards, when preparation was ended, and the life beyond other lives was legun, still was it not true that the godhead veiled itself in the humanity ? Was He not still, to common observation, a common man, hungering and thirsting, walking and resting, toiling and sometimes weeping, like the ordinary people around Him? Was it not thus that God dwelt in Him, making Him an example by making Him in all things like us? Yes, the sign of the birth was the sign also of the life. Christ the Lord is here, and, therefore, the human— the very human—is the token. He looked for God with us ; well, He shall find Him in the village home, and He shall find Him among the common people.

There is yet one other aspect of the angel's signal, and ve must give a word to it in conclusion. We have spoken of it as characteristic of God's dealing that He veils in common forms the chief mysteries of His grace. But is it not also characteristic of man's treatment of those mysteries, this thrusting of the infant Saviour into tlie court-yards and outhouses of that liethlelicin hostel ? Is it not a parable of the reception which He meets with everywhere in the homes and iiearts of men? "He came unto His own, and His own received him not." Ho was in the world ; the world was made by Him ; the world knew Him not— would not know Him. We are told nothing —and conjecture would be idle —as to any special motive for that inhospitabe reception. We only know that it was a time of much coming and going—that there was a concourse of many guests occasioned by the imperial edict of the taxing, and that for these humble parents from Galilee there happened to be no room in tlie inn. When, in that night of unrest and discomfort, the hour for delivery came suddenly on, there wai no place for the child but the stable and the manger. The guest chamber was full, and every place in the hostel was occupied. She brougnt forth her first-born, wrapped Him in the swathing Kinds, and then laid Him iu the manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. How true is this similitude and this parable ! No room for Jesus Christ, even at Christmas, in the guest chamber; no room for the talk of Him; no room for the recollection of Him, though His own birth is the pretext for revelry—no room for Him where guests congregate—where friends eat and drink, dance and play—no room. Indeed, His entrance, unbidden and unwelcome, would damp and overcast all. There are guests there whom He could not meet—men who deny His deity—men who carry in their bosoms the sin which He was horn to destroy ; therefore, at all costs of inconsistency or ingratitude—of disrespect or blasphemy, keep Him without. The night air is not too chill for Him. The company of the beasts and the cattle-drivers is not too rude nor too discourteous. Brethren, let not the thought be put away from us hastily or without reflection. Christmas is not like Good Friday—a day of pain as regards the subject of commemoration; nor is it like Whitsuntide—a celebration of mysteries too high for us in their spirituality or their aspiration. We can all feel the beauty of that revelation—a Saviour, born into a world of sorrows that He might share its sorrows and atone for its sins. Thus far all can sympathise. All can admire, at least, if tlicy cannot adore. Yet, even here—even in tlie record of simple, natural, homelike humanity, we find ourselves often reluctant—sometimes recalcitrant—"when wc would make it the comforter of our trouble or the companion of our rest. For the Saviour Himself there is no room in His home : we can but indolently acknowledge or distantly and formally worship. Still He stands without knocking; let us at last hear His voice. Let us at least, on His own birthday, see that we meet Him in His own house, and pray Him so to be with us in our moments of joy and in our hours of darkness, that we may both know Him now by faith as our Lord and our life, and after this life have the fruition of His love in that heaven of rest and glory from which none shall go any more out. STRENGTH IX SPIRITUAL LIFE. At the l J erth Conference the Rev. George Wilson, of Cramond, dwelt on the secret of power in Raul, as indicated iu the words, "I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me." According to the Scriptures, the Christian's union with Christ is a mutual thing. ''He that abideth iu Me, and I in him, the same bringeth fortli much fruit" (John xv. o). If it be true that the believer lives iu Christ, it is no less true that Christ lives in the believer. "Christ in you the hope of glory." If a man makes his Christian standing everything, and the Christian state nothing or next to nothing, he is shorn of his strength. The same Apostle who says, "Be strong in the Lord and in the power ot His might," says, " Work out your salvation with fear and trembling"—and the one exhortation is no less important than the other. Here is the secret of strength of will. When the will becomes one with Christ's, all His almightiiiess is at the back of it. Sc with the power of love. The heart of the Christian is given to Christ, and the heart of Christ to tlie Christian. The secret of Christian joy and Christian defence is even the same. What we most want is to get down to where Christ makes men strong. God never makes men strong till He cets chem down. "Out ol weakness made strong." They are made weak in order that they may be strong, empty that they may be filled, nothing that Christ mav be all in all. "YET THERE IS ROOM." Room! where? Kmu.-i in the- heart of Oo<], Kiiimi cm the Father's oreast ; For each weary child coming home to-ilay. There's room ami rest. lloom 1 where? Itooiu in tlie Father's limine, Where all is love and liejit; Where the ones are satisfied : Conic home to-nii,'ht ! lluora ! where ? Bourn at the Cross of Christ. R-jum at the Saviour's feet ; And each sorrowing one that comes. Ui Him, His smile shall meet. lloom ! where? lloom at the festal board, where Christ the feast lias- spread, Wh.re lie gives His blood as cos'.lv wine. Himself the bread! lieoui! where Hoora at the well ot life, Where the living water lies; Where each thirs'.y soul, drinking deep, shall find It satisfies ! lloom. ! where? lloom in the .Shepherd's arms, Room in the sheltered fold, In the verdant pastures, where none shall fear Hunger or cold. Still room ! Oh ! famished weary one. The Word of God is truo; In the Father's home, in the Father's heart, There's room for ycu I L. I, 1.