SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1923, Page 11

SUNDAY READING

((By

Rev. A. H. Collins.)

IMMANUEL.

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bare a Son. and shall call his name Immanuel.’* . —lsaiah vii., 14. . The Wonder-'Child, whose birth was thus predicted, may have been, and prob bably was, some great national hero, whom God raised up to deliver His ai?.i cient Israel. Expositors, whose spirit was deeply devout, have so interpreted the passage. Sir George Adam Smith, in. his brilliant commentary on Isaiah, takes that position, and I see no reason to deny the claim. But whoever may have been the historic figure, in the days of Ahaz, he did not exhaust the significance of the great prophecy. Christian people have found in the passage one of the early forecasts of Messiah’s advent, and Saint Matthew explicitly relates this word to the birth of Mary’s Son, “Behold the Virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” Then the evangelist adds the interpretive clause, “which is, being interpreted, God with us.” There have been other great souls in whom God has dwelt, and through whom God spoke, and is speaking still. Nevertheless, it is true that the Christ of Bethelehem was in a unique sense, and a unique degree, the incarnation of Deity. “Immanuel, God with us,” belongs to Jesus Christ as it belongs to none beside. Jesus Christ alone meets our tremendous need. He is infinite, 'but He became finite for us. He was incarnate, but He is an Eternal Spirit. He is a historic person but He fives in every soul that breathes.

TWO CARDINAL DOCTRINES. Christianity has two great cardinal doctrines —the Incarnation and the Atonement—one relating to the birth, and the other to the death of our Lord. These doctrines have ruled the thoughts of men in different ways at different, periods. For centuries the chief emphasis has been laid on the cross, and not on the cradle; on the death and not the birth of Christ; and for my part I hold that any obscurity on the fact of the. Atonement must end in incalculable less to the vigour of the Christian faith. But Dr. Westcotte rightly pointed out that the Incarnation of God in Christ is the crucial doctrine, for the whole value of the Cross depends on the nature of the Person who died thereon. Saint Paul wrote: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,” and that sets the Cross in unique and Isolitory splendour. But the Cradle is needed to explain the 'Cross. Others have died and for, their fellows, and unless Jesus Christ was other, and more, than others, His death might have been a martyrdom, a noble sacrifice, but it would not have been an atonement for a guilty race. I say, then, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the truth we need to ponder. The Advent antidates the Crucifixion, and the Advent is the pivot on which history turns. The coming of the Wonder Child is the glad tidings of great joy.

ALMOST INCREDIBLE. At first sight the idea that the infinite and Holy God should take flesh and submit Himself to human conditions is wonderful a-j to seem almost incredible. But great and staggering though it be, second thoughts suggest that the Incarnation is not only credible; it is supremely natural and rational. For if there bo a Personal God at the heart of al 1 things, it is surely reasonable to expect that He will reveal Himself.” We cannot conceive of a Person creating persons, except with a view to hold intercourse with them. But a Personal God can only fully reveal Himself to persons spiritually akin to Himself, and whilst it is true the difference between God and man is the difference between the infinite and the finite, yet there is a kinship between God and man. God is spirit and man is spirit. Moreover the Christian faith is not the only one that speaks of God manifest in the flesh. Pagan religions have their doctrine of Incarnation. The Greeks have their story of the descent of the gods in the likeness of men. There are the stories of Hercules, Buddah, Romulus and Apis. These pagan myths, these pathetic stories, all point forward to Bethlehem, and proclaim the universal craving of human hearts to find God. The idea of an Incarnation is not contrary to reason. It is natural that God should show Himself. A dumb God is unthinkable.

NOT HIS FIRST COMING. But —and this is the truth I want to stress—the appearance of Jesus in the cattle cratch was not His first coming to our world. As Dr. Dale says, “The Incarnation was not an isolated and abnormal wonder; it was God’s witness to the true and ideal relation of God to all men/’ The coming of Christ in Bethlehem was the fullest and most glorious expression of a principle that is old as the world. Creation was the self expression of God, “whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.” “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The angel that appeared to Joshua, with drawn sword; the burning, fiery pillar; and the angel that “encampeth round about them that fear Him,” are examples of divine Epiphanies, which antidate Bethlehem.

There are two ways of regarding God’s relation to the universe) One way represents Him as the Engineer who designed the vast machine, and set it spinning ’ down the grooves of time, but stood apart and above His handiwork, with no kinship with it. That is what we call the transcendence of God. The other way to think of God animating, quickening, and sharing the life of the world—living in men and things, as the sap in the vine, the life and light of men. Everything that breathes in an expression of Deity. That is what we mean by the imminence of God.

INCARNATE IN BOTH WORLDS. Further, God was incarnate in His Word as well as in His world. The Bible is the Cradle of the Chr'-at. For what is the Bible save the record of how God came to men in successive epochs, and spoke to men with growing clearness? Step by step the Father of Our Spirits revealed Himself to men as they were able to bear the light, and we shall never make much of these ancient Scriptures until we see in them the evidence of a progressive revelation ox God

Himself. The early records are gross and material. Men thought and spoke of God. in ways quite impossible to us. They represented Him as limited in time and space, as approving and commandinc deeds that shock our moral sense, s.e demanding rivers of oil and hecatombs of slain beasts, and they believed so because their eyes were dim and their minds gross. To say this is not to blame them, any more than we blame the children in the primary department that they do not speak in the terms of a universitly don. Later they learned better. But the whole Book is a series of divine appearings which prepared the world for the larger, fuller, clearer light of Christ. “God, who at sundry times and divers portions spake unto oyr fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken until us by His Son.” ’

“GOD WITH US.” The next step is inevitable. “God with us,” in the vast domain of created things, and in the progressive unfolding of His Word, should prepare us to expect to find “God with us” in the lives of men, and finally in Jesus, the Son of Man. 1 said that a dumb God is unthinkable, and a God remote and inaccessible is equally unthinkable. If there had been no incarnation of God in Jesus Christ the world would have been waiting for it for the simple reason that it is the felt, need of human hearts. There were Immanuels before Christ came. The mysterious figure, that crossed the stage of history in Isaiah’s dream was- one of them. Every true prophet, law-giver, judge, and King of Israel was an incarnation of the All Wise, Who is the All Loving too. God spoke great words of liberty by Lloyd Garrison. He spoke of purity in Frances Willard. He championed righteousness in the heroic' life of Gladstone; and He is dwelling in and speaking through brave and humble folks whom the world thinks to be nobodies. Does this seem derogatory to the honour of Christ? Does it seem less wonderful and welcome that God should come in the guise oi’ men who are fettered and faulty, than that 'He was born of a peasant maid? Why should it? That “Beautiful Syrian Saint,” whose feet pressed the waves .of stormy Galilee, whose hands were outstretched in mercy, and whose lips dropped pearls, was the perfest flower of our humanity.

And so the Word had breath and wrought With human hands, the creed of creeds, In loveliness tef perfect deeds More strong than all poetic thought. That he may read, Who binds the sheaf And digs the grave and sails the sea. And those wild eyes that watch the waves In roaring round the coral reefs. FOR YOU AND ME. But the Gospel of the Incarnation is for the likes of you and me. God is with us no less than with the men. of old. God is with us as truly, though in lesser degree, than He was with Jesus Christ. Nay, not only with us, He is in us, and we are in the world not to make a name or make a fortune, but to be present day incarnations and interpreters of God to men. We are here to mediate the hope, the patience, the mrcy of God to men who do not know Him. We are in the world to prolong the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Watt, the artist, has a striking picture entitled, “Love steering the barque of humanity.” It is a strenuous presentation of man’s dependence on Love. There he is bending at the oar, every muscle strained and almost at the point of exhaustion. The sails are blown about the mast in confusion, and the seas are

hurling themselves to the skies. There is dire imminent calamity. But one figure redeems it all. Love is there, quite as strenuous a.s man, but full of inviolable calm, and Love holds the rudder and guides the barque through the storm. That is the message of Christmas. As Christina ‘Rossetti sings— Love came a own at Cn ns rm as, Love all lovely, love divine; , Love was born at Christmas, Star and angel gave the sign, • Worship we the Godhead, Love incarnate, Love divine: But wherewith for sacred, sign? Worship we our Jesus, Love shall beour token. Love be yours and love be mine. Love to God and all men, Love for plea, and gift, and sign. •LOVE CAME DOWN.”

“Love came down at Christmas.” It is not enough to say that the Incarnation marked the coming of God in human guise. The wonder of Christmas is not complete until there bursts on the soul the deeper truth that God is Pure and Perfect Love. The Incarnation might have been the world s despair had it not been for that. A God of hate or indifference would have meant the destruction of faith. What makes the Incarnation a Gospel is that it marks the coming of Perfect Love for Perfect Salvation. “Unto you is born this day a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.”