-a

cuted, but executed not so as to destroy but to save; with an unhasting forbearance which sought, between the doom and its execution, to restore the moral life by repentance and faith. So a hundred years lay between the proclamation of the Deluge and its terrible coming. Ten righteous persons would have turned aside the doom of Sodom, but nothing else than some turning from sin would have stayed its awful destruction. The extirpation of the completely corrupted, fatally infectious peoples of Canaan, when their cup was full of sin done against their own conscience (Rom. i. 18-23), was the first task given to Israel as the family and people of Jehovah —a task impressive to them of His all-seeing wrath against sin, and the fear His holy love had of their and manhood's ruin thereby; but their constant work was the congruous one of being a light to all who would see His mercy and grace. The task and the work were a perpetual proclamation to the world by history of His revelation of Himself to Moses as merciful and gracious, but who will by no means clear the guilty (Exod. xxxiv. 67). His discipline of Israel itself was that of a father's inexhaustible love, yet not a love self-indulgent and blind, but much more a suffering love, saving through sorest selfsacrifice. The terrible penal laws of that discipline against any sinning after the manner of the heathens around-its severity upon backsliding as sure as its overflowing love awaiting repentance, and its lavish encouragement of faithfulness—its removal, ever and ever more, of unfaithful stewards and failing ordinances its perpetual watchfulness to teach the service of holiness as the sole use of all that was conventionally holy in ceremonies or places or persons-are the family-like history of the whole anxious period from Egypt to Babylon. His language to man all the time when He was exercising that discipline is full and overflowing with affection as can be; full of ever-varying terms of kindness, names of family endearment, reveries of fondness, purposes of heart to crown His beloved with tender mercies; but again and again, all the time, as intense in pain as the pain can be which a father's pity hath over terribly sinful children upon whom he cannot execute the fierceness of his anger, or the agony of a husband because

of the unfaithfulness and sure misery of an erring spouse (Hosea ii. 2). All the varied course of that holy love which was revealed to Moses in Horeb was a long forelight of that love which, visible to the eyes of men, themselves also trying and burdening it even unto death, looked, in the last days of Hebrew faith, from the side of Olivet upon the holy city, and wept over it, and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"

tion of

24. On the threshold of the fulness of God's manifestation Anticipaof Himself as the Saviour of man, when the riches of signifi- "The cant names and illustrative histories and suggestive visions Flesh.” of His holy saving love were to be gathered together in one great interpretation and realised sight in Christ Jesus, it seems in place to look back upon a very early anticipatory unveiling for a moment, a glimpse of sight, of the reality and not the name of what was to come in a day afar off. A cloud of witnesses from Moses to David and the Prophets had received the names suggestive of assuring faith to think of God by-father, shepherd, portion, dwelling-place, &c.—and they could make use of these names with deeply-comforting faith in the nearness of the love meant to shine through them upon man's desirous sight; and their faith had been helped by many experiences of the promised manner of Jehovah's grace. In meet superiority to them all, the experience of the father of the faithful stands out by itself the first and best in the history of faith. His religious title was shared by no other in name until the reality came in the homes of such as Lazarus and John and Peter. He was "the friend of God"— the title by which His memory lingers round Hebron to the present day. The human face, so to speak, of Jehovah's love to man once looked upon him, with the complete human sympathy which would make that love man's perfect portion. In the light of that marvellous reciprocity of friendship to which he was admitted at Mamre he foretasted the day of Jesus; when the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, was to become the first-born of many brethren, through such

Desire of

all nations.

The manifestation.

desire to forgive and save as had that day allowed His "friend" to plead even for Sodom and Gomorrah until his courage of intercession failed, not the hearer's plenteousness of mercy-and through self-sacrifice such as His servant was afterwards compelled to all but experience.

25. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good-tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!" (Isa. lii. 7.) Like dawn upon the mountains those mingling distinct and indistinct lights arising here and there during the four thousand years of the morning of salvation, each shining chief in its season till embraced by new arising brightness, gradually filled the atmosphere of the world with the expectation of the Sun of righteousness, the birth of One who came down from heaven to deliver from all human ills, to bring back the golden age; and the eyes of the nations looked towards Judea as to the mountain of the Lord's house, ready to see His star and arise and follow wherever it should bring them, asking, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?"

Christian Faith.

"GOD MANIFEST IN FLESH."

26. The progress of revelation-that is, of God's unveiling His own nature and His disposition towards man--was great between the generations of the old world, when He was characteristically a God afar off, and the times of Israel's many educating fortunes, during which He showed Himself characteristically a God at hand (Jer. xxiii. 23). But gloriously greater, gracious beyond anything that eye had seen, or ear heard, or it had entered into the heart of man to conceive, was His nearest closest showing of His love which had awaited the fulness of times, but waited manifestly "straitened” till it should uplift for ever the veil and bid His fallen creatures look upon His face and believe evermore. No wonder that the hearts of the prophets who prophesied of the grace that

should come," inquired and searched diligently what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow" (1 Pet i. 10, 11); or that "the angels desired to look into" it as a mystery (ver. 12). How could God come nearer in tender goodness to the poor objects of His love, His fallen children, the blinded sinning ones whom He followed with a yearning heart, than when He called Himself a "father" to them, a "husband," a "friend closer than a brother"?-how more assure them of His protecting guidance, His providing love, than when He was their " shepherd," their "king," the "leader and defender of His people"?—how better give them thoughts of unbroken safety and peace than in being their dwelling-place," the "portion of their inheritance"? Only by one strangely impressive approach to them, one which no creature, however highly exalted, instead of being so brought low, could ever have dared to think of the Creator descending to. It was to be by putting away all metaphors of nearness and affection, even the metaphors so filled with realities, the names that were continually surrounded with the acts bespoken by them; and actually exchanging faith for sight, turning similitude into reality; showing Himself to be man Himself, and becoming even in the earthly elements of man's nature "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh."

66

27. In the fulness of times He who in holy sorrow, the God's in"repentance" of God, had withdrawn Himself from the sin- carnation. polluted earth behind clouds and thick darkness; but watched over fallen mankind unseen, and spoke to them in visions of the night, and made Himself known at long intervals to chosen servants whose hearts He had prepared to know Him and teach their brethren the things of God; who returned to earth to a single chosen prepared people in the thunders and lightnings of Sinai; who afterwards dwelt among them in a secret place, and spoke from a holy of holies to them by an oracle, and sent to them testimonies of His holiness and His purposes of grace towards them by prophets whom He called to be messengers to them from His invisible presence; He who shadowed forth Himself to them in the love of their guiding

fathers, the government of their holy and yet sin-atoning priests, and their righteous and beneficent kings, and their heavenlyminded prophets; He in the fulness of times drew near to them as one of themselves could draw near to another. The so long obscured fact of their close connection with Him, that their nature was part of His nature, was unveiled at last to very sight and pledged by a bodily life. He came unto His own, and was born among them after their own manner of birth. Always their own, He became their own after the flesh, joined to them by the most dearly acknowledged ties of earthly kindred. "Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He likewise Himself took part of the same" (Heb. ii. 14). How instructive in the light of this text is it that the earthly genealogy which records the Son of God taking rank in human families as the Son of man, should exhume the buried fact of man's unique place in life, and record the nearness, not a new-bestowed but a revealed one, a nearness which had always been; saying, "Adam was the son of God" (Luke iii. 38). Thus was the reality of Jehovah's declared coming nigh to mankind guaranteed. The reality of His compassion and love for them and the perfectness of His sympathy were made evident to sight in the same manner. In His assumed earthly life in their own flesh He took their position entirely, the position to which He had in all former time held forth His offers and assurances of loving-kindness and tender mercy, the condition of " a man of sorrows." "He was tempted in all points like as we are" (Heb. iv. 15). He completed the manifestation of His willing identity with the race whom He declared that He so loved, by submitting to their death. He did all this to persuade mankind of the one fact which all His revelations had been unveiling as fast as man could appreciate it—the one fact of which all the facts of religious history are parts-the fact to which all lines of religious thought are to bring the observant thinking soul— the fact which is to originate and sustain all religious affection and conduct-the fact He himself proclaimed in the day that He perfected it-"God so loved the world" (John iii. 16). So He directs us to read the meaning of His manifest