SERMON II.

THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY INCARNATION.

PREACHED ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

LUKE, i. 35.

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

HERE is a very deep and very wonderful connexion be

THERE

tween the relations of our Lord Christ to His Father and to us. In heaven, and from all eternity, He has been a Son, "the only begotten of the Father;" on earth He became the Son of the Father again, and by a new title," therefore, that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,”—He being by the same wondrous act the Son also of an earthly parent. By His resurrection from the dead He acquired another, a third title to divine Sonship; as St. Paul seems to explain the matter in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts, applying to the resurrection of Christ the declaration of the second Psalm,-" Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee;" confirmed by a similar application in Heb. v. 5. Now in all these three forms and grounds of divine Sonship we are interested. In the first, because, doubtless, it is the eternal model and type upon which all other spiritual filiations were primarily formed and designed. It is one of the ways in which we are made like to God, imitators of Deity, "partakers of a divine nature," that we should be thus bound to God even as the Second Person of the Trinity to the First. Nay, probably,

since the family relationship itself is unquestionably a pure and holy thing, it was originally created as a sensible image of that ineffable relationship of the everlasting Father and Son; a perpetual picture in time of that great fact in eternity. Instead of supposing, as speculators often do, that the words, as applied to the divine persons, are a mere metaphor derived from the earthly relation, why not rather conceive that the earthly relation was itself created to be the counterpart, and symbol, and memorial of the heavenly? And possibly too, the apostolic polity of the Church, with its paternal, filial, fraternal relations, may have had some similar ground deeper than we can fathom; may have been intended to reproduce in that "new earth," which is the Church, another perpetuated image and symbol of the same eternal connexion ;-a supposition which may chance to appear less fanciful when you remember in what peril that great doctrine of the Father and the Son has ever been of corruption or extinction, in almost every religious community where the apostolic polity has been rejected. With the second-the Sonship by Incarnation- we are yet more deeply concerned, because it laid the foundation (whether as designed from everlasting or at length realized in the fulness of time) of all filial relation between God and man, being itself the conduit that connects deity and its graces with humanity and its weaknesses; the source, cause, and principle of every divine blessing whatsoever. And with the third-the Sonship of Christ by Resurrection-we are again more intimately connected than even with the last; for with this we have a real and direct, though most mysterious communion, in that twofold regeneration (for to both the same name is instructively given) of which we are made the possessors and the heirs; the regeneration of the soul in this life, and that of the body in the life to come; both of which are expressly said to make us "the sons of God," because the one only completes and consummates the other; and in both of which we are "the children of God, being the children of the resurrection,"-of a resurrection which is now spiritual (risen with Christ), and which shall hereafter combine spirit and body together. And hence it is that St. Paul (Rom.viii.) makes that future resurrection "a manifestation of the

sons of God," an unveiling and public recognition of their sonship; and hence, too, it is that in the one supernatural gift he finds the source of both the blessings. "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." The Spirit which gives the adoption here is the germ of the Spirit which gives the resurrection hereafter: and the resurrection itself is but the adoption made visible in glory.

You see, then, how deeply, in every form of His divine relationship, we are interested in "the Son of God;" how in His generation we see our regeneration; and how, in this sense no "jealous God," He would make us sharers of all His own unspeakable privileges, and teach us not even to dread the awful glory of reposing in that "bosom of the Father," where He himself from all eternity has dwelt.

But of all these ways and titles of Sonship, doubtless the most wondrous is that which made Christ at once the Son of God and the Son of Man; the Sonship of this great festival. The eternal generation of the Word of God is too wholly beyond our comprehension to be matter of real amazement. It is a fact in a sphere of being that utterly overpasses our conjectures. All colours are alike to the blind, and all suppositions as to the substantial nature and essence of God are, apart from revelation, equally possible or impossible to us. On the other hand, the resurrection, marvellous as it is, is easily conceivable when once the deity of Him who rose is granted. But the INCARNATION of God, the conjunction of divine and human, is just sufficiently within our capacity (for we do know one member of the connexion) to let us feel how infinitely it also transcends it. It is the mystery of mysteries, the wonder of heaven and earth, each alike astonished at the union of both, the one everlasting miracle of divine power and love.

In such a subject as this, what can one say which is not unworthy of it? It were vain to try amplification or ornament of such things as these. This matter is far vaster than our vastest conception, infinitely grander than our loftiest; yet overpoweringly awful as it is, how familiarity still reconciles us to

hearing of it without awe! Perhaps even the overpowering greatness of the subject makes us despair of conceiving it at all. All the wonders of God fall deadly on unfitted minds. And thus men learn listlessly to hear words without even an effort to attach ideas to them; and this is not least the case with those who dispute the most bitterly about the lifeless words themselves. In such a case, all that can be done is to endeavour to devise some mode of meeting this miserable influence of habit, by forcing the mind to make some faint effort to realize the infinite magnificence of the subject. Let us endeavour, then, to approach it thus.

You are wandering (I will suppose) in some of the wretched retreats of poverty, upon some mission of business or charity. Perplexed and wearied amid its varieties of misery, you chance to come upon an individual whose conversation and mien attract and surprise you. Your attention enkindled by the gracious benevolence of the stranger's manner, you inquire, and the astounding fact reveals itself, that in this lone and miserable scene you have, by some strange conjuncture, met with one of the great lights of the age, one belonging to a different and distant sphere, one of the leaders of universal opinion, on whom your thoughts had long been busied, and whom you had for years desired to see. The singular accident of an interview so unexpected fills and agitates your mind. You form a thousand theories as to what strange cause could have brought him there. You recall how he spoke and looked; you call it an epoch in your life to have witnessed so startling an occurrence, to have beheld one so distinguished in a scene so much out of all possibility of anticipation. And this, even though he were in nowise apparently connected with it except as witnessing and compassionating its groups of misery.

Yet again, something more wonderful than this is easily conceivable. Upon the same stage of wretchedness a loftier personage may be imagined. In the wild revolutions of fortune even monarchs have been wanderers. Suppose this, then,-improbable indeed, but not impossible surely. And then what feelings of respectful pity, of deep and earnest interest, would thrill your frame, as you contemplated such a one cast

C

down from all that earth can minister of luxury and power, from the head of councils and of armies, to seek a home with the homeless, to share the bread of destitution, and feed on the charity of the scornful. How the depths of human nature are stirred by such events! how they find an echo in the recesses of our hearts, these terrible espousals of majesty and misery!

But this will not suffice. There are beings within the mind's easy conception, that far overpass the glories of the statesman and the monarch of our earth. Men of even no extreme ardour of fancy, when once instructed as to the vastness of our universe, have yearned to know of the life and intelligence that animate and that guide those distant regions of creation which science has so abundantly and so wonderfully revealed; and have dared to dream of the communications that might subsist-and that may yet in another state of existence subsist with the beings of such spheres. Conceive, then, no longer the mighty of our world in this strange union with misery and degradation, but the presiding spirit of one of these orbs; or multiply his power, and make him the deputed governor, the vicegerent angel, of a million of those orbs that are spread in their myriads through infinity. Think what it would be to be permitted to hold high converse with such a delegate of heaven as this; to find this lord of a million worlds the actual inhabitant of our own; to see him and yet live; to learn the secrets of his immense administration, and hear of forms of being of which men can now have no more conception than the insect living on a leaf has of the forest that surrounds him. Still more, to find in this being an interest, a real interest in the affairs of our little corner of the universe; of that earthly cell which in point of fact is absolutely invisible from the nearest fixed star that sparkles in the heavens. above us. Nay, to find him willing to throw aside his glorious toils of empire, in order to meditate our welfare, and dwell among us for a time. This surely would be wondrous, appalling, and yet transporting; such as that, when it had passed away, life would seem to have nothing more it could offer compared to the being blessed with such an intercourse.

And now mark-behind all the visible scenery of nature;