Kingdoms
Dynasties

the first Christmas. The real interpretation of existence only then became possible. How little the world was conscious of it! It had its own interpretation of the prophecies, which were sufficiently startling; but to-day we know that, whatever old prophecies remain unfulfilled, this is sure, that nineteen hundred years ago a child was born, of the tribe of Judah, in the city of David, who was called Christ; and that in him as a fresh point all the devious lines of the revelation of God to man in the past converged; and from him again all the unfolding of the future has diverged, as his life and power and work embrace to-day all that man is and hopes to be. have risen and fallen because of him. have appeared, done their his truth, and passed away. been laid down, many a lofty spirit has suffered in his name. For the first time men have grasp upon the knowledge of God, and know what the loving Father has planned for them. Not only have countless individual lives been changed, but all the world has been made new. Europe has become the center of the world's history, because Christ has found his home in European institutions, and by the impulse of his love in their hearts, missionaries from Europe have gone over the world, until the story of Jesus Christ is preached in every land.

work, been changed by

Many a noble head has

This, then, is the outlook of Jesus as given to us to-day. Jesus Christ stands the one great fact. Infidels have denied that there was such a person. Rationalists have subordinated him to an ideal. Pantheists have sunk him in an eternal incarnation of God in his world. Mystics have dissipated him in the shadowy realm of spirits. Open foes and false friends have perverted his teaching and obscured the glory of his person. And yet he has emerged from all alike unaltered. No dimness has come to the luster of his name, no spot has been found, in the scrutiny of the centuries, upon the perfection of his matchless character. He stands to-day as he has always stood, the Redeemer of men, the one hope of the world.

We turn our thoughts, in common with other Christians, to the circumstances which surround the birth of our Lord. They are what we should expect. The story is everywhere charged with divinity. Coming to it from whatever standpoint, no one can read this story without feeling that everywhere it bears the stamp of the other world. It is filled with the spirit of the supernatural. Open it where you will. Take the circumstances of his birth; take Mary's song; take the scene of the shepherds; take the coming of the wise men; you recognize that here is a story differing from all other stories. It is not its simplicity, its sweetness, its dignity; it is not any one

thing, either in its substance or its form, that constiutes its abiding distinction, or supplies the reason for its impressiveness upon all classes. You may read it to little children, to the poor, the suffering, in the asylum, in the prison; every eye is intent, every heart shows the same surrender to the mysterious power of this story. It seems a little patch plucked out of heaven. Read in any land, the effect is the same. Our civilization is not above its level, nor is the rudest savage tribe so remote from it but that the missionary can sit down and tell the story to the most degraded. The one explanation of this is in the divinity that hedges it about, and the divineness that is in it. It is the story of the birth of the Son of God. The Christian has the true interpretation. There was nothing sudden about it, nothing unlooked-for from the Christian standpoint. The virgin birth shall not disturb us. As an incident in the narrative in every way appropriate, we accept it. We have no wisdom to go beyond what is written.1

If there is a Father in heaven, a loving God, the Maker of us all; if the story of man's fall is true, and God's relation to it, and God's promises, even in man's despair, then the yearning after God of the men of the Old Testament, and of the better spirits among the heathen, and the testimony of our own souls, even

1 See Note 1.

in our darkest hours-all this converges upon the fact, and shows that just so he would reveal himself. God would so come down into human life, he would so take up human life to himself, he would so establish this bond between his creatures and himself, because God so loved the world.1

The mystery which hangs over the beginnings of every human life is only gathered up in a new form over this life. A little child is put into our arms. How mysterious its presence! A new life has come out of eternity, to live forever, to think God's thoughts, to feel, responsive to the divine love, to be an active agent forever in working out the plans of a holy and a loving God, in all the universe. This is the interpretation of the strange awe and tenderness that come into every home with the birth of a little child. How all this is gathered up in marvelous intensity, how it all gains a new depth and fulness of meaning as we go back to the birth of that babe in Bethlehem! As God is present in all life, so God himself, in the fulness of the divine, was in that birth, not only for that hour, and for Mary who hid these things in her heart, and for the awed witnesses as they stood impressed as never before, but for all men and all time.

But not only is it the story of the coming of the

1 See Notes 2 and 3.

divine into humanity, it is also the story of the birth of humanity itself. This is an equally important truth for us. We read the story of man's life in Eden. It is strange; it belongs, in our thought, to a very remote past. The world has so changed since then. Man has changed in his thought, in his surroundings, in his own person. We have small power of interpreting that old story. We content ourselves with the great central fact that in the beginning God created the earth and prepared it to be the abode of man; that when man came to consciousness he found himself possessed of a sense of right and wrong; that with transgression came the burden of guilt upon all mankind, and the wrath of the divine righteousness upon man's iniquity. Then follows the enduring promise of the divine revelation of pardon and of life. Beyond that we cannot look.

But when we turn to the story of Jesus, how different! At once all our inquiry begins to be answered. Every man reads the story for himself, and seeks to find how Jesus Christ comes into his own life. He realizes the personal message. And so humanity-not the large humanity of the world but our own personal estate, with our temptations and our needs-finds itself stirred and thrilled by the possibility of what Jesus Christ has brought to us. We have received a revelation,

1