The Culture of the Young—The Reason of Christ's Sovereignty—Flattering Christ—Christ Himself Is With Men

Prayer

Almighty God, we bless thee for psalm and gospel; we thank thee that the olden men were enabled to speak their heart's life in holy psalm. Though they saw not the King, yet did they speak tunefully of him: it was in no mean praise they forecasted the coming One. Thou didst give them music, music of heart and voice—lo, in that music they all but realized the ineffable joy of the divine presence upon the earth. It is thus thou dost ever treat us: thou dost give us means of utterance which are themselves sacred, and in the very utterance of our prayer thou dost give us sweet answers. We bless thee that we have read the word of the gospel, spoken in no poetry of expression, but in the poetry of fact, for we have seen Jesus, and his star, we have been present at the offering of the first worship to the child—may that worship be the keynote of our life, expressing always our uppermost desire: may it be our joy to be found serving no other master, and loyally bending before no other king. We will have this Man to reign over us by thy grace, yea, though we once rejected his dominion, yet now would we contritely and humbly welcome him. We would live in Christ, for Christ would we live, we would be found in him as the branch is found in the vine, drawing our life and its daily sustenance from him who is the one root. Seeing that this is our desire and that it has risen into a prayer, we accept the prayer as the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, and knowing it to be inspired, we are already assured of thine infinitely gracious answer. We would no longer live in ourselves and to ourselves. We would enter into fellowship with Christ in every pang of his suffering and in every ecstacy of his joy. Let this our prayer be answered to-day, and we shall rejoice with exceeding great joy, yea our satisfaction and gladness shall be full.

For all the mercies of another week we bless thee. Thou hast given us a staff to help us along every difficult road, thou hast set lights above us in the time of darkness, in the hour of solitude; thou hast spread companionships for our souls, yea all thine angels have ministered unto us, and because of their society we have not the pain or the temptation of loneliness; thou hast given us food convenient for us; thou hast not neglected us in any point or in any degree whatsoever, thy ministry towards us has been one of overflowing love, we are to-day the living, the living to praise thee with new and richer song for all thy kindness, for thy patience, thy tender mercy. Evermore fill us with a sense of thy presence, let a consciousness of thy nearness destroy all fear of man, let it expel from our heart everything that is of the earth, earthy, and fill us with high desire to enlarge our capacity and to discharge with a more ardent zeal all the obligations of this life.

We mourn our sin: it makes our tongue black to mention our iniquities, and our lips quiver under the infinite distress of their burden. We know not where to begin, and beginning, we should never end, for our breath is tainted with corruption, our every thought is borne downward to the dust, our prayers are mingled with earthliness: we cannot escape this bondage except by thy grace, thou loving one, who didst die for us and rise again, to lead us to the noblest conquests. Let thy grace abound over our sin, we now penitently and humbly entreat thee; let the cross of Christ rear itself above all our iniquity, and have written above all the superscription of Pilate the great welcome of thy love, and the gracious assurance of thy pardon.

Enable us to live our few days in peace and quietness, in zeal for all godliness, in diligent and honest service in thy kingdom. Seeing that our days are few, and that they are flying whilst we mourn over their brevity, we may gird up our loins and be instant in season and out of season, doing thy will with lowly patience and with confident trust.

According to our individual necessities, let thy gospel come to us this day. Thou knowest the prayers we cannot utter, thou understandest the thoughts for which there is no language. We ask thee now to come into our heart, to see our need exactly as it is, and to supply our want out of thy great grace.

In our prayer we would remember our loved ones who are not with us, the children too young to come, the sick and the weary, shut up, in pain, desiring release from the torment of a life that has been a long disappointment, yet willing to fall into thine hand and know no will but thine. The poor, the desolate, the feeble, the infirm, the friendless—the Lord's blessing be upon them all, giving them warmth of heart and such renewal of hope as can find its satisfaction in Christ only. Be with those also who are separated from us by long distance: the Lord's merciful messages go out towards them, Sabbatic gospels and benedictions—reminding them of this service, filling their souls with all gladness. The Lord's blessing be round about the whole globe like a living light; omit none from thy benediction; let the rudest, poorest, vilest, feel that the heavens are filled with the Father, and that the earth is his footstool.

Let thy word be amongst us to-day, a sweet message, a wind from heaven, a fire from above the fountains of the sun, a great joy, an ineffable rapture; yea, may it be all things beautiful, tender, and ennobling to our waiting souls. Amen.

Matthew 2:1-10

1. Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem (six Roman miles south-west of Jerusalem) of Judea (so called to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in Galilee), in the days of Herod the King (the father of Herod Antipas and the grandfather of Herod Agrippa, before whose son Paul pleaded), behold there came wise men (Magians—Magicians) from the east (the far East, supposed by some to be Persians) to Jerusalem.

2. Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews (not King of the Jews alone, but the king that springs from the Jews), for we have seen his star (an astrological mystery for which there is no modern interpretation) in the east, and are come (more than a four months' journey) to worship (to do homage to) him.

8. When Herod the king had heard these things he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

4. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

5. And they said unto him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet.

6. And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shalt come a governor, that shall rule (literally shall conduct as a shepherd, ποιμαυει) my people Israel.

7. Then Herod, when he had privily (secretly) called the wise men (for royalty must consult wisdom), inquired of them diligently (ascertained exactly) what time (having found out the place by another authority) the star appeared.

8. And he sent them to Bethlehem (from a metropolis to a village—the usual way!) and said, Go and search diligently for the young child, and when ye have found him bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

9. And when they had heard (equal to the Latin verb audire, which implies not only hearing but obedience) the king, they departed; and lo, the star which they saw in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.

10. When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Here would seem to begin the inquiry about Jesus Christ which has never since ceased to be the supreme question of the religious mind. That inquiry, I take it, is more eager and widespread to-day than ever it was in any period of human history. Still the great subject is—where is Christ, who is Christ, what is Christ? The books that reveal him most profoundly and lovingly to the human mind and heart are books which hold their own to-day amid the fiercest possible literary competition. All this means something. There is in it a deep and all but tragical mystery; an agony of the heart speaks in this inquiry of the lips. The life of man wants something more than it has yet secured; it tries to evade answers that bring with them severe moral obligations, and yet it recurs to those answers as if they were the only profound and vital replies. It is a great mystery, it is even a sharp pain, it is a dense cloud, and out of it there come, in strange and terrible gleamings, lightnings that might affright and destroy the mind that inquires and wonders.

The great inquiry related to that which was essential rather than to that which was accidental. Of course that which was accidental had to come into the inquiry. Certain things had been prophetically written, certain places and times had been specifically indicated, and therefore attention must be directed into those quarters. Still the grave and everlasting inquiry relates to that which is essential and immutable. The word upon which I would lay the strongest emphasis is the word born. Not upon the word young, not upon the word child. "Young "is a term that lives on for a few days, and then melts out of our sight and becomes age whilst yet we admire its tender bloom. "Child" is a beautiful bud that bursts into a full flower whilst we are looking at it. But BORN is a historical word: it is the same always, it indicates the revelation of life, the setting up of new ministries and forces in the universe. To be young is to be a child, is to pass through very transitory stages and attractions; but to be born sets up a fact, immortal as God. We have been born. Our youth has gone like the mist of the morning, our childhood is a hardly remembered sun-spot in our recollection, but our birth hastens to shape itself into a permanent destiny. It is in this light I look upon your dear little children when you bring them to me to be baptized. I do not sneer at babyhood, nor do I say, how can the dear unconscious little infant understand this ordinance of baptism? Life is larger than understanding, life is grander than logic. Are we subjects for the vivisecting instruments of the Aristotles of the ages? Are we not something infinitely and inexpressibly more? When you bring the child, you bring more than childhood, you bring life, and when I throw upon the dear little face the baptismal drops, I throw them not upon a creature six weeks old, but a creature born—a new creation, a beautiful presence in the universe, great enough for God to take an interest in, small enough for us to smile about, precious enough for Christ to die for.

This interest in childhood should teach us a great deal. Childhood in itself is little, but it is a quantity that is always growing. Let old Pharaoh teach us what to do with the children. He said, "These Israelites will be too many for us one day." What, then, did he propose in the view of their over-multiplication? To kill off all the men, or all the women? His was a profounder policy: I would God the Church could seize it and apply it to the current questions of our own economy. He said, "Kill the boys, drown them." Am I appalled by the idiot's philosophy? No; but I am struck by the wisdom that sees in childhood, boyhood, a growing power, and that directs its attention to the early life of nations, for they who begin with the adults begin at the wrong end, and they who begin with the little ones begin at the right point, and may achieve profound and permanent success. Do not sneer at the boys. Do not count them for nothing. They will be your successors, they may now be your scholars. For a time they may grieve you and annoy you, and, by an impertinence that is only for the passing day, they may again and again bring momentary annoyance or distress upon you; but it is a grand thing to have to do with them. Let your gentleness make them great. Show yourself so deeply interested in them, by many an inquiry, as to start in their minds the question whether they be not something greater and grander than they appear to be merely for the passing moment.

Pharaoh and Herod directed their attention to young life. If they could have gotten hold of the young life and turned it in their direction they might have built up very bad sovereignties, but it was one of two things with them, either the boys would overcome them or they must overcome the boys. Let me speak words of strong encouragement and genuine comfort to those of you who are young. You cannot tell what you may be yet. Work with a high aim, be moved to noble and pure ambitions. You will have your broad chance in the world. O may every finger you have, and every faculty, be made keen enough and strong enough to seize the chance and turn it as it were into fine gold.

In reading this text one is struck with the power of one life to rouse a world. Observe who gather around this young child. Wise men from the east, kings, chief priests and scribes of the people, and elsewhere we hear of the interest of shepherds who were keeping their flocks by night. A strange thing for these old Persian astrologers to come four months from their homes to see one who was born—not king of the Persians, then their journey would have admitted an easy explication—but king of the Jews —why should those Oriental star-gazers be interested in Jewish history to this extent? There is more in the question than appears on the surface. This king of the Jews is not king of the Jews only, but he is the king who springs out of the Jews to be the king of all men. He will choose his own name presently. Our fathers called us what they pleased without consulting us: not a man was asked what name he would bear: his name is the finger-mark of a power he can neither understand nor resist, but there comes a time when every man may make himself a name, may by his spirit and his actions build up an appellation which will endure through all eternity. When Jesus Christ comes to speak of himself he will explain this Persian eagerness. He will call himself the Son of Man. He will broaden away from his birthpoint until he covers the whole area of human nature, answering every throbbing pain, anticipating every distressful prayer, and giving answers greater than any questions that ever could be framed.

Herein is the explanation of all kinds of people wanting to know about Jesus Christ. Philosophy calls in to see what he is. Kings pause a moment on their royal processions to ask questions about him, chief priests and scribes of the people betake themselves to literary research and religious investigation that they may be able to answer popular inquiries concerning this unnameable Man. And all kinds of poor people want to know where he is, that they may speak to him a prayer that has come back from every door, a bruised bird that could find no space for its flying. We have read in the seventy-second psalm of the first Solomon, type of a greater, who shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth—why? Heard ye the sweet answer? For he shall deliver the poor and the needy and him that hath no helper. This is not a painted majesty, a gilded dominion, a great comet-like blaze of transient splendour: it is a monarchy built on beneficence. He who makes it his supreme business in life to help the poor and the needy, the woman and the child, the far off and the destitute, the misunderstood and the friendless—nothing can hinder him putting on his head crown upon crown until other kings look petty beside his majesty.

It is thus that Jesus Christ will reign. Not by force of chariots and multitudinousness of horses, not by the grandeur of his earth-state, but by that loving sympathy which understands everybody, by that infinite beneficence that stops not at donations of the hand but gives all the blood of its heart. Hereon ye may build the Christian argument, and naught will be able to overthrow it. They will be able to ask you difficult questions about miracles and mysteries of every kind, they will be able to puzzle you with grammatical inquiries, they may lose you altogether in historical and archæological investigations and references: your heads may become bewildered there—you stand to this grand sovereign fact, let him be king who can do most for men. Here you have the key which explains the in-rushing upon Christ of all the nations and climates of the world.

Yet one cannot but be struck with the different purposes of the inquiry. The Magians said, "We have come to worship him,"—literally to do homage to him. Trust the men who can do homage to anything, out of and greater than themselves. Always set a high price upon reverence. Veneration is the basis of. all noble and tender and beneficent character. I would distrust the man who has proved himself destitute of veneration. It does us good to bend the knee to an object which we suppose to be greater than we are ourselves. We have all seen the poor superstitious creatures, as we deem them, on the continent of Europe, coming into the churches for a moment and bowing and genuflecting after a manner which we could not understand. I never could mock that service. I have thought I have seen upon the peasant's face a tenderer expression, a more glowing solemnity because of that little service in the house of God. There are men who are greater in blasphemy than in reverence, and the world over they never had anything good to say of men, and they never did anything for men worthy of a moment's remembrance. Why have we come into Christ's house this morning? If we have come to worship him, we shall retire from the house larger and better men: the small critical function with which we might have distressed ourselves in passing through the service will be suspended, and in our hearts there will glow a fire of new love. By so much as we have bent the knee lovingly and loyally to the Son of Man have we thrown off the worst part of ourselves, and taken upon us part of that which constitutes his beauty and strength.

Herod's purpose was not to worship him: he said it was to worship—he lied. Can men lie about religious things? Yes. Can men say worship when they mean destroy? They say it every day. Can men be found who will put up a church for Christ and yet not know what they are building? Alas, it is not only possible, it is the saddest fact of our business, that we build temples, and curse the stones as we put them together. We set up ministers, not with songs but sometimes with oaths. There is a possibility of destroying Christ, under the guise of worshipping him, and there is a further possibility of destroying Christ more or less unconsciously, by giving false notions of him, by making him a class-Redeemer, by setting him apart for sectarian uses, by attaching to him badges and labels, scarves, and memorials, that make him belong to one corner only, by narrowing his words down into denominational shibboleths—by a thousand such ways we destroy Christ's influence in the world. Know ye that Christ is a Sun which cannot be touched, and also a light which plays with loving familiarity upon the one-paned cottage of the poor man and upon the stately palaces of royalty and wealth? He is a Sun not to be clipped by your instruments or rearranged by your eager fingers, and he is a light that will bless you, but must never be trifled with.

Then there are other men who do not come to worship Christ, and who certainly do not come to destroy him—who simply come to speculate upon him. They make him an intellectual puzzle. He is the mystery of the day to them, they must say something about him, he is an enigma they cannot afford wholly to ignore, and it is heart-breaking to hear the chaff they pour forth without one grain of wheat in the innumerable bushels. And sadder still to hear the patronage they offer the Son of God. Have you heard how they speak about him? With measured approbation, with a fine critical discrimination as to his properties, and qualities, and place in human history. It makes me sad to hear how they damn him with faint praise. They say he had upon him the inspiration of genius, they allow that he was an excellent character, perhaps a little too amiable now and then. He had wondrous prevision, he saw a great deal more than many of his contemporaries saw. He was a very excellent man in all his purposes; his motives were unquestionably good. If he is not more than that, he is the crowning hypocrisy of history. What I dread amongst you most is not that you will destroy Christ, but that you will patronise him. You who laid the hand upon the fat bullock and said "Good," will put the same paw upon the Son of God and say "Not bad." He will resist such patronage, and denounce it, and decline it, and return it to rest upon those who gave it. It will be a curse that they can never survive.

Jesus Christ is nothing to me if he is not the Saviour of the world. I never heard persons in moments of great agony or distress speak about the inspiration of genius being upon Christ. I have heard them say so when they were doing well: I have heard them speak thus about Christ when they were parenthetically interposing, "No more, thank you," about their fat dinner. But when I have seen them doubled up with great distress, and thrust into dark corners, and carrying burdens that break the back, and shuddering under clouds that may be laden with death darts, I have heard a whimper that would have disgraced a dog. You will know what Jesus Christ is most and best when you are in greatest need of such service as he can render.

You find, too, very different results flowing from these inquiries. Herod was troubled, but the wise men rejoiced with exceeding great joy. This is a summary of to-day's experience. It is one of two things with this Christ in the life. He is either the source of your keenest troubles, or he is the beginning and the end of your supremest joys. The good always trouble the bad. The honest clerk troubles you who are not honest. You hate that young man: he is good to look upon, he is pleasant to speak to, he is most companionable, many an attraction attaches to his method and ways amongst men, but his honesty is a continual judgment upon your dishonesty. If you were to hear that he had dropped down dead, it would only be a hypocrite's sigh that would answer the announcement. It is a law of the universe, if we may judge by its being a law of society, that the bad are always troubled by the good, the generous giver is a daily trouble to the penurious man: he finds motives for his generosity, he attributes his liberality to false inspirations, he wonders he could not be more prudent, careful, and thoughtful: all the while in his heart he hates the man who by contrast throws him into very cold and distant shadow.

On the other hand, no man has given such joy to the world as Jesus Christ has given. He carries all his disciples up to the point of rapture. Such have been the feelings of Christian men that a new language has had to be invented for the expression of their lofty and sacred emotions. Religion, say you, has a cant of its own: it is only a cant to those who have not been fired to the same intensity of zeal, and brought to the same nobility of sacrificial temper. When the Christian man shouts, "Praise the Lord, Amen, Hallelujah," he utters a fool's language to those who have never been in his temper. It is a foreign tongue to them, which they can only answer by foolish mocking. But there are times in the religious experience when only such a word as Hallelujah—Hallelujah—a word not to be explained in smaller terms—expresses the dominant feeling of the excited and grateful soul.

Have you seen Christ's star in the east? That is a sight which we may never behold; but we may see a greater sight than that. We may see himself. It is only the accidental that drops off—such words as young, child, Bethlehem, star—fall away into their proper insignificance, but such words as born, King, Christ, Redeemer, sin, salvation—abide with a most indestructible permanence in human recollection. It will be a happy day when we are more eager to see Christ than we are to see any symbol of Him that could be found, either in the heavens or on the earth. I do not want you, as my fellow-students of this Word, to care about baptism and the Lord's supper, and the Sabbath-day, and the church built with hands—except as these may lead you further into the inner sanctuary where is enthroned Christ himself. If I found men now earnestly searching the heavens with the most scientifically constructed telescopes, that they might find a star resembling what the Persian sages saw, that they, too, might follow its guiding light to some distant Bethlehem, I would say to them, "Christ is not here nor there: he is not to be found in sign or symbol now, except in some low and momentarily convenient sense. He himself is with us: he is to be found in our consciousness, he is to be the answer to our sin, he is to be the satisfaction of our hunger, he is to be the light of our intellectual firmament, he is to be the glory of our spiritual hope."

What, then, is our supreme anxiety to-day? Is it to see the star or to see the Saviour? Is it to make a prophetical calculation of years and months, or to go out of the heart searching for One who is the answer to sin and the balm for its cruel wounding? If you say, "Sirs, I would see Jesus," you will find him in the Holy Scriptures, you will find him in every Christian's experience, in proportion as it is enlarged and true; yea, you will find him in the very question itself, for no man ever asked that question with the sincerity and earnestness of fire, without the answer beginning the moment the question ended.

Chapter 6

Review of the Second Chapter—The Troubled King—the Beneficence of Trials—the Scriptures Always New

Prayer

Almighty God, we know thee as a God of Love, and it is to thy pity that we now come with our praises and our prayer. We do not address thy righteousness, for thy purity makes us afraid with a great and painful fear: we come to thy mercy—thou hast been pleased to exercise mercy towards the sinful children of men. Through Jesus Christ our Saviour we know of this mercy; he indeed is the mercy of God in human form, our Priest, our Saviour, our only Intercessor, mighty in all things, but mightiest in the intercession of his love. We would hide ourselves in Jesus Christ; he is our safety, our security; the rock that cannot be broken into by thief or robber, or overwhelmed by fiercest storm. Hide us in thyself, thou Rock of Ages, then shall we be safe for ever from fear of man, and from all other fear.

We have come with a great, broad, loud psalm in our heart, for our joy is great and our thankfulness unutterable in mortal speech. We look back and behold a great light; on either hand we look, and behold a rod and a staff, and if we venture to trespass and look for one moment into the future, there is no trouble there; the clouds will roll away and the broad bright morning will shine upon our life. We wish to trust thee more, our desire is to go out of ourselves, to bid farewell to our own devices and defences, and to cast ourselves upon the wisdom and the protection of our Father in heaven. We have heard wonderful things of thee, we know they are all true, for we ourselves have tested them word by word, and are to-day thy living witnesses, showing forth the abundance of thy goodness and the sureness of thy promises.

Thou hast dried our tears, thou hast recovered us from many a slip; when the enemy has taken us in his strong snares, thou hast broken every one of them and blessed us with renewal of liberty. We have played the fool, and prayed downwards instead of upwards, and our hearts have gone far astray from thee, yet has thy Jove been greater than our sin, thy grace has overflowed our guilt, and by the infinitude of thy mercy and thy love we have been brought back again from far off places, and set once more within the warmth of our Father's house. We bless thee for all thy care. There is nothing too small for thee to look at. Thou governest the heavens and thou blessest little children. Thou lightest the lamps which flame across the universe, and thou dost make the lily beautiful in its quiet place. Thou numberest the hairs of our head, our tears thou dost put in thy bottle, our heart-throbs thou dost count one by one; when the last pulsation comes, our immortality shall begin.

We have come to bless thee: this was our set purpose; our one meaning was to lift up the psalm high as heaven, until it filled thine ear, and made thee glad with our filial love. We now commend ourselves to thy keeping. We would not live one day without thee: we would live and move and have our being in God. We would rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him; we would have no desire that cannot be satisfied by his grace. Our hearts would be as temples of the Holy Ghost, in which the loving One reigns and rules with all the omnipotence of love. The Lord purify us by the blood of sacrifice, the Lord wash us in the holy, sacred stream that flowed from the Saviour's riven side, the Lord give us to know the mystery of pardon and the joy of adoption into his family.

We commend also unto thee all whom we love and for whom we ought to pray. As patriots we remember our country and say, God save the Queen, bless the land, make its harvest abundant and its commerce prosperous, and let all the people sitting at the table of plentifulness remember who spread the banquet, and praise the Lord with a life of love. We remember our sick ones, too, for whom we have prayed many a prayer, and for whom we seem to be unable to do aught that is really effectual for their bodily recovery. We can do more, and we do it now: we pray that thy grace may be greater than their weakness, and that in their hearts there may be a sacred joy, a very rapture and song of triumph, a victory greater than all the distresses which make them weak.

We pray for those from whom we are separated for awhile, for our friends on the great wide sea—the Lord give the winds and the waves charge concerning them. For our loved ones in far away lands, for our sons and daughters in the colonies, for all for whom we ought to pray, of every class and name, the Lord bind us together in the bonds of a true love. Being one in Christ, may our fellowship be complete and lasting.

Let thy word dwell in us richly, let thy gospel come to us this morning as a singing angel, coming with sweet messages from thy heart, and may we listen to every tone and give broad welcome to every word from heaven. Amen.

Review of the Whole Chapter

The second chapter of Matthew is a record of trials. Everybody engaged in the tragedy seems to have been pierced through and through with the same sharp sword. This is the more wonderful, seeing that the object of the chapter is to set up the kingdom of heaven amongst men. One would have supposed that with a purpose so lofty and so beneficent, the career would have been one perfectly clear of all difficulty, broadening like a dawning day, and offering to every one engaged a right hearty welcome, and crowning each toiler with a gentle and loving benediction. If the people engaged in this exciting narrative had been about to do something very bad, we would have followed their punishment with keen interest, and after each infliction of the deserved blow we would have said, "This is merited; no man can do wrong and yet enjoy prosperity." But nothing of the kind is here. With one exception everybody wants to do what is good so far as the kingdom of heaven is concerned, and yet every one engaged in this marvellous development of human history is smitten, pierced, thrown down, banished, or otherwise visited with some heavy and inexplicable penalty. This chapter is a record of trials, and these trials acquire a keener accent and a more painful significance from the fact that they all occur in connection with the establishment of a beneficent kingdom, whose avowed object is the salvation and holiness and infinite blessedness of all who accept its dominion.

There are trials purely personal, for example those of Joseph and Mary. Mary comes into the story by the pressure of an infinite destiny. She does not ask to be an actor in this scene—she is modest; violet-like she seeks the shade, she craves for no renown, she does not ask to be put in the fore-front of any battle or contest. Yet to pains of divers kinds is added the agony of misunderstanding and banishment, suspicion of the foulest kind and abandonment by those who should have loved her most. This, in connection with setting up the Christly kingdom on the earth! Our narrow, short-sighted sympathy says she might have been spared this; an angel might have rolled a white cloud for her to sit upon as upon a throne. Instead of this, behold the severity of her lot, behold what unmerited punishment darkens her little patch of sky and makes her earth barren and desolate, without green thing or root of promise.

And Joseph, a negative character, a man who is in, and yet hardly knows why he is in, the story, sustaining an incidental and relative position to it, wholly secondary, almost yet not altogether needless,—even he is afflicted with great visions and great distresses, startled by unexpected ghosts, aroused from his sleep that he may be told to flee away as if he were an offender against human law and social decency. He must needs be up and flee like a thief in the night-time. And all this, in connection with introducing to the world the only Friend it ever had! These historical recollections would always be interesting to minds who study the unity of the human race, but they are more than interesting, they are religiously suggestive and comforting to those who remember that all these trials are repeated in the life of every honest man and woman to-day.

Then there were trials, imperial as well as personal. Herod was troubled. Not Herod the individual man, but Herod the king. His throne, which had been steady as a rock, began to quake under him, and he said, "What ghost is shaking this firm seat?" He was distracted, his mind was split in two, he was in perplexity, in intellectual vexation—he could not bring the pieces together and shape them into coherence and meaning. He was a shrewd man, a man to whom councillors appealed in the time of their perplexity, a man high in authority, to whom was committed the giving of great decisions; and yet something occurred in his history which brought a great blinding mist over his eyes. He mistook distance, proportion, colour, he could see nothing as it really was; he rubbed his eyes to cleanse them of the mist, but it grew as he rubbed, and he was blinder at the last than at the first. And this, let us constantly remember, in connection with setting up a kingdom of light and peace, righteousness and love.

Instead of the king having the first revelation, and receiving that revelation as the earth receives the bright morning, he seems to have been left out of the count altogether. He stumbles into it, he does not walk lovingly and loyally into this inheritance. The revelation is a ghost, a flash of light, a rattle of thunder, a shaking of the throne, a darkening of the window, an overturning of the hot brain. Herod cannot speak coherently; all other questions have dwindled into commonplace or into trifles since this great inquiry thrust itself on his reluctant but startled mind. Hitherto he has sat on his throne or presided over his court, he has been attentive to every one, and has meted out justice with an even hand, with a balance that could not be tampered with. He has acted in a manner that claimed and secured the confidence of those who were round about him, but a question has arisen in his intellectual thinking which makes all other questions mean and covers them with infinite contempt. Since that question arose and gave direction and colour to his thinking, all the questions that he had hitherto thought to be great have fallen away from their eminence, and he can hardly command patience to consider and balance and decide the trifling inquiries. This again would be an interesting historical fact, if it were only confined to Herod himself, but it broadens into something greater, brightens into something more fascinating, when we remember that this trouble, vexation, or pain is repeated in the case of every king and every country receiving or inquiring about the Son of God.

Surely the trials end here? We must now have come to the end of the blank catalogue. The light will come now. As a faithful expositor of the Word, I must say, not yet can the light come. There were trials personal, as in the case of Joseph and Mary; there were trials imperial, as in the case of Herod the king; I have to add, in pathetic and distressing culmination; that there were trials domestic, as in the massacre of the innocents. "Herod was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under." It was truly called the massacre of the innocents, it was making the many suffer for the one; it was a picture of the indiscriminate vengeance of excited and uncontrollable human nature. It was the thrust of a blind man who said, "I will strike who comes first, if haply I may strike the offender." Who can calculate the number of little ones slain by that fierce and cruel sword? Who can hear the mourning, lamentation, great weeping and distress? We stand a thousand years and more away from those desolated and depeopled homes; we can take with some comfort a tragedy two thousand years old, but that is to our shame and not to our honour. It is possible to set ourselves back along the historical line, far enough to sympathise with those whose children were given up to that unsparing sword. All this, let me say again, was in connection with the setting up of the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon the earth! A sword through his mother's heart, a shadow across the path of his reputed father, a king smitten by invisible lightning, troubled as with a cloud terrible with the presence of innumerable ghosts, homes made black because of the death of little children. All this was not in our reckoning This never came into our dream. No poet dare have dreamt this poem; it would have damned his reputation. Truth is stranger than fiction, reality is hardly reached by poetry; when it is the highest poetry of all it is the most real, it touches heights which men call insanity.

What then have we, as Christian readers, to say about these trials in their relation to the kingdom of heaven? I have three things to say about them, and the first is that the kingdom of heaven, as represented by Jesus Christ, was not responsible for them. It is a fine matter, is this allotment of responsibility. We are sometimes occasions without being causes. Who is responsible for the pain suffered by that poor man whose limb is being amputated at this moment? Do we say, "Cruel surgeon, why do you inflict such pain on a fellow creature?" We do not hold the surgeon responsible for the agony of the sufferer: he may be the occasion of it, but he inflicts agony that he may save from some greater distress. You must look into causes preceding the ministry of the surgeon; the limb was beginning to putrify—it was momentary agony or death, and the surgeon beneficently advised the infliction of transient pain. When he said, "Cut off the limb," he did not say it loudly or unfeelingly, he spoke the language of sympathy and beneficence. Let us. know that in all our education and uplifting pain is unavoidable, because of the moral condition into which we have brought ourselves. When the father uses the rod upon the criminal child, does he inflict the pain cruelly? He inflicts it beneficently. If he loved less he would strike less, if he were less loving he would be less severe. His very severity is an expression of his pity and yearning love.

It is hard to understand this, it cannot be defended as a mere theory; it is not open to any discussion that could be conducted in words, but it comes up as a great fact in the swelling human heart, that sometimes we are obliged to prove our love by our severity. When the Son of God came into the world there was no room for him: he had to make room for himself, and sometimes when a tree makes room for itself it overthrows old walls and strong buildings—those silent, ever swelling roots thrust out the masonry of man.

This leads me to say, in the second place, that these trials were part of a happy necessity. All education is but another word for pain, trial, trouble, discipline. The education that comes otherwise may disappear as it came. We learn by pain, we advance by strange and often intolerable agonies, we cannot understand why our ignorance should be driven away only by processes that tear and wear the finest sensibilities of the soul. Look back upon your education: oh the headaches, the smartings, the disappointments, the troubles, the evasions; and yet the result of the whole is wisdom. Your will was curbed at every point, your little plans were turned upside down, you were made to know that you must begin at this hour and work till that appointed time, or if not you must suffer the penalty. The tasks we had, the lines to commit to memory, the sharp visitations of the rod, the chidings and reproachings and scoldings and buffetings, the shamings with the uplifted finger of the mocking master, and yet now, somehow, it seems as if all these things worked together, being duly and lovingly controlled, to the formation of a massive and broad character not easy of destruction.

As civilization widens, trials multiply. You could not introduce the locomotive engine into your English civilization without a great massacre of innocents. When the locomotive engine took his breath and gave his first utterance into the startled air, what a slaughter there was all over the country of innocent speculators, innocent investors, innocent people of all kinds. What vested interests went down, what arrangements of stabling and hostelry and hospitality of every kind were knocked on the head. Every grand improvement in civilization means death as well as life, in proportion as a man or an improvement is great. No introduction can be effected into old habits or established upon old lines without great rending and tearing of things long-existent. No preacher could come into London with any dominating power of light and wisdom without having to make room for himself and inflict pain upon many innocent people. He would not be otherwise admitted. He must come by fighting, battling, blood, fury, vehemence, for seven years be suspected and misunderstood, and reproached, and only as the divinity is within him would he create his own space and liberty. His friends would be troubled, driven off into Egypt; all Herods would shake on their thrones, and innocent people of all kinds would be caught in a shower of stones. It is the mystery of civilization; it belongs to the widening course of things; it is true of all departments of life.

The third thing I have to say about these trials is that they imperfectly, yet definitely, represent the greater trials of God in the education and maintenance of his universe. He can do nothing without pain. He is tried every day. He builds a wall around his vineyard and sets up a tower in it; and he comes at the appointed time to gather the grapes that he may crush them into wine for his heart's drinking, and behold the vineyard bringeth forth wild grapes. He nourishes and brings up children: the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but his children do not know, do not consider, take their bread as if it had come from the earth, and not fallen from heaven, drink their unblest water, and sleep an irreligious slumber. He looks on from the heavens with a great face of trouble, more marred than the face of any man. He cannot rule his children without being insulted every day. He cannot propose to add one beam of light to the glory which falls upon them without criticism that amounts to impiety, or without reproaches that add up to the sum total of blasphemy.

Let us not, then, suppose that these are merely historical trials, and that they have no counterpart in the current experience of the day or in the mysteries of the divine government of man. The glory of the New Testament is that it is new. I would not charge myself with boldness if i undertook to show that every line in this New Testament was printed only yesterday, so true is it to human life, so photographic of everything that is immediately round about us, so ardent with the warmth of our own life, so throbbing with all that is quick in our own pulsations. Hast thou read the New Testament as an old book, say sixteen or eighteen hundred years old? I do not wonder that thou hast stumbled in many places and been caught in many a thicket, and in trying to disentangle thyself hast come to great difficulty and distress. I read the New Testament as just written, just put into my hands, printed afresh with the ink of heaven every morning, and sent down for the day's guidance. It is the part of the Christian preacher to freshen old histories, to throw upon them the dew of the morning, and make them sparkle with immediate light.

What is true of these trials, so far as the establishment of the kingdom of Christ upon the broad earth is concerned, is painfully and often insufferably true of the setting up of the kingdom of heaven in the individual heart. It is not easy to go over from Baal to Jehovah. Some of us are now only on the road, with the journey merely begun, though we have been five-and-twenty years endeavouring to take a step or two. Could I address some dear young heart, looking upon these statements as great mysteries, that heart would say to me, "Oh, you must be such a happy man, you are free from all these trials and bitternesses, and are already in Beulah's fair land, blest with the spirit of peace, lighted with the glories of heaven, far above the cold winds and darkening fogs. You have accomplished the journey." To that sweet speech I should make a frank reply. For days, and weeks, and months, dear child, I know not what joy is. Sometimes I feel as if I were worse now than I ever was in my whole Christian life before. My wonder is that I am not damned and put out of sight. God has hard work with me: it is difficult for him to build his temple in such a heart as mine: the devil will not let me lay one stone upon the top of another without trying to throw it down, the enemy will not let me get one whole prayer right clear out of me—he stands at my mouth to prevent the word, to twist the prayer. Whilst I am in my highest moods of communion, he whispers to me with hot breath, "What a fool you are: this is mockery, this is emptiness; take your prayer back, you impious idiot, and use your breath for other work." Still the kingdom of heaven is going on in my heart; other voices say, "Cheer thee; thy way is one of tribulation, but the end is peace. Fear not, they that are for thee are more than all they that can be against thee. God will accomplish his purpose little by little, but he will have the victory. Great are they that are against thee, greater they that are for thee. Hold up thy head, fear not, the angel will break the power of the enemy, and out of thy distress shall come thy joy."

These words fall on the breaking heart with infinite healing, and comfort me with a sure hope. By-and-by we shall say to some watcher, fairer than the morning light, "What are these arrayed in white robes, and whence came they?" He will answer, "These are they that came out of great tribulation." Tribulation is another word for education if rightly accepted. Let me, then, cheer you and cheer myself. It is a hard fight, the trials are thick on the ground, the air is black with them, but we shall be "more than conquerors through him that loved us." Be this your motto: "The Sword of the Lord—and Forward!"