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God’s purpose is to rule by a man. The King both of earth and heaven is to be son of David and son of Abraham. ‘The man Christ Jesus’ is heir of the throne of David as well as possessor of the throne of heaven. The crown of all the earth is to be placed on the head of a man. Human hands are to wield the sceptre of the universe .... God’s purpose is to link heaven and earth together by a man. It is in the man Christ Jesus that the reconciliation takes place between them. It is by this man that the nearness is to be maintained for ever. He is the bridge, the ladder, the chain, the golden clasp that is to knit together the heavenly and earthly regions and races. Round this human centre the universe is to revolve. Glad tidings! The woman’s seed has at length come to our rescue from the hands of our great enemy! Glad tidings! Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. Glad tidings! Jesus, the son of Mary, of David, of Abraham, of Adam, is our Saviour; our prophet; our priest; our king. Oh, has not God loved man?

He is of the same stock as we are, the same ancient root, the first man Adam, whom God created. He is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh … In everything that is truly human He is one of us. He “knew no sin”; He was ” that holy thing” yet was He all the more human because of the absence of sin for sin is not an original part of our nature. As man, then, He sympathises; He pities; He loves. As man, He “loved his neighbour as himself,” and so “fulfilled the royal law of love.” As man, He was born, He lived, He “grew in stature, and in wisdom, and in favour with God and man.” His was thoroughly a human body and a human soul; his was thoroughly a human life and a human death. His was human hunger and thirst, human sleep and waking, human weariness and rest. His words were human words, issuing from human lips, and the utterance of a human heart. His looks were human looks, his tones were human tones, his tears were human tears. He was man all over, yet sinless; man all over, living in man’s world, yet not partaker of that world’s evil; man all over in every step He took, and every word He spoke; man all over in his daily intercourse with his fellow-men, and in his fellowship with his Father in heaven.

His whole ancestry is as thoroughly human as ours can be. Every link of the chain is human … It is a long chain, sometimes almost broken or worn through; but thus all the more thoroughly human. He is the seed of the woman; the man Christ Jesus. He is very man, out of the loins of Abraham, and of the substance of the Virgin; son of Mary and son of Adam.

Thus is Jesus in all respects fitted for his mighty work of redeeming. He is very man and very God. He is the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David, the son of Mary, yet God over all, blessed for ever. Thus He can bear our sins; He can sympathise with our sorrows; He can fight our battles; He can love as a man, a fellow-man, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.

As we take Matthew’s history literally, so do we take that of John. If we allegorize the first chapter of the one evangelist, we must allegorize the first of the other. If John does not mean that Christ was very God, Matthew does not mean that He was very man. The divine side of Christianity is as strongly shewn in the one evangelist as the human side in the other. He whom we call Lord and Master, Saviour and Redeemer, is one in whose Person the extremes of all being unite. All Godhead and all creaturehood are in Him; the fulness of the finite, and the fulness of the infinite; all the excellence of the created and the uncreated.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not great or mighty men; they are but shepherds, dwelling in tents. So was David a shepherd boy, taken from among the flocks. So was Joseph, and so was Mary,—poor in this world; a carpenter and his wife. There is a singular mixture of the high and low, of the rich and poor. For He is the Saviour of rich and poor. His gospel is equally for both.

Verse 1

Jesus is God! the glorious bands
Of holy angels sing
Songs of adoring praise to him,
Their Maker and their King.

Verse 2

He was true God in Bethlehem’s crib,
On Calvary’s cross, true God;
He who, in heaven, eternal reigned,
In time, on earth abode.

Verse 3

Jesus is God! there never was
A time when he was not;
Boundless, eternal, merciful,
The Word the Sire begot.

Verse 4

Backward our thoughts through ages stretch,
Onward through endless bliss;
For there are two eternities,
And both alike are his.

Verse 5

Jesus is God! oh, could I now,
But compass land and sea,
To teach and tell this single truth,
How happy should I be!

Verse 6

Oh, had I but an angel’s voice,
I would proclaim so loud,
Jesus, the Good, the Beautiful,
Is everlasting God.

Verse 1

Angels rejoiced and sweetly sung
At our Redeemer’s birth;
Mortals! awake: let every tongue
Proclaim his matchless worth.

Verse 2

Glory to God, who dwells on high,
And sent his only Son
To take a servant’s form, and die,
For evils we had done!

Verse 3

Good-will to men; ye fallen race!
Arise, and shout for joy;
He comes, with rich abounding grace
To save and not destroy.

Verse 4

Lord! send the gracious tidings forth,
And fill the world with light,
That Jew and Gentile, through the earth,
May know thy saving might.

Verse 5

William Hurn, 1813.

Verse 6

1O3 Salvation Morning, 7s & 6s.

Verse 7

God’s Salvation Morning.

Verse 8

What means this glorious radiance
Across Judea’s plain?
Those white-winged angels singing
In such exultant strain?

Refrain

The King of glory cometh,
Earth’s broken hearts to bind,
And God’s salvation morning
Hath dawned for all mankind.

Verse 9

What means this wondrous story
The holy angels tell?
Of one who reigned in heaven,
And now on earth would dwell?

Verse 10

Why bend these Eastern sages
To one of lowly birth?
What means this heav’nly message
Of love and peace on earth?

Verse 11

Ye wand’rers in earth’s darkness,
On ocean deep and land,
Hail! hail! the joyful tidings,
The morning is at hand.

Verse 1

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace to the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven’s all gracious King:”
The earth in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

Verse 2

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still celestial music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on heavenly wing,
And ever o’er its Babel sounds,
The blessed angels sing.

Verse 3

O ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way,
With painful steps and slow;--
Look up! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

Verse 4

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold!
When peace shall over all the earth
Its final splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing!

Verse 1

Calm on the listening ear of night
Come heaven’s melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.

Verse 2

Celestial choirs, from courts above,
Shed sacred glories there,
And angels, with their sparkling lyres,
Make music on the air.

Verse 3

The answering hills of Palestine
Send back the glad reply,
And greet, from all their holy heights,
The day-spring from on high.

Verse 4

“Glory to God!” the sounding skies
Loud with their anthems ring--
“Peace to the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven’s eternal King.”