Advent

He comes as an infant, yet He comes as a King. He comes, offering rest, and forgiveness, and life; yet He, at the same time, makes a claim upon us which none will accept save he whose heart has been touched by the Holy Ghost. He speaks to us in grace, he looks at us in grace; yet in doing so He presents us with a cross which we must bear, with a yoke which we must take on. He announces himself as Jesus the Saviour, yet, in doing so, He lets us know that He is as a Saviour from sin, a deliverer from this present evil world. Therefore it is that He is not always welcomed; nay, so often rejected. Therefore it is that his presence in love and lowliness troubles the sons of men. They are disarmed,—perhaps attracted, by that love and lowliness; but the demands which these make upon their whole being and life, their allegiance, their obedience, their affection, are such as they will not submit to. So they are troubled, and bid Him depart out of their coasts.

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.

This is the voice of one crying in the wilderness; the voice of a second Elijah; the man of the desert; the burning and shining light; the forerunner of Messiah; the prophet of warning. He spoke to Israel; he speaks to us. It is the voice of warning; a trumpet voice; prelude to the last trumpet; herald of coming wrath and woe. It spoke first to Israel; it speaks to the church; it speaks to Christendom; it speaks to the world; it speaks to each of us.

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.

This is strange. Had the like happened elsewhere, in Babylon, or Rome, or Egypt,—it would not have surprised us. Or had these been “troubled,” it would have been natural enough. But it is Jerusalem! She is troubled! Nay, it is “all Jerusalem.” Troubled at the news of her King’s arrival! Not excited, or agitated, but “troubled.” Had it been said, “rejoiced,” we could have understood it, but “troubled,“—how strange! Let us inquire into Jerusalem’s trouble and its causes. The simple visible cause was the statement of the wise men that one had been born King of the Jews. And how this could trouble Jerusalem is not easy to see. For,—It contained nothing alarming. It was but of a babe that the wise men spoke; only the birth of a babe,—no more. They did not come to tell that some Eastern King had espoused the cause of this babe, and was on his way, with an army, to secure a throne for him. Their question simply pertained to a babe whom they desired to worship. It was a religious act entirely that they had come to perform. The name they gave the babe, “King of the Jews,” might trouble Herod; but surely there was nothing to alarm Jerusalem. Herod was a tyrant,—a foreign tyrant, moreover,—only indirectly a Jew; he might be troubled; but it ought not to have awakened fear in any Jew, especially in any citizen of the royal city.

Christ, at his first coming, laid the axe there; at his second coming He will lift it up and smite! The axe was laid down when Israel least thought of such a thing; when they were boasting of privilege, and calling themselves children of Abraham; so it shall be lifted up to smite, when men are saying “peace and safety”; boasting of progress and reform, and deliverance from the bigotry of narrow-minded men. Now is the age of trial, of probation. Israel’s forest was found barren, and was cut down. Now Christendom is on its trial. Shall it be cut down? It has been long spared. Is it fruitful? Thou, O man, art on thy trial? What is to be the issue when the Lord comes?

For it is only they who are not disposed to admit his entire claims that can be troubled at the announcement of his advent,—either his first or his second. Take Him for what He is; take Him for what He contains and offers; take Him for what the Father testifies of Him,—take Him entire, and you have nothing to fear.

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.

Remember, too, that it is in Bethlehem of Juda that Jesus is born; and be very careful lest you fail to be found there, lest He fail to be received by you. Bethlehem is the house of bread; Juda signifies confession or praise. If, then, you replenish your soul with the food of the Divine Word, the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and devoutly receive the Bread which came down from heaven, and which giveth life to the world; if the vessel of your body is made strong and able to hold the new wine by being refreshed and strengthened with His new and glorified flesh; if, moreover, you live by faith, and have no need to weep because you have forgotten to eat your bread, then, indeed, you are become a Bethlehem fitted to receive our Lord.

There are two things from which our weak human nature shrinks—pain and shame. Christ came to take both from us, and this He did by accepting both in His own person—when, for instance, not to mention other occasions, He was condemned to death, and to a most shameful death, by wicked men… Behold here an Infant without stain! Behold the Lamb without spot, the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world! Who could better take them away than He Who knew no sin? He, indeed, can cleanse me, who has never Himself been defiled. His touch can remove the clay from my eyes, for His hand is free from the lightest dust. He can take the mote from out my eye Who has no beam in His own; or, rather, He Who has no smallest grain of dust in His own eye can take the beam from mine.

Notwithstanding all this, the Child, the Lamb without spot, is circumcised. Though He stood in no need of circumcision, He willed to submit to that humiliating ceremony. Though He was without wounds, He shrank not from binding up our wounds. This is not the way the impious act; it is not thus with the perversity of human pride. We glory in our wounds, and blush to have them bound up and healed; while He Whom no man can convince of sin is the remedy of sin, and, without any necessity on His own part, receives both its shame and its punishment, and submits to the sacrificial knife.

Happy the soul who has tasted this fruit of salvation, and is drawn to “run in the odour of his ointments,” that she may “see his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.” Take courage, you who were lost: Jesus comes to seek and save that which was lost. Ye sick, return to health: Christ comes to heal the contrite of heart with the unction of His mercy. Rejoice, all you who desire great things: the Son of God comes down to you that He may make you the co-heirs of His kingdom. I beseech you, then, O Lord, heal me, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved; glorify me, and I shall be glorious. Then indeed shall my soul bless the Lord, and all that is within me praise His Holy Name, when He shall have been merciful to my iniquities, have healed my infirmities, and have filled my desire with good things.