44), tells us also that in his first hours the night was turned into more than day, and that heavenly glories shone forth not unwitnessed (Luke ii. 9), while angels announce to shepherd-watchers on the grassy slopes of Bethlehem the tidings of great joy,' the birth of the new-born Saviour. But how unworldly was this display ! What humility in the midst of that glory ! They were not imperial councillors or lordly courtiers, that were sum moned to witness the birth of the Prince of Peace ; but lowly men who tended sheep ! Nor was it in palatial saloons that this Royal Babe first saw light (Luke ii. 12, 16). Does not the pro found simplicity of that bumble nativity add won derfully to its glory ? In the appreciation offaith, no doubt, it does. And herein we recognise a great moral purpose ! The entire history of ths birth, as well as of the life and death of Christ, is an appeal to the purest faculty of human faith. And greater trial still of the same holy faculty is presented to us in his pre-natal history. How often has belief been sorely tested since that an. nouncement of the immaculate comVtthn which the Holy Virgin herself made to her husband, when even that 'just man' was staggered with a transient apprehension of Mary's unfaithfulness, and was minded to put her away' (Matt. i. 19) ! Neander (Life of yesus Christ [Bohn], p. 13) has well shewn the a priori necessity of the immaculate conception. It was impossible that the second Adam—the progenitor of a new and heavenly race—could de rive his origin from the first Adam in the ordinary course of nature.' But the miraculous entrance of Christ into humanity was misunderstood and rudely calumniated (John viii. 41). To the pure in heart and unwavering in faith only does it occur as an article of the creed in sublime congruity with every other particular of the human life of their Saviour. That life teems with conditions, equally intelligible to faith, equally perplexing to unbelief ! Let us mention one case which enters into our present sec tion. The national expectation pointed to Bethle hem-Ephratah as the birth-place of Christ (John vii. 42). Prophecy had stimulated this expectation (Micah v. 2) ; and authoritative interpreters con firmed it (Matt. ii. 4, 5). Yet He, whose ways are unlike OM'S (IS. 1V. S), accomplished the prophecy indeed* (Matt. ii. ; Luke ii. 4-7), but as it were furti-vely, so that inen mistook the qualification of Jesus to be the Christ, in what was one of its clearest points ( John i. 46 ; vii. 41, 42, 52). To our mind this difficult and undemonstrative charac ter of Christ's earthly history adds to its value and beauty, as testing the loyalty of faith.t The cir cumstances of the Saviour's birth might have been ordered otherwise—and mere human wisdom would probably have accompanied them with so imposing a display of an imperial grandeur as to have co erced the minds of men into a ready acquiescence : with such a display unbelief indeed would have been simply impossible—but equally impossible must have been that ennobling discipline of faith, which now constitutes the value as well as the characteristic of the Gospel. We will now sum up the facts con nected with our Lord's birth, noting the features of concealment and mystery, which bid their full ap preciation from the mass of mankind, and confined their acceptance to the few, who believed. (I) He was born of 'a pure virgin' by an immaculate con ception ; but this fact was disguised either by his passing for the real son of Joseph, his legal father only (Matt. xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3), or by the stigma of illegitimacy (John viii. 4f). (2) He was actually born al Bethlehem, whither Joseph and Mary had temporarily removed, to be registered according to the census* of Augustus (Luke ii. 6, 7) ; but he was regarded by the Jews as a Gaillean (Luke xxiii. 6, 7). His birtb-place and home was supposed to be Nazareth (John i. 46 and passim in the Gospels, with which comp. Matt. xiii. 54, 57 ; Mark vi. 4 ; Luke iv. 23, where Nazareth is no doubt the rarpts of Jesus). (3) His parentage was of the highest royalty,+ whether we regard his mother's descent (Luke i. 31, comp. with 32); or that of his reputed and legal father (Matt. i. 20 ; Luke i. 27) : but he was looked upon as the son of s humble Galilean, far removed from all regal de scent (Matt. xiii. 56 ; Mark vi. 3 ; John vii. 41, 42).
Ozer Lord's byitncy.—Eight days after his birth the child JEsus was circumcised (Luke ii. 21), and the ceremony received the name which the angel had originally prescribed, and which has been dearer than all names to unnumbered souls from that time until now. In due season (on the thirty
third day after circumcision, Lev. xii. 3, 4), the blessed virgin and her husband, in pious conformity to the Mosaic ordinance, carried her infant to the Temple at Jerusalem to offer the appointed sacri fice for her purification, and to pay the usual ran som for her first-born (Num. iii. 47). St. Luke's beautiful narrative (ii. 21-39) presents to us the same union of lowliness and honour, which has already struck us, as characteristic of every circum stance connected with our Lord's entrance into the world. The humbler offering of the mother ex posed to public view her 'low estate ' (Lev. xii. 8), and the rite of herpurzfication concealed and dis guised that immaculate purity of her offspring which was indispensable to his efficiency as the Redeemer of mankind. But as in the paradoxes of his nativity, so here also, faith did not stumble at this humility. In that helpless Babe, surrounded as he was with every sign of obscurity and lowli ness, the devout Simeon, under the impulse of in 'spiration, descried the Blessed One, who was to be the glory of Israel, and the light of the Gentiles ! And while the astonished parents were yet in amazement at this heavenly attestation of their son, whom they had dedicated, in such bumble guise, to the Lord (Luke ii. 33), the widowed prophetess Anna, coming in that instant, gave thanks like wise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem' (ver. 38). It would be difficult to imagine any more impres sive scene than that of the Presentation in the Temple, or a really greater honour tn the infant Saviour than the meek gloty which was accorded to him in the devotion of these venerable person ages and in the admiration of the pious group gathered around them at that service ! That nothing might be wantin,g in the witness which God gave of his son even thus early, wise men' came, as we have already said, from the East to Jerusalem to render to the new-born Saviour their homage, as representatives of the Gentile world. Not finding him in the metropolis, they proceeded to Bethlehem. Hither Joseph and Mary had returned as to their temporary home from their visit to the Temple but a few days (Bp. Ellicott, Lecturer, p. 7o, and the authorities quoted by him), when the Magi appeared on their royal errand. Greater than ever must have been the wonder of the parents, especially of the meditative and obser vant heart of the Virgin (Luke ii. i9, 33, 51), when these strangers, undeterred by the poverty of her lodging, did not disdain, with princely munifi cence, to offer their gifts and adoration of her infant Son, in whom, by a wonderful faith, they saw under the depths of that lowly condition no less a being than hina who was born king of the Jews ' (Matt. ii. 2, ri)—‘ One who was the hope of the world, greater than Zoroaster had ever foretold, a truer Redeemer than the Sosiosh of their own ancient creed' (Bp. Ellicott, Lectures, p. 77, gives a brief description, from Anquetil du Perron's Life of Zoroaster, of some articles of the Magian creed contained in the Zend-Avesta). But the excite ment which attended the birth of the holy child Jesus was not confined to the faithful and pious. The powers of evil were moved. Alien as he was on the throne of Israel, the first of the Herods did his worst to destroy the Infant whose reputed claim to the kingdom he occupied aroused his cruel jealousy. To secure the death of Mary's son, St Matthew informs us that the tyrant issued a decree, which was but too faithfully obeyed, for the murder of the babes of Bethlehem, from two years old and under' (Matt. ii. 16). We have in these apprehensions of the savage king a rough and unwilling testimony (such alone as he could offer) to the real greatness of the new born babe, notwithstanding the apparent lowli ness which surrounded him at Bethlehem. Front the massacre* of the infants, Jesus escaped through the prompt obedience of Joseph to the ad monition of the angel, which directed him to flee to the south, into Egypt, and there remain until the tyranny was overpast (Matt. ii. 13-15). The doci lity of this excellent guardian (comp. on arehp St 'calor, Wordsworth, Gr. Test. i. 5, col. 2) of the infant Saviour was rewarded by supernatural guid ance at every critical step in his precious trusteeship.