PREACHED BY William Morley Punshon, LL.D., IN THE WESLEYAN CHAPEL, LONDON.

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same.-Hebrews ii: 14.

SOME eighteen hundred years ago, in the land of Judea, a strange restlessness had come upon the public mind. If a stranger, just about that time, had visited the holy city, and had made himself acquainted with the inner life of its inhabitants, he would have found them all engrossed with one absorbing theme. It had superseded, as a matter of interest, commerce and conquest and the intrigues of faction and the concerns of ordinary politics. It had become the unconfessed hope of matrons and the deep study of earnest men; and so thoroughly had it spread that it became identified with every thinking of the Hebrew mind and with every beating of the Hebrew heart. This subject was the advent of a deliverer who had been promised by God unto their fathers. In their holy books there were circumstantial accounts as to the signs of His coming, and as to the period at which He might be expected to appear; and these various prophecies converged to their fulfillment. There had been rumors of certain meteoric appearances, which, in Eastern countries, were deemed the luminous heralds of the birth of a great king; and the pulse of many a patriot Jew would throb more quickly, as, in his vain dream of material empire, he saw the Messiah in vision already riding upon the necks of His enemies and His followers flushed with the spoil. In the midst of this national expectancy, events of strange significance were occurring in a quarter from which the eyes of the world would have turned heedlessly or in scorn. The national census was decreed to be taken through all the provinces of the Roman empire, in the time of Cæsar Augustus. In obedience to the imperial mandate, each one went up for enrollment to his own-that is, his ancestral city. The influx of strangers had crowded the little inn in the little town of Bethlehem, so that the outbuildings were laid under tribute to

furnish shelter to later comers. In the stable of that mean hostelry a young child was born. There was nothing about Him to distinguish Him from the ordinary offspring of Jewish mothers, but at the moment of His birth a song from angel harps and voices rang through the plains of Bethlehem and ravished the watchful shepherds with snatches of celestial music. Small space had passed e'er the wondering pesants beheld a star of unusual brilliancy hovering over that obscure dwelling. By and by the inn was thrown into commotion by the arrival of a company of strangers from afar, swarthy and richly appareled, who brought gifts and spices and presented them and bowed their knees in homage before the new-born babe as before a royal child.

Rapidly flew the glad tidings from lip to lip, and passed from one to another until the city was full of it-received by haughty Pharisee with scoffs and derision, hailed with devout gladness by the faithful few who watched for the consolation of Israelstartling all the masses of the people-shaking the vassal monarch on His throne, "Unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord."

Dear friends, it is ours in this day to rejoice in the blessing which on that day descended on mankind. Blindness, indeed, hath happened unto Israel, so that they see not the glorious vision; but the advent of the Saviour is the chiefest joy of multitudes who once struggled like ourselves on earth and who now triumph through His grace in heaven, and multitudes more-believers in His true humanity and happy in their brotherhood with Emmanual, thank God for the unspeakable gift, and that "Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same."

The one thought of the text and that to which I want to confine myself for a few moments to-night, is our Saviour's assumption of humanity; and I want just to present it in a few of the aspects in which it will be most easy for us to understand.

In the first place, perhaps, it will be necessary for us to remark that it was a condescending assumption of humanity. It is obviously impossible that the language in which the apostle here refers to Christ could have been used legitimately of anybody possessing essentially the nature of flesh and blood. The words as applied to any mere man, even the holiest, even the most heroic, are impertinent and without meaning.

There is necessarilly implied the fact of pre-existence, and of pre-existence in a nature other and higher than that which He assumed. In a subsequent verse the implication is further made that this pre-existence was in a nature other and higher than the angelic, for we are told that, in His descent from the highest to recover and to save, "He took not hold on angels."

That is the way in which it should be rendered, "He took not hold on angels," but they perish without redemption, without hope, "but He took hold upon the seed of Abraham." In the previous chapter, the apostle largely illustrates our Saviour's essential superiority over angels. "And when He bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith: And let all the angels of God worship Him." Just as when a crown prince, you know, starts upon his travels into a distant country, the choicest of the nobility are designated to be his attendants and to follow in his train, so "when He bringeth His first begotten into the world"-a strange land to Him-He saith: "Let all the angels of God, all the principalities and powers in heavenly places wait upon, worship, serve, attend Him." Again He says, "Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire; but unto the Son He saith: Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever-a sceptre of righteousness is a sceptre of Thy kingdom." From these passages and others of similar tenor, whose name is almost legion, we are swift to conclude and we are bold to affirm the proper and originated Godhead of the Saviour. It was God made man for man to die. Yes, brethren, that stoop of illimitable graciousness was from the highest to the lowest. In mysterious union with the childheart of that unconscious babe, the veiled divinity slumbered. That weary and hungering traveler upon the journey of lifeit was Jehovah's fellow! That sufferer, agonized but uncomplaining, who has just bowed His head to drink in meek submission the cup which His Father has given Him-it is the true God and eternal life. Strange marriage between the finite and Infinite! Incomprehensible union between divinity and clay! There are those scoffers in the world, I know, who dismiss the doctrine of the incarnation as the figment of fancy, or as the dream of fanaticism, some who try everything by the standard of their own perceptions and invest their own reason -at best of no great tallness, and which prejudice has dwarfed into still smaller stature, with absolute dictatorship over the world of mind. They profess to tell us that they disbelieve the fact of the incarnation, simply-stripped of all the pseudo-philosophic words with which they veil their unbelief, because they do not understand it. Meanwhile they live in a mysterious world. Nature has her thousand secrets which their art has no skill to unravel in the daily concerns of life, in the blessings Providence pours forth ungrudgingly. They take their churlish share in blessings whose wherefore they do not understand. They are themselves a mystery, perhaps greater than all. They cannot understand, any one of them, how that strange and subtle organism which they call "man" comes into being-how that strange and subtle principles which they call "life" floods them every moment with rapture; and yet, with marvelous

inconsistency, credulous on matters where no mystery might have been expected to abide, they are skeptical on matters where mystery exists of necessity, and where the absence of it would have been a suspicious sign. "Canst thou, by searching, find out God? Canst thou discover the Almighty to perfection?"

The incarnation of Christ is a mystery. We grant it-an inexplicable and a solemn mystery. Would there be no mystery, on the other hand, think you, in the event of its denial? Let us see. There is an individual obscurely born, reared in village humbleness, looked on by His kindred according to the flesh with coldness if not with dislike, with no influential connections, with no noble patronage, bold in His reproof of sin, austere in His mode of living, telling, with a strange candor, all to whom He ministered that He required absolute service, that He had no preferments in His gift, that He had no bribes to win the allegiance of the sordid, that it was more than likely that if they followed Him they must part with everything else; they must separate from all that was endearing; they must be cut off from ecclesiastical privilege; they must be traduced by slander; they must be haunted by persecution; nay, they must be ready for martyrdom because they who killed them would think in their blindness that they were doing God service. Well, now, look at that individual. In spite of all these disadvantages, and in spite of all His honesty, by the mere charm of His teaching and of His life He gathers a multitude of followers. He charms the fisher from the lake; He charms the soldier from the standard; He charms the publican from the receipt of custom: and not only these who might be supposed, perhaps, to risk little by the venture; but He charms the physician from his practice; He charms the ruler from his pride; He charms the scholarly student from the feet of his master. The chief authorities conspire against Him, but His doctrine spreads. He is attainted as a criminal, but His name is held dearer than ever. His death gratifies His blooodthirsty and relentless foes; but His disciples rally, and His cause lives on. His tomb is jealously guarded and hermetically sealed, but it is somehow found empty, notwithstanding; and He has established an empire in the hearts of thousands upon thousands for which they are at any time ready to die, and which promises to be as permanent as time. And you ask me to believe that all that could have been accomplished by a mere man like ourselves! Would not that be a mystery, think you, than all other mysteries deeper and more marvelous far? Well, again, look on that individual. During His lifetime, on the testimony of unquestionable witnesses, He exerted miraculous power. He has power over the elements, for the winds are still at His command, and the lawless sea obeys Him. He