offended LORD, who should bruise the serpent's head. As such, the faithful patriarchs from Adam and Noah downward, believed His future coming: thus in the shape of GOD Incarnate to deliver man from the plagues of demoniacal bondage, did the same expectation descend in the mythologies of heathen nations. Thus, the best of the Gentile world had expectations of their future LORD: and obscure prefigurations, even in the midst of corrupt and idolatrous fables announced His mysterious Advent. Thus was He the "Desire of all nations;" but more especially the consolation of Israel; the holy seed of promise which Abraham rejoiced to behold from far; whose blessing was secured by immutable covenant in the posterity of Isaac and Jacob; whose life and death was prefigured in all the shadows of the ceremonial law; who was represented by Moses, by Joshua, and David, and other various types of that memorable economy; who was foretold with growing clearness in several distinct particulars by His royal ancestor, and Isaiah, and all the Prophets : expected accordingly by the faithful Israelites in uninterrupted succession, to the times of the great forerunner. And what then must we conceive of the object of preparations such as these? When that forerunner himself is declared to be on this account even "more than a Prophet," because he prepared the way before this his LORD,-himself "not that Light, but sent to bear witness of that Light," what then are we to think of Him, to whom all pre

I

ceding revelations of GOD to men avowedly tend, in whom all the several lines of prophecy meet and centre? Where, indeed, can they adequately centre, but in the Incarnate SON of GOD? the conclusion which His inspired Apostle has given us in saying, that GOD, having in sundry manners spoken in times past to mankind by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by His SON.

It is our privilege this day to mark in all its marvellous circumstances, the accomplishment of this long-sustained hope of humanity. We have heard how, when the Divine WORD was to unite Himself with our humanity, and be made in the likeness of sinful flesh, He was Himself to be kept clear of contact with corruption and sin: His humanity must be perfect, His flesh all holy, His soul uncontaminated by any association with our original taint; and since that subsists in all who are engendered in the natural way from sinful Adam, therefore He could not be born after the manner of ordinary men. Therefore, of the stem of Jesse, from which He was to rise, a Virgin root was found to give birth to the Divine Redeemer; one whom the power of the Highest overshadowed and sanctified, that that Holy Thing which through the SPIRIT'S quickening virtue should proceed from her substance, might be wholly pure, and fit for the All-holy God to take into hypostatical union with Himself. Thus the Divine WORD was made flesh of her whom all generations therefore truly term

blessed ; whose honour exceeds that which we know to belong to any creature whatever, that of having given human birth and being to the Eternal SON. We have heard also that this Blessed Virgin, though of the house of David originally, and though exalted by Divine grace to an honour above all the potentates of the world, was yet in lowly and poor condition when the LORD thus regarded her, as indeed ever since while on earth: so poor, that when the call of a yet undiscerned Providence brought her to Bethlehem, the town of David her ancestor, whence also, according to the Prophets, He also was to be born whose goings forth were from everlasting, the greater Shepherd and Ruler of Israel,-the only lodging procurable for her betrothed guardian and herself was the stable of an inn: a manger of beasts was the receptacle of the LORD of Glory at His first coming; and humble shepherds came thither to adore what the heads and rulers of Judah were not even privileged to know. But we have heard how the glorious hosts of heaven sang, though men were silent, the hymn that told the meaning of events so marvellous in the ears of mortals: even "Glory to GOD in the highest; on earth, peace; good-will towards men."

With these admirable circumstances fresh in our minds, let us now at length turn to the description of Isaiah in my text. Let us see how all the characters he ascribes to the Son that was to be born, were displayed most eminently here.

"His name shall be called WONDERFUL." What, indeed, can be more wonderful than this Nativity? Great," says S. Paul," is the mystery of Godliness, GOD manifest in the flesh." Wonderful is it that under any circumstances, or in any manner, GoD should reveal Himself to man. "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and stars which Thou hast ordained ; LORD, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" It is wonderful that GoD should visit man with the gift of inspiration, and make men His prophets and messengers; that His SPIRIT should converse by their mouths or pens in the ordinary modes of speech and writing, by which men communicate with each other. And greatly indeed is the wonder increased when we take into account the sinfulness of man: when in these intimations of His Divine will, we find the ALMIGHTY reasoning, arguing, expostulating; when the order of things among men is reversed, the offended Majesty turning suitor to the rebel and the criminal; when He even assumes the appearance of human sentiment or passion in these communications, describing Himself as wrathful against the determined sinner, or pitying the contrite penitent, or jealous over those whom He has appropriated as His own; when He repents Him of His past proceedings towards communities or individuals, or when He sympathizes with their sorrow and suffering. These expressions are indeed wonderful, though we know that they are

expressions only; figures and forms of speech by which the Eternal lowers Himself to our poor conception; and being Himself far above such human modes of feeling, thus deigns to represent His mode of acting to His creatures. But that these expressions should become in any way a reality, a literal fact, that such a sympathy should be established in deed and truth between Almighty GoD and man,-who could have believed, or who, without Divine revelation, could have conceived the faintest suspicion of this? Yet this is no more than what this Incarnation and Nativity do actually present to us. No longer is that a mere figure of speech which Isaiah uttered with respect to the GOD of Israel; "In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them." For here we behold the Divine WORD, the SON of GOD, the first offspring, the Eternal and consubstantial offspring, of the Eternal FATHER, making our condition His own; taking on Him not only our bodily nature with its capacities of physical pleasure or pain, but our mental and intellectual nature also; our soul with its capacities of hope and fear, of joy and of grief. To the knowledge which as GOD He possessed of our sorrows and infirmities, He adds what as GOD He could not have, the knowledge of personal experience. He not only perceives them as GOD, but He feels them as Man; He by the will of GOD was to taste of death, as the Apostle speaks; "to taste of death" and all its attendant evils "for every man."