III.
The Message.
1. "There is born ... a Saviour." A Saviour! What a thrill of joy must have shot through the hearts of these astonished men as they listened to the word of wondrous import. A Saviour ! Then indeed man is to be saved ! Through the long, dark, weary ages man had been groaning in miserable captivity to the tyrant
1 L. Abbott, in Christian Age, xli. (1892) 84.
2 G. Matheson, Searchings in the Silence, 52.
ST. LUKE II. lo, II 33
powers of sin, and nothing was more evident than this, that he had lost all power of saving himself. Now, at last, another is going to undertake his helpless cause. He who of old heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt under the taskmaster's whip, and saw the anguish of their heart while they toiled under the cruel bondage of Pharaoh — He who sent them a saviour in the person of Moses, and who subsequently again and again delivered them from their enemies by raising up a Saviour for them, He had at length undertaken the cause of ruined humanity, and was about to deliver a sin-bound world. A Saviour, and the champion of our race, was actually born and in their midst, ready soon to enter on His mysterious conflict, and to work out a complete deliver- ance, a full salvation. This was indeed glad tidings of great joy. This was the dawning of a new epoch. The Day-spring from on high was surely visiting a darkened, sin-shadowed world.
^ The birth of any man child is an interesting event — another added to the many million lives, to the multitude which none can number, who are to stand before the judgment-seat of God : another life from the birth-source, which shall flow on through the channel of mortal life, the gulf of death, and the underground channel of the grave, to the boundless ocean of eternity : — for, once born, one must hold on to think, and live, and feel for ever. Such is the birth of every one who has his time to be born behind him, and his time to die before him still. But how intensely interesting the birth of that child whose name is called " Wonder- ful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace," but for whose birth we all must have died eternally, and but for whose birth, it would have been better none of us had been born.^
]f Christ goes out into the world. He heals the sick, He feeds the hungry, He comforts the afflicted. But in all the healing and helping this one message He repeats, in different forms, over and over again: "Thy sins be forgiven thee." They let down a paralytic through the roof of a house before Him, and this is His message : " Thy sins be forgiven thee." A woman kneels before Him and washes His feet with her tears and wipes them with the hairs of her head, and this is His message : " Go in peace, and sin no more." They nail Him to the cross, and His prayer breathes the same message : " Father, forgive them." There hangs by the side of Him a brigand who has gone through sins of murder and robbery.
* Life of Robertson qf Irvine (by A. Guthrie), 256. ST. LUKE — 3
34 GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY
He looks upon him with compassion, and says : " This day thou shalt be with me in paradise." He is indeed the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is more than healing the sick, more than feeding the hungry, more than clothing the naked, more than educating the ignorant ; this is taking off the great burden under which humanity has been crushed.^
2. " There is born . . . Christ." He was born the Messiah, the Anointed One of Israel. To Israel He came fulfilling all the ancient covenant promises, and bringing with Him the " tender mercies of our God." He is that Seed of the woman announced and promised to Adam and Eve in the garden, whose mission it was to bruise the serpent's head. He was and is that Seed of Abraham " in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed " ; of whom Balaam prophesied and said, " I shall see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but not nigh : there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel." He was and is the One whose day Abraham saw afar off and was glad. He was and is that Wonderful Counsellor of whom Isaiah prophesied, the root out of a dry ground, whose " visage was so marred more than any man"; who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, on whom the Lord caused all our iniquities to meet ; the " prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren " whom Moses foresaw and whom he bade all Israel hear ; the Stem of Jesse; the Branch of Zechariah; the Messenger of the Covenant and the Sun of Eighteousness, arising with healing in His wings, whom Malachi foretold as being nigh. He is the sum and substance of all the ceremonial sacrifices and feasts of the Jews ; in a word, He is that One of whom Moses in the Law and all the prophets did speak and all the Psalmists sang.