Bible Commentaries

Chapter3

The Culture of the Young—The Reason of Christ's Sovereignty—Flattering Christ—Christ Himself Is With Men

Prayer

Almighty God, we bless thee for psalm and gospel; we thank thee that the olden men were enabled to speak their heart's life in holy psalm. Though they saw not the King, yet did they speak tunefully of him: it was in no mean praise they forecasted the coming One. Thou didst give them music, music of heart and voice—lo, in that music they all but realized the ineffable joy of the divine presence upon the earth. It is thus thou dost ever treat us: thou dost give us means of utterance which are themselves sacred, and in the very utterance of our prayer thou dost give us sweet answers. We bless thee that we have read the word of the gospel, spoken in no poetry of expression, but in the poetry of fact, for we have seen Jesus, and his star, we have been present at the offering of the first worship to the child—may that worship be the keynote of our life, expressing always our uppermost desire: may it be our joy to be found serving no other master, and loyally bending before no other king. We will have this Man to reign over us by thy grace, yea, though we once rejected his dominion, yet now would we contritely and humbly welcome him. We would live in Christ, for Christ would we live, we would be found in him as the branch is found in the vine, drawing our life and its daily sustenance from him who is the one root. Seeing that this is our desire and that it has risen into a prayer, we accept the prayer as the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, and knowing it to be inspired, we are already assured of thine infinitely gracious answer. We would no longer live in ourselves and to ourselves. We would enter into fellowship with Christ in every pang of his suffering and in every ecstacy of his joy. Let this our prayer be answered to-day, and we shall rejoice with exceeding great joy, yea our satisfaction and gladness shall be full.

For all the mercies of another week we bless thee. Thou hast given us a staff to help us along every difficult road, thou hast set lights above us in the time of darkness, in the hour of solitude; thou hast spread companionships for our souls, yea all thine angels have ministered unto us, and because of their society we have not the pain or the temptation of loneliness; thou hast given us food convenient for us; thou hast not neglected us in any point or in any degree whatsoever, thy ministry towards us has been one of overflowing love, we are to-day the living, the living to praise thee with new and richer song for all thy kindness, for thy patience, thy tender mercy. Evermore fill us with a sense of thy presence, let a consciousness of thy nearness destroy all fear of Matthew 2:1-10

1. Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem (six Roman miles south-west of Jerusalem) of Judea (so called to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in Galilee), in the days of Herod the King (the father of Herod Antipas and the grandfather of Herod Agrippa, before whose son Paul pleaded), behold there came wise men (Magians—Magicians) from the east (the far East, supposed by some to be Persians) to Jerusalem.

2. Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews (not King of the Jews alone, but the king that springs from the Jews), for we have seen his star (an astrological mystery for which there is no modern interpretation) in the east, and are come (more than a four months" journey) to worship (to do homage to) him.

8. When Herod the king had heard these things he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

4. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

5. And they said unto him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet.

6. And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shalt come a governor, that shall rule (literally shall conduct as a shepherd, ποιμαυει) my people Israel.

7. Then Herod, when he had privily (secretly) called the wise men (for royalty must consult wisdom), inquired of them diligently (ascertained exactly) what time (having found out the place by another authority) the star appeared.

8. And he sent them to Bethlehem (from a metropolis to a village—the usual way!) and said, Go and search diligently for the young child, and when ye have found him bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

9. And when they had heard (equal to the Latin verb audire, which implies not only hearing but obedience) the king, they departed; and lo, the star which they saw in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.

10. When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Here would seem to begin the inquiry about Jesus Christ which has never since ceased to be the supreme question of the religious mind. That inquiry, I take it, is more eager and widespread to-day than ever it was in any period of human history. Still the great subject is—where is Christ, who is Christ, what is Christ? The books that reveal him most profoundly and lovingly to the human mind and heart are books which hold their own to-day amid the fiercest possible literary competition. All this means something. There is in it a deep and all but tragical mystery; an agony of the heart speaks in this inquiry of the lips. The life of man wants something more than it has yet secured; it tries to evade answers that bring with them severe moral obligations, and yet it recurs to those answers as if they were the only profound and vital replies. It is a great mystery, it is even a sharp pain, it is a dense cloud, and out of it there come, in strange and terrible gleamings, lightnings that might affright and destroy the mind that inquires and wonders.

The great inquiry related to that which was essential rather than to that which was accidental. Of course that which was accidental had to come into the inquiry. Certain things had been prophetically written, certain places and times had been specifically indicated, and therefore attention must be directed into those quarters. Still the grave and everlasting inquiry relates to that which is essential and immutable. The word upon which I would lay the strongest emphasis is the word born. Not upon the word young, not upon the word child. "Young "is a term that lives on for a few days, and then melts out of our sight and becomes age whilst yet we admire its tender bloom. "Child" is a beautiful bud that bursts into a full flower whilst we are looking at it. But BORN is a historical word: it is the same always, it indicates the revelation of life, the setting up of new ministries and forces in the universe. To be young is to be a child, is to pass through very transitory stages and attractions; but to be born sets up a fact, immortal as God. We have been born. Our youth has gone like the mist of the morning, our childhood is a hardly remembered sun-spot in our recollection, but our birth hastens to shape itself into a permanent destiny. It is in this light I look upon your dear little children when you bring them to me to be baptized. I do not sneer at babyhood, nor do I say, how can the dear unconscious little infant understand this ordinance of baptism? Life is larger than understanding, life is grander than logic. Are we subjects for the vivisecting instruments of the Aristotles of the ages? Are we not something infinitely and inexpressibly more? When you bring the child, you bring more than childhood, you bring life, and when I throw upon the dear little face the baptismal drops, I throw them not upon a creature six weeks old, but a creature born—a new creation, a beautiful presence in the universe, great enough for God to take an interest in, small enough for us to smile about, precious enough for Christ to die for.

This interest in childhood should teach us a great deal. Childhood in itself is little, but it is a quantity that is always growing. Let old Pharaoh teach us what to do with the children. He said, "These Israelites will be too many for us one day." What, then, did he propose in the view of their over-multiplication? To kill off all the men, or all the women? His was a profounder policy: I would God the Church could seize it and apply it to the current questions of our own economy. He said, "Kill the boys, drown them." Am I appalled by the idiot's philosophy? No; but I am struck by the wisdom that sees in childhood, boyhood, a growing power, and that directs its attention to the early life of nations, for they who begin with the adults begin at the wrong end, and they who begin with the little ones begin at the right point, and may achieve profound and permanent success. Do not sneer at the boys. Do not count them for nothing. They will be your successors, they may now be your scholars. For a time they may grieve you and annoy you, and, by an impertinence that is only for the passing day, they may again and again bring momentary annoyance or distress upon you; but it is a grand thing to have to do with them. Let your gentleness make them great. Show yourself so deeply interested in them, by many an inquiry, as to start in their minds the question whether they be not something greater and grander than they appear to be merely for the passing moment.

Pharaoh and Herod directed their attention to young life. If they could have gotten hold of the young life and turned it in their direction they might have built up very bad sovereignties, but it was one of two things with them, either the boys would overcome them or they must overcome the boys. Let me speak words of strong encouragement and genuine comfort to those of you who are young. You cannot tell what you may be yet. Work with a high aim, be moved to noble and pure ambitions. You will have your broad chance in the world. O may every finger you have, and every faculty, be made keen enough and strong enough to seize the chance and turn it as it were into fine gold.

In reading this text one is struck with the power of one life to rouse a world. Observe who gather around this young child. Wise men from the east, kings, chief priests and scribes of the people, and elsewhere we hear of the interest of shepherds who were keeping their flocks by night. A strange thing for these old Persian astrologers to come four months from their homes to see one who was born—not king of the Persians, then their journey would have admitted an easy explication—but king of the Jews —why should those Oriental star-gazers be interested in Jewish history to this extent? There is more in the question than appears on the surface. This king of the Jews is not king of the Jews only, but he is the king who springs out of the Jews to be the king of all men. He will choose his own name presently. Our fathers called us what they pleased without consulting us: not a man was asked what name he would bear: his name is the finger-mark of a power he can neither understand nor resist, but there comes a time when every man may make himself a name, may by his spirit and his actions build up an appellation which will endure through all eternity. When Jesus Christ comes to speak of himself he will explain this Persian eagerness. He will call himself the Son of Man. He will broaden away from his birthpoint until he covers the whole area of human nature, answering every throbbing pain, anticipating every distressful prayer, and giving answers greater than any questions that ever could be framed.

Herein is the explanation of all kinds of people wanting to know about Jesus Christ. Philosophy calls in to see what he is. Kings pause a moment on their royal processions to ask questions about him, chief priests and scribes of the people betake themselves to literary research and religious investigation that they may be able to answer popular inquiries concerning this unnameable Man. And all kinds of poor people want to know where he Matthew 2:11-15.

11. And when they were come into the house they saw the young child (the child first, not the mother: this order should be marked) with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him (a word often used in a double sense; Xenophon says that Cyrus was worshipped by his subjects); and when they had opened their treasures (caskets or packages), they presented (according to oriental custom) unto him gifts: gold and frankincense, and myrrh, ( Psalm 45:8, Psalm 72:15; Isaiah 60:6).

12. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

13. And when they were departed, behold, the (an) angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt (the nearest asylum), and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

14. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother (this order is unnatural, if not inspired) by night, and departed into Egypt;

15. And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet (of Israel, but typically of Christ), saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

"They found the young child with Mary, his mother." Surely this is an inversion of the right method of stating the case, judged by our little rules, pedantic and inadequate. A critic might here interpose and say, You have adopted the wrong order of sequence, you have inverted the proper method of statement. Instead of saying, Mary, the mother, and the young child, you have actually put the young child first, and thus you have inverted the order of time. Nor is this a slip, for I find the angel of the Lord adopting the same sequence in the13th verse, saying to Joseph in a dream, "Take the young child with his mother," and afterwards in the20th verse, the angel again says, "Arise, and take the young child and his mother," and in the21st verse, "Arise, and take the young child and his mother." The frequency of the repetition shows us that to indicate the young child first and the mother afterwards was not a literary slip.

When will we learn that life is larger than logic? When will we keep our little technical rules away from great providences and mysteries? We are ruined herein by our own exactness. The literalist can never be right in anything that challenges the highest efforts of the mind. He who is right in the mere order of words, after a pedantic law of rightness and accuracy, often misses the genius, the poetry, the overflowing and ineffable life of things. He boasts of his exactitude, he is very clever in defending himself against etymological and critical assaults, but he is vitally wrong. Within the limits which he has assigned for the movement of his powers he is right, but those limits themselves are wrong, and, therefore, it is possible to be partially right and yet to be substantially and vitally in error. Matthew 2:16-23.

16. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men (mocked of God, rather) was exceeding wroth, and sent forth (murderers), and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts (suburbs or precincts) thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.

17. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,

18. In Rama (which lay on the way to Babylon) was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel (the progenetrix of Israel) weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

19. But when Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.

20. Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel (the country is divinely named; the particular town was humanly selected); for they are dead which sought the young child's life (literally the young child's soul).

21. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.

22. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign (under the inferior title of Ethnarch) in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither; notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee:

23: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a. Nazarene (mean and. contemptible, so the root of the word signifies.)

"Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men"—yet the wise men did not mock him at all! When will people get away from the region of secondary causes, and understand that life has a divine centre, and that all things are governed from the throne of heaven? It is not only a philosophical mistake to drop into second causes for the purpose of finding the origin of our miseries, it sometimes, yea often, becomes a practical mischief, a sore and terrible disaster of a personal and social kind. Therefore with great urgency would I drive men away from secondary lines and intermediate causes, to the great cause of all—God, and King, and Lord, and Christ. Herod was mocked of God: he was not mocked of the Persian sages: they were not unwilling to ally themselves with him, so far as they were personally concerned, if they could contribute aught to his intelligence or to the carrying out of his expressed purpose to "worship" the Child of whom they themselves were in quest. Herod was mocked, vexed from heaven, troubled from the centre of things. The fog that, fell upon his eyes came downwards, not upwards, it was a blinding mist from him who sends upon men delusions as well as revelations.

We have ourselves been mocked of God, and we have taken vengeance upon human instrumentalities. If we insist upon having our own way, there is a point at which God says, "Take it, and with it take the consequences." If we resolutely and impatiently say, "We will find success along this line and no other," God may say to us, "Proceed, and find what you can." And at the end of that line, what have we found? A great rock, a thousand feet thick, and God has said, "You may find success if you will thrust your hand through that granite." So we have been mocked. We have determined to proceed along a certain course, notwithstanding the expostulations of heaven, and having gone mile after mile, what have we found at the end of the course? A great furnace, and God has said to us with mocking laughter, that hast shaken the skies, "Your success is in the middle of that furnace: put your hand right into the centre and take it,"—knowing that he who puts his hand in there takes it out no more.

In proportion, therefore, as we are mocked and vexed, as we come back from the wilderness, bringing with us nothing but the wind, as we return from the mountains bringing with us nothing but a sense of perplexity, it becomes us to ask serious questions about our failure. Who mocked us? Not men, not women—we were laughed at from heaven. There is no passage of Scripture which has upon me so weird an effect as that which says that God will mock at our calamity, and laugh when our fear cometh. We have seen his tears—they baptized Jerusalem, they have fallen in gracious showers upon the graves that hold our heart's treasure, but we have never heard his laugh. There is a human laughter that turns us cold—God forbid that we should ever hear our divine Father's laughter, when the great fire-waves swell around us and all heaven seems to be pleased with the discomfiture of our souls.

When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men, what did he? Let us suppose that the passage is interrupted at that point and that we are required to continue the story. Now let us set our wits to work to complete the sentence which begins with "When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men." Let me suggest this continuation—He saw a religious mystery in this matter: he said, "This is not the doing of the wise men, there is a secret above and behind and around this, which I have not yet penetrated: I am troubled, but it is with religious perplexity. I will fall down upon my knees, I will outstretch mine arms in prayer, and will cry mightily to God to visit me in this crisis of my intellectual distress and moral consternation." Let me now turn and see how far my conjecture is right. "Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew." The power of wickedness is physical, the power of goodness is moral. Wickedness says, "A sword;" goodness says, "A pen."

We know that this narrative is true in the case of Herod, because it is made true every day in our own experience. When we are vexed and mocked and disappointed, we do exactly what Herod did—we grow exceeding wroth, and slay. You need not consult the ancient historians to know whether Herod really did this work or not, when we ourselves are doing it every day of our vexation and disappointment. We all play the fool under such visitations. Not unless we are regenerated by God the Holy Ghost and cleansed through and through by the atoning blood do we rise to the high dignity and grandeur of moral dominion and spiritual conquest.

There are two victories possible to us, the one is physical, the other is a moral. I want this child to attend public worship. I say to the child, "You must: if you refuse I will scourge you until you go to church. I am older, I am stronger than you are, and you shall feel the supremacy of my age and the oppressiveness of my strength. To church I will make you go." I have succeeded, the child is in the church to-day. The child is here, but not here. By a perverse will the child is turning this church into a desecrated place. The child's will is not here, nor is the child's love present with us: our prayers have been burdensome, and God's own word has lost its music, because of the constraint under which that attendance has been enforced.

Let me take the case of the child from another point. I have been dwelling upon the advantages of going to church: I have been speaking about God and God's love, Christ and Christ's cross, about the tender music and the beautiful word and the loving gospel, and I have said to the child, "I should like you to go: it would make my heart glad if you did go—I only ask you, I do not force you." And the child has said, "Certainly I will go; show me the way, I should be glad to go." The child is here, every blood-drop in his heart is here, his eyes are rounding into a great wonder, and his breast heaving with an unusual but most glad emotion. Which is the conquest? The conquests of force exhaust themselves and perish in ignominious failure, the conquests of love grow and increase with the processes of time.

When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men, he was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem. The power of badness is destructive, the power of goodness is preservative. We need direction in the quality and uses of strength. It is easy to destroy: even a beast can crush a flower, but no angel in all the heavens can reset the broken joint. We mistake destructiveness as a sign of power. What power there is in the act of destructiveness is of the lowest and coarsest quality. You cannot drive evil out of men by any merely negative and destructive process. If you call out "Repent," you must immediately follow the word with "For the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The call to repentance is in a sense a negative call, the announcement that the kingdom of heaven is at hand is the positive and affirmative call, which tends to the upfilling of the emptied heart with the better dominion, the sanctuary from heaven. You may cut down all the weeds in your garden, but if you do not attend to that garden, putting in the place of that which was noxious that which is useful, the old roots will re-assert themselves and your garden will become a scene of confusion. Jesus does not destroy without creating. If we suppress anything we do not believe in, we ought to set up in its place influences of a higher and nobler kind. It is no use for you, my friends, to empty the public-house unless you open some other place that shall attract within its better limits those whom you have expelled. It is of no use for you to drive the devil out of a man unless you have something to put into the man. That devil will wander about and will return and bring with him seven worse than himself, and the end of the man will be worse than the beginning.

"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, mourning, lamentation, weeping," distress night and day, the cry of pain and the moan of agony. The result of selfishness is human distress, the result of goodness is good-will towards men. See then what the world would come to under a selfish rulership. Selfish rulership says, "If I cannot have my own way easily, I will have it at all costs and hazards." Selfish rulership lifts up its sword and says, "Make way." Selfish rulership will purchase its own ends at any cost of mourning, lamentation, and weeping. Thus the bad man seems to succeed more than the good man; his way is rougher, his manners are ruder, he destroys, he does not create, and it is always easier to pull down than to build up. Jesus Christ proceeds slowly because of the depth and vitality and permanence of his work. It is easier to curse than to pray. Under Herod the world would become a scene of selfish triumph; under Christ it would become a family united by tenderest bonds, made holy by mutual and sympathetic love, and sacred by the exercise of those obligations which elevate and ennoble human nature. I ask you, therefore, to-day, as the end of this part of the exposition—who is to be king, Herod or Christ, violence or persuasion, force or love, selfishness or beneficence? The choice is sharp, the division is distinct: he who would seek to muddle and confuse these distinctions, is not the friend of progress, he is the victim of a mischievous pedantry. The world can only be under one of two kings, God—mammon, Christ—Herod, beneficence—selfishness. Choose ye; put high his banner over your life and let it float so that men can see it from afar.

In the next paragraph of our text we find the appearance of an angel of the Lord in a dream. The angels are ever mindful of the good. "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be the heirs of salvation?" You say you have had no experience of angel ministry: be careful what you say, lest you narrow yourselves unduly by the mere letter, and miss the poetry and grandeur of your life. You say you are bound by things visible and palpable, and beyond those things do not venture to go. I am not asking you to venture to go any distance beyond those limitations, but I am asking you to allow God the power to come to you by any one of a series of innumerable ministries. You must not "limit the Holy One of Israel." The question is not, What can I do? It is, What can God do?

I could imagine a little boy with his arithmetic saying that all things that could be reckoned up, in space and in quantity, were reckonable upon the basis of his book of figures. He begins and ends with the multiplication table; he says the multiplication table ends at twelve times twelve, and beyond that he will never go. He is not going to be wise above what is written: if any man should venture to ask him how many are thirteen times thirteen, he would shudder with arithmetical aversion, and reply that thirteen times thirteen was not to be found in the multiplication table. Would he be right? He would be as far wrong as possible! Thirteen times thirteen is as certainly in the multiplication table as twice one or five times five. He will find that out by-and-by. He thinks he is keeping himself within due limits and must not transgress certain boundaries, when he says the table ends at twelve times twelve. He is going to be arithmetically orthodox: other people may dream about thirteen times thirteen if they please, he thinks that inquiry involves a very grave responsibility: he shrinks from their society, and he betakes himself with renewed ardour to the four corners of the table that begins at twice one and ends at twelve times twelve. Is he arithmetically pious and arithmetically orthodox? He is arithmetically narrow and arithmetically bigoted and arithmetically foolish!

By-and-by he will advance further. I will say to him, "What is the square root of five-and-twenty?" And he will say, "Anybody knows that the square root of five-and-twenty is five." "What is the square root of minus a?" "Ah, I do not go into that sort of thing at all." "But there is a science which tackles questions of that kind." The boy replies, "I know nothing about it; I do not want to be wise above that which is written. I can give you the square root of one hundred in a moment, but the square root of minus a—he must be a very presumptuous and arrogant person to discuss such a question! If it be not presumptuous, which it appears to me to be, it is exceedingly foolish." He lives within his arithmetic, he does not know that there is another science just over it, which undertakes to find out sums by signs, and to discuss deep problems by letters and symbols that appear to be foolish to those who have never entered their higher education.

When I come to these angel ministries, they baffle me. I say, "They are not in my arithmetic, they are not in the multiplication table." Let me never forget that algebra continues and perfects common arithmetic, and let me never forget that even beyond algebra itself are methods of calculation unknown to those who are in the lower ranges of human thought. I must not set up myself as the measure and bound of things. If the Bible comes to me with angel ministries, with assurances of what has been done by angels and through the medium of dreams, by high efforts of the religious imagination, I must not play the boy-fool by saying that reckoning ends with twelve times twelve; I must remember that the universe is larger than I have yet imagined it to be, and that there are men who are older and wiser, and it is not for me to say God's ministry begins here and ends there. I love to live in an enlarging universe, I love the horizon which tempts me to touch it, and then vanishes to an infinite distance.

The angel of the Lord said, "They are dead, which sought the young child's life." The good have everything to hope from time, the bad have everything to fear from it.

The bad man is in haste, the good man rests in the Lord and waits patiently for him. The bad man says, "It must be done now; my motto is "ad rem,"—now or never, strike the iron while it is hot, let passion have its way instantaneously." They that believe do not make haste, they are calm with the peace of God; they trust to time; they say, "All things will be fulfilled in the order of duration and the process of the suns." Innocence can wait; innocence can go into any land and tarry there until sent for by the angel; innocence can go into any prison and wait, not till helped. by a butler, but until sent for by the king. If thou art innocent, be quiet; if thou art really good at the core, through and through, simple-minded, honest in motive, pure in purpose, high and sacred in ambition, wait; thy funeral will not be first.

Yet another fear fell upon the mind of Joseph. When he heard that Archelaus reigned in Judea, under the inferior title of Ethnarch, in the room of his father Herod, he was "afraid to go thither." There are some families of which we are afraid: there are whole generations that seem to be blighted with a common taint. There are some chains whose links are all bad. Joseph thought that Archelaus might inherit the prejudices and hostilities of his father. There was no need for him to do so. Thank God, a man may break away from his own family, a child may be a stranger to his own father. Thank God for these possibilities of beginning again. I see what is called fate in the order and destiny of men: I have taken hold of the chain and find it to be thick and strong—yet I see also the wonderful liberties of men, so that they can detach themselves from a melancholy and shameful past on the part of others and begin again, by themselves, under God's blessing and direction, for themselves. Was your father a bad man? You may be a good son. Fear not, do not droop under the blighting cloud. If it be in your heart to be better and you mention this purpose in prayer to God, your father's name shall rot, and yours shall be a memorial of goodness and hope, long as the sun endures.

They are DEAD which sought the young child's life. That is always the ending of wickedness: that is the history of all the assaults that ever have been made upon Jesus Christ and his kingdom. I have seen great armies of men come up against the young child, and behold they have perished in a night, and in the morning the angels have said to one another, "They are DEAD which sought the young child's life." I have seen armies of infidel books come up to put down Christianity, to expose it; and refute it and cut it to pieces, and destroy it as Herod's sword the children of Bethlehem, and lo, in twelve months not one of them could be found, and the angels have said to one another, "They are DEAD which sought the young child's life." I have seen critics come up with keen eye and sharp knife, and a new apparatus adapted to carry out its processes and purposes of extermination, and behold the critics have cut their own bones and died of their own wounds, and the angels have said, "They are DEAD that sought the young child's life." I have seen whole towns of new institutions, created for the purpose of putting down the Christian Church. All kinds of competitive buildings have been put up at a lavish expenditure, the preacher was to be put down, the Bible was to be shut up, the old hymn-singing was to be done away with, a new era was to dawn upon the wilderness of time, and lo, the bankruptcy court had to be enlarged to take in groups of new mendicants, for they DIED that sought the young child's life!

No man ever died who sought the young child's saving ministry; no man ever died who went to the young child and said, "My Saviour, thy grace is greater than my sin, pity me and lift me out of this deep pit by the hand of thy love." The angels never said about such a one, "He is dead who offered that prayer." No dead man is found at the foot of the cross, they live who touch that tree, they are immortal who open their hearts to receive that baptism of blood, they are a triumphant host that take hold of hands around the young child.

He is always young: he is always in bloom. Time cannot wither him: as for custom it cannot "stale the infinite variety" of his ministry and his worship. God delights in youth: there is no wearying in the duration of goodness—wickedness runs down into exhaustion, goodness runs up into renewal of efflorescence and beauty, and eternal spring.