of sin, by the greatness of the sacrifice required for its overthrow, and to urge and excite us to do battle with it, each in his own heart, by the victory which Christ Himself obtained. It is to supply us with a right estimate of the transitory objects of sense, and teach us to disentangle ourselves from what impedes our heavenly progress. It is to supply us with principles and rules of life, by which to guide ourselves amidst the temptations and difficulties of the world. But above all, it is to fill us with such a deep and enduring love of Him who hath created and redeemed us, and so to transfix us with the sense of His merciful compassion, that not even the humbling conviction of our own utter worthlessness, and of our daily and hourly infirmities, shall hinder us from relying on the efficacy of His help, seeing that we are the very members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.

SERMON VII.

The Encarnation.

ST. JOHN i. 14.

"The Word was made Flesh."

T is the characteristic of St. John's Gospel that it is concerned with unfolding to us the Divine nature of our blessed Redeemer, through the doctrines and discourses which fell from His lips, rather than with a detailed statement of the outward circumstances of His life. The three earlier Evangelists had been inspired to bring out with prominence all that related to the truth of our Lord's humanity. His regal character as the King of His people, His priestly character as the offerer and provider of His people's sacrifice, His fulness of sympathy as the Son of Man,-had been depicted by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. Those three aspects under which our Lord's Person may be regarded, and which are symbolised by the lion, the calf, and the man, seen in vision by Ezekiel and St. John, had been unfolded; but, as in the vision there was a fourth living creature like unto an eagle, representing the divine and heavenly aspect of our Lord's nature, so we have a fourth Evangelist, whose

special privilege it is to soar above the world and all things human, and gazing with undazzled eye upon the Sun of Righteousness, to reveal to mortal man somewhat of the mystery of the Divine nature. While the other Evangelists are occupied chiefly with depicting our Lord's life on earth, St. John is occupied rather with revealing Him to us as the "Word who was with God," who came forth from God; as one who is from heaven, and whose home is in heaven.

Thus St. John is not concerned with any details relating to the circumstances of our Lord's birth; but he proceeds at once to state the great truth of our Lord's Incarnation in terms which should impress us most strongly with its deep mysteriousness. In few words he states this great truth, which is at once the foundation of our faith and the centre of all Christian doctrine-" The Word was made Flesh." The angel had declared that the holy thing which should be born of the blessed Virgin should be called the Son of God; but St. John having told us that the Word was with God from the beginning, and that the Word was God, states explicitly that He, the Word, was made flesh. Thus are we led at once to contemplate the Divine nature of our blessed Lord before His Incarnation, and so to realize more fully the depth of His humiliation in taking to Himself our nature.

We have to believe, then, that the second Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, He who had been in the bosom of the Father from everlasting, who is the

Word, the very expression of the Father's Will, He who had created the world, for our sakes manifested His presence upon earth as really and truly man. He, being God, created unto Himself a human soul and body out of the materials of our nature. And thus He shewed Himself to mankind as God and Man. There was no separation of the two natures, neither was there any confusion. The fact revealed is, that Christ was truly God and Man. His Godhead suffered no abatement by reason of the limitation of His Manhood, neither did His Manhood by the infinity of His Godhead. So, also, we have to bear in mind that though the two natures of Christ are perfect and distinct, yet they are to be thought of as united together in one Person. "As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ." Herein, then, consists the infinite mystery of love contained in the truth of our Lord's Incarnation, that God Himself has condescended to come upon earth and become man, not, you will observe, to assume a mere human form, but to take to Himself our nature in all its completeness, and to limit Himself by the conditions of our true humanity. It may be asked, Why did God adopt this mode of revealing Himself to man? Such enquiries can only perplex without in any way leading to edification. It is for us to accept the truths of revelation as they are set before us, and thankfully to meditate on the love and wisdom they exhibit. It is for us to believe that as our bodies are the organs and instruments

G

by which our souls act, and the channel whereby they suffer, so our human nature was deemed in God's wisdom to be the fitted means by which the Son of God should effect the great work of the salvation of mankind. "Wherefore when He cometh into the world He saith, Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a Body hast Thou prepared Me." Thus the human nature of our Lord was the instrument by which His Divine nature was brought into relation with mankind; it was through it that He, being also truly God, was enabled to complete the work of our redemption? For how otherwise could He have been crucified, and have suffered for us, save by reason of that man's nature, to which these things are applicable? And further; as the soul is the real doer of those things which are effected by the body, so the Godhead of Christ is the true cause of that which His Manhood accomplished. To all appearance He was as any ordinary man, but veiled beneath that human form there was the Divine nature determining His whole outward life, and promoting those acts of love and mercy by which a fallen world was to be redeemed. "Thus God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself."

Such, my brethren, is the great doctrine of the Incarnation as revealed to us by St. John, and witnessed to by the Church in her hymns and creeds. I have set it before you in all its deep mysteriousness, that we may endeavour to realize it as a truth, though with our limited faculties we can never ade