Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-12-14
THE CHRISTMAS DAY.
What st. Paul Meant by Referring to
the Fulness of the Time.
NO CENTURY BEFORE OR SINCE
Was So Suited to the Spread of the New
Religion as the First.
THE WORLD RIPE FOR THE ADVENT
lwRIrrEN FOR THE DrspArcu.,

| Io-uay Is the tnlru SUNDAY In Advent
Tomorrow will be the 18th DAY of Decem
Der. Christmas is near at hand. The win.
dows of the stores are decked out with
temptations for Christmas purchasers. The
common attitude of these weeks is the atti.
tude OF expectation. In the almanac. in the
street and in the church we are pointed for.
ward. There is general stir of prepara.
ton. We are anticipating an anniversary.
want to take you back this morning, be.
hind all the anniversaries, past the long
procession of the centuries, into the year be.
fore Christmas. The world for ages had been
keeping Advent. Winter after winter the
snow fell upon the branches OF the fir trees,
but they never brushed it off to make
Christmas trees out of them, for Christmas
never came. But at last it was the year be-
fore Christmas. People began to look for
ward. There was a stir of preparation.
And then, when everything was
ready, "when the fulness of the time
was come, God sent forth His son."
That is what ask you to think about. ]
want yon to see how amazingly true that is,
that Christ came just at the precise time
when everything was most ready for His CON-
ing. There has never been such another era
| of opportunity in all the worlds history.
st. Paul did well to entitle it ''The fulness
of the time.'
THE WORLD AS IT WAS.
There were three great pations in the civ
| ilized part of the world into which Christ
| came. They were the nations in whose
| language was written that inscription which
NJ l,-;o = l.. -
the crisis of that great purpose for the sake
of which He came. They were the Hebrews,
the Romans, and the Greeks. In the his
tory of each of these great nations it was the
fulness of the time. Century by century,
in a way wonderful to think about, Hebrew
religion and Roman law, and Greek letters
had been making ready for Christ's coming,
And now it was the fulness of the time
Christ came, let us notice in the first place,
in the midst of the expectations OF Hebrew
religion.
Nothing is palmer in history than that
when Christ came the whole nation of the
Jews was in an attitude of anticipation.
They were expecting somebody. And the
expected one was the Messiah, the Christ.
The first question which came into the peo-
ple's minds when John the Baptist stood
preaching at the fords of Jordan was, SIS
this the Christi" ''Art thou He that should
Gomez" they asked the Prophet of Naza-
reth. Somebody was evidently coming. ALI
Judea was awake with expectation. 1t is
true, that when the Christ did come they did
not recognize Him. They had formed a
false idea of what manner of person He
should be. They were almost as much mis-
taken about Him as those wild Indians are,
who at this moment are keeping their strange
and portentous Advent along the border
lands OF our Western settlements; keeping it
with ghost dances and the sharpening of
tomahawks and the cleaning of guns and ex-
pecting Messiah who shall lead them in
great unconquerable army and sweep the
whites into the Eastern sea.
LIKE THE INDIAN MESSIAH.
That was very like what the Jews were
looking for. Caiaphas shared the hopes of
Sitting Bull. The Jews were awaiting
another Moses, or Joshua, or Solomon.
ruler or fighter, with sword in his hand
or with crown upon his head. They let
the Christ pass unreverenced, dishonored,
bearing His grievous burden of persecution
to His death upon the cross. That is all
true. Nevertheless the fact remains that
they were looking in their blind way for
the Christ, and with their faces turned in
quite the opposite direction, were expecting
Him to come. By and by, when a man did
come, patterned after their low idea, prob
ably the creature of it, the leader of COM
pany of brigands, the "Son of a Star" by
title and the Christ by claim, you know how
such multitudes of credulous people fol-
lowed him that the Roman power was
shaken from end to end of the Jewish
provinces by the shock OF dangerous in
surrection. That shows what sort of spirit
was in the air when Christ came. 1t was
the fulness of the time Everybody was
aware OF that.
Nothing is palmer in literature, than that
in the pages of old authors, dead and gone
centuries before, certain mysterious predic-
tions stood written down, which inspired
and justified this expectation. When Herod
the King, called the scribes together and
asked where Christ should be born, they
knew very we'll what the question meant,
and they knew exactly where to find the
answer. They turned to well-known page
in the ancient prophecy and read what had,
ages back, been written there, that Christ
should be born in Bethlehem. Everybody
knew the reason for that universal expecta-
tion of Christ's advent. 1t grew out of the
pages OF these old books. That Christ
should come, that He should be born of
virgin, of the family of David, in the town
of Bethlehem, before the scepter should de-
pant from judah, and while the Temple
should be standing, and at a time in some
sort corresponding to the actual date of the
birth of Jesus of Nazsreth-we can read
to-day the words which they read. There
they stand. Written at different times, and
by different men, and wonderfully meeting
here beside this cradle in Bethlehem, eigh-
teen hundred and ninety years ago.
FULFILLED THE PROPHECIES.
The time came; the predictions were full
filled; the time passed. Here are the mys-
tory, save Jesus of Nazareth, has ever even
pretended with any show of probability to
have fulfilled them. And now the day has
might have been possible. Even the Hebrews
have long ago given up hope. Jesus of
Nazareth did fulfill those prophecies. At
the very moment when all was ready, at the
fulness of the time, Christ came.
Christ came-and here is the second point
at time when the whole civilized world
was united by the two-fold bond of a common
government and common language. The
government was the sovereignty Of Rome;
the language was the tongue of Greece.
From the golden milestone in the forum
roads reached out, like modern railways.
into all parts Of the known world There
had never before that century been a time
when travel was anything like as expedi-
tious, as safe, as easy. There has never since
thatcentury until these days in which we live
been condition of things like it. Before
that all had been war. You could not 90
100 miles without running into some kind
of ambuscade.
After that the plague of war fell again upon
the empire. Presently the harharians ,anoa