The Newtown bee., 1895-02-15
BE MEAN TO ONE ANOTHER

us the eternal sons of His love aad gloryf How can we
 l BE MEAN TO ONE ANOTHER | when we think of Gods love to us There is another thought which comes to me with thrill of joy which helps to confirm my faith in the Incarnation if God is everywhere present in all His universe so that in some sense at least He is in all things and as the great apostle St Paul says ssIn Him we live and move and have our beipg,' how simple and natural it seems that He should show Himself in just the way He did, in that form and likeness which is most like Himself and nearest to Him. | self in this world, s'the human form di- | vine" the perfect Son of Man, ,--the human completed by it's spiritual union l with divine,-the Divine embodied and exemplified in the human. I don't know that it is any harder to believe tbat God came and dwelt among men to redeem the world than it is to believe that God made the world and man in His own inn age. If He did the one why should He not do the other? The love that could create could most surely redeem and the love that can save can without doubt perfect and glorify that which he has begun in us.
 My present thought is that Jesus passed through all the successive stages of hu- man life and knew by experience the same essential earthly life in the flesh that we live. He was the Divine-man and example for us in all things. Above all and first of all He showed us how we are related to Our Father in Heaven and that we are to be like Him in spirit and in truth, and that
 HE'S EVER READY TO HELP US
 to be what He would have us to be. That He loves us and does not con demn us but in all things seeks to re- lease us from our own sense of condem- nation by redeeming us from sin.
 In the birth of Jesus we have the union of the Divine and the human. AS the only Begotten of the Father He is God l And He was God with us in the highest manifestation which we could compre hend. AS the child of Mary He is the Son of Man. He is the perfect man. humanity made divine. His paternity was divine and eternal His maternity was human and mortal, and therefore He was the Goldman. How it exalts our poor sin-cursed and weakened nature that we through Him are regenerated and made partakers of the divine nature which is eternal! He who has life ip Himself even as God the Father has life in Himself comes to us in our own mortal conditions of being, touched with the feeling of our iDfirmities," |" that we may touch Him through faith and live; that this mortal may at last put on immortality Dead in sin, we can only live by Him! He is our only Mediator. This is the meaning of the Incarnation. And then, being touche with the life of God, the only life there is that can vanquish death; then He also gives us the pattern of conduct and character-He is our Divine example He begun at the beginning and went all the way through this life for us, with us, we may well say, illustrating all its stages of development and phases of ex perience. He was made likes us; He suffered with us and for us; and made plain the future before us that we need not fear nor dread; He has gone on be fore us to prepare place for us; He in tercedes for us and waits to receive us He was poor babe like other babes helpless and dependent. The conditions of his childhood were of the mos lowly; but
 HE WAS HOLY CHILD , Divine infant. The madonna ant ? child is the worlds highest ideal of th' beautiful and perfect-the divinely human. Jesus was boy like othel boys. And the Child grew, and waxee strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; ane the grace of God was upon Him." Suct is the divine record of His growth anc l progress as the Son of Man. If we needed any proof of His real and proper humanity we might find it in those , words. He was subject to the laws and conditions of our nature; He was as truly a child as we have been; He grew He waxed strong in spirit; He was en- dowed with gifts from His heavenly Father, being filled with wisdom, His understanding, reason, and conscience, were illuminated as ours; the grace ot God, the spirit of holiness, humility. love, was upon Him. This subjection of His person to the laws of human nature is again recorded where St Luke says, He s'came to Nazareth, being about l2 years old, land was subject unto them. , And again in the words of our text: I"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man, His youth was proper youth. of subjection and obedience and love and growth in grace as also in body and mind. St Ireneus, one of the earliest of the Church Fathers, says: He came Mot disdaining nor going in way above human nature; nor breaking irf His own person the IaB which He had set for mankind; but sanctffying every age by the likeness it bears to Hir- For He came to save all men f- selfs--all, mean who aap
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