The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-24

or God once impressed on Adam and Eve. He entered into the most intimate relations with humanity. Most men are poor, unhappy pitiable; 1t is only the few who are otherwise. nor is their lot a certain one. So Jesus was born in a wretched manager and bore every pang and whip of poverty and sorrow; He was weak and lowly and dependent, that He might teach us how to look on all these things, might leave to the most helpless of our race the strong support ing philosophy of a divine example. might glorify and sanctify these usual condi- tions of our birth and training. Then again, in all men there is spring or source of rebellion against law and or der that make for the things above. Hence sin and its consequences. In vain had the Father imposed the stern ceremonial( oppressive law of the Old Testament The one people to whom He gave it, lowered with promises and prophecies and mir acles, again and again shook off its yoke as something unbearable. But the Little Infant in the crib brings a new law, the law of love-EIimself, the very source of goodness. From His person through endless ages there flows an unspeakable charm that warns life like a fire and draws like a magnet. and sweeps us upward to him like a mighty wind. Now, we have not only the Divine Example, that touchstone of right and wrong, of good and bad, but in the heart of every man of good will there is planted the conscious tendency to observe the new law, with the power to do so
 This day, nineteen hundred years ago, they were killing the fat beeves about the altars of the Temple, and repeating the solemn promises of the Lord that He would rend the heavens and rain down the Just One. Sometimes, too. was stirr ing the hearts of men at Rome and in the faIaf rcrn ef., Ia f1 lines, that even yet seem tine highest fight of human hope in days of despair. And kings, wise men from the esat, are even now bending over the Infant God, with the traditional homage of their mys- terious lands. One blameless man, one stainless maiden, are there and the dumb beasts in mute testimony to their Maker. Thus was the new law proclaimed, the school of life opened, not in the smoke and thunder of Sinai, but in the stiffness of the cave, in the depths of winter, in the remoteness of Semitic hilltown; never creation, animate and inanimate: before the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the Jew and the gentle, the east and the west. One day men will say of the new Teacher that He speaks as one having power. It is because He began to study human life at the lowest rung of the ladder One day an emperor will stand aghast at the tenacity of His dis ciples not to be shaken by fire or sword or any contumely It is because their Lawgiver squared His precepts with the deepest lines of the human heart, and crowned their observation with the sat isfacton of it's holiest impulses and emo tions.
 The holy church is well aware that the evils of life are not all traceable to the shortcomings of men; there is an exter- nal power, the power of Satan. the source 4-... tt-rar ncdi- ble root of rebellion. Against this manifold power she halls the birth of Jesus as the coming of Israel. His right arm shall be stretched out to ward off the host of impiety. Long had Israel known the roads that led down into exile; often had the people of God watered their bread with their tears in the lands of Pharaoh, or Cyrus or the Ptolemies or Caesar. Away from the hilltops of Judea the world itself was prison house and life the porti- co of death The heather society was leagued against them and their one tenure the belief in one God and in His moral law Peoples had ragged and kings had thundered, and tribes and nations had hurled themselves on the chosen people in the interests of idolatry. But the hope in the Redeemer, in the Liberator was unshakable as a rock and seemed to cast its roots deeper with every reverse.
 But now Judah is passing away. The shadow of the sword lies over the city and the temple. A new light falls on the pages of the old law from the crib at Bethlehem There is indeed a new Cap tain, a new Liberator but no longer from the thraldom of Egyptian or Essyrian or Greek. This new captain comes to break the gates of hell, to free the souls of men from their real oppressor, whom as yet they only dimly recognize. He Is an em- peror of truth against an emperor of lies. AA tfafra Rf ch ha nj frauds and decelts by which the hearts of men had been ensnared and their eyes made blind to the truth. Henceforth the nature of mans true enemy is known; so. too his habits his home. his means of warfare. Pharoah and Ptolemy, Babylon and Tyre, and hencefort'h only symbols of a spiritual enemy, of spiritual strongholds of temptation and sin
 70 Adonai. thou leader of the House of Israel, who didst appear to Moses in the Burning Bush, and didst give him the law on Mount Sinai, come and re- deem us in the strength of thy arm, o Key of David, and Sceptre of the House of Israel who doth open and no man closeth who closeth and no man doth open come and free the captive from his prison-hou where he sitteth in darkness and in the shadow of deathn'
 In this double conflict with the forces within and without himself, man was being ground as wheat between the up- per and the neither millstones. He did not understand the terms of the struggle, and his best efforts, both in the law and outside of the law went for naught. From many a heart in those days went up the cry of the apostle, Unhappy me. who shall free me from the body of this death?" Philosophy had vainly tried to furnish some men with an anchor in the sea of doubt and opinion. The face of superstition had changed again and again. but its painted lips were powerless