Born of a Woman.
by H. P. Liddonfrom
Christmastide in St. Paul's: Sermons Bearing Chiefly on the Birth of Our Lord and the End
of the Year.
Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1898 [Fifth Edition]
Sermon VI. for the Sunday after Christmas. ST. MATT. i. 22, 23.
Now all this was done,
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet,
saying, Behold, a Virgin shall be with Child, and shall bring forth a Son,
and they shall callHis Name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is,
God with us.
MANY readers of the Bible must be struck by the reason which St. Matthew
here gives for the occurrences connected with the Birth of Christ: “All
this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord
by the Prophet.” Perhaps we whisper to ourselves that the event predicted
is, after all, more important than the prediction; and that it would have
been more natural to say that the prophecy existed for the sake of the
event, than the event for the sake of the prophecy; that Isaiah’s utterance
was meant to prepare the world for Jesus Christ, than that the Birth of
Jesus Christ was designed to justify Isaiah. But, in truth, both the prophecy
and its fulfilment were from God; and the independent and higher importance
of the event is not inconsistent with its being also a certificate of the
Prophet’s accuracy. There were other reasons, no doubt, for the Birth of
Jesus Christ of a Virgin-Mother; but one reason for it was that it was
already foretold on Divine authority. And it fell in with St. Matthew’s
general plan throughout his Gospel, to insist on this particular reason.
He wrote for Churches consisting almost entirely of converts from Judaism;
and he is concerned, at almost every step of his narrative, to show that
the Life of Jesus, in all its particulars, corresponded to the statements
of Jewish prophecy, as understood by the Jews themselves, respecting the
coming Messiah. So he begins at the beginning, with the Birth of Christ;
and he says that Jesus was born just as Isaiah had said that Christ would
be born, and, among other reasons, because Isaiah had said so. Those first
Jewish Christians might feel wonder, even scandal, when first they heard
of the embarrassment of St. Joseph, and of the Angelic assurances; but
they had only to open the roll of prophecy to find that the history had
been accurately anticipated. “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold, a Virgin shall
be with Child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His Name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” In St. Matthew’s eyes,
then, Isaiah is almost as much the historian as he is the Prophet of our
Lord’s Nativity. But is it clear that when Isaiah uttered the words which
are quoted he meant to predict such an event as St. Matthew records?
It has been suggested that this was not really Isaiah’s meaning; that
Isaiah had in view some other event, at once nearer to his own times, and
more commonplace and ordinary than the Birth of the Redeemer; and that
St. Matthew accommodates the Prophet’s language, by a gentle pressure,
to the necessities of the supernatural account which he is himself narrating.
And a main reason which is urged for this view of Isaiah’s meaning is,
that if we look to the circumstances under which his pro-phecy was uttered,
it is difficult to think that so distant an event as the Birth of Messiah
would have at all served his purpose in giving a sign to Ahaz.
What, then, were the circumstances which led Isaiah to proclaim, “Behold,
a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His Name Emmanuel
“ ? (Isa. vii. 14.) Ahaz, the King of Judah, was besieged in his capital
by the allied forces of Israel and Syria, under their kings Pekah and Rezin.
These kings were really leagued against the rising empire of Assyria; but
they thought that they would best consolidate their own power in Palestine
by deposing the reigning family of David from the throne of Jerusalem and
setting up a vassal monarch, “the son of Tabeal,” (Isa. vii. 6.) on whose
services they could reckon in the approaching struggle with Assyria. Isaiah,
with his son, was sent to encourage Ahaz to make a stout resistance, and
to assure him that, notwithstanding the project of the allied kings, God
would be faithful to His covenant with David. These associated kings, Isaiah
says, need occasion Ahaz no anxiety; they were like brands that are nearly
burnt out; there was no Divine force in Syria, and no political future
for Israel. Ahaz had only to trust God; all would be well.
Ahaz was silent; silent because suspicious and distrustful. And then
Isaiah bade him ask for some token which might assure him of God’s presence
with and good will towards him. “Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask
it either in the depth, or in the height above.” Had Ahaz then asked
for a token of God’s good will towards himself personally, or his immediate
descendants, it would, no doubt, have been granted. But Ahaz was bent upon
an irreligious policy of his own; he thought that, by the aid of Assyria,
he would be able to do without the God and the religion of his ancestors;
he looked on God and His Prophets as personal enemies who thwarted his
plans; and he did not wish, by asking for a sign, to commit himself to
a religious creed and system with which, he hoped, he had parted company
for ever. Yet Ahaz, standing before the Prophet, could not refuse to say
anything; he must accept or decline the invitation to ask for a sign. He
declined to do so; and, as irreligious people often do in like circumstances,
he pleaded a religious scruple as the reason for his refusal. The old Law
had warned Israel against tempting the Lord by asking for new evidences
or “signs” of such truth as was already sufficiently attested; (Deut. vi.
16.) and Ahaz, who had resorted freely to the forbidden arts of necromancy
gravely produced this entirely insincere reason to account for his resolve:
“I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.” (Isa. vii. 12.)
Then it was that Isaiah spoke, not without some righteous anger, to
King Ahaz. “Hear ye now, ye house of David; Is it a small thing for you
to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? therefore the Lord Himself
shall give you a sign.” (Isa. vii. 13.) A sign would be given, but Ahaz
could now no longer determine its drift and character. It would show that
God would be true to His promises to David; but it would afford scant encouragement
to the personal ambitions of the degenerate descendants of the man after
God’s own heart. The earthly throne of David might perish; but the promise
of unfailing empire made to David would still be safe, though it would
be fulfilled in a distant age, and by unthought-of agencies. Just as Moses
was assured that God had sent him, by the sign of a future deliverance
from Egypt, which at the time seemed impossible; (Exod. iii. 12.) so religious
Jews of Isaiah’s day, for whom Isaiah was really speaking, were to be assured
of the safety of the great religious interests entrusted to the House of
David, by a sign or predicted wonder, without parallel in history, but
designed to convince them that God might punish the rebellious kings of
Judah, and yet work out the promised salvation of Israel and the human
race. “Behold,” Isaiah cries, as he gazes across the centuries at the picture
which passes before him—“Behold, the Virgin”—the language shows that he
is thinking of one in particular—“is with Child, and beareth a Son, and
shall call His Name Emmanuel.” (Isa. vii. 14.)
It was, then, no part of Isaiah’s plan to give a sign which should assure
Ahaz of present deliverance; he had done that before in plain language.
And when he utters the prophecy quoted by St. Matthew, he has other and
higher objects before him, the nature of which must be determined, not
by the real or supposed state of mind of Ahaz, but by the natural force
of the Prophet’s words.
Here, then, let us consider the importance of the event to which Isaiah
thus looks forward, and which the Evangelist describes as fulfilled.
I.
This importance is seen, first of all, in the strictly preternatural
character of the occurrence itself. “Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and
bear a Son.” The foil to this prediction is the universal law, by which
our race is transmitted, that a child must have two human parents. St.
Matthew is explicit in his account of the events which preceded our Lord’s
Birth; but it has been contended that the word (Etymologically, the word
hmle' may mean a marriageable maiden (ole,
adolescere); but in the Old Testament there is no proof of
its being applied to any but the unmarried. To determine the sense of such
words by that which they, or their roots, bear in the cognate dialects,
is a common source of error.) which Isaiah uses, and which is translated
“virgin,” may mean a young but married woman. If this were the meaning,
it is difficult to see why there should be any allusion to the mother at
all, since the predicted child would only be born like all other children,
and would not be a sign in the Prophet’s sense. But the Hebrew word for
“virgin” is used of Rebekah (Gen. xxiv. 43.) before her marriage with Isaac;
of Miriam, (Exod. ii. 8.) the maiden sister of the infant Moses; and in
five other places (1 Chron. xv. 20; Ps. lxviii. 25; Prov. xxx. 19; Song
of Sol. i. 3; vi. 8.) in which it is found in the Old Testament there is
no reasonable ground for thinking that any but unmarried women are meant.
I do not forget the names of scholars who, moved apparently by extraneous
considerations, have disputed the accuracy of the authorized translation;
but one fact in connection with it is instructive, and may throw a great
deal of light upon more recent criticism. When the first translation of
the Hebrew Bible into Greek was made, some two centuries at the least before
our Lord, in Alexandria, and nothing was supposed to be at stake, the Jewish
translators rendered this word of Isaiah’s by “virgin.” (LXX.,
paryenov.)
But when, in the second century of our era, Aquila, a Jewish proselyte
of Sinope, having his eye upon the Christian appeal to Jewish prophecy,
undertook a new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, he rendered
it by “a young woman.” (neaniv,
Aquila.) If in our day the point could be decided by the natural force
of language, without reference to the claims of Christianity or the possibility
of the preternatural, there would not be much doubt upon the subject.
For Christians, who bow to the authority of the Gospel, there can be
no doubt. After describing our Lord’s Birth of a Virgin-Mother, St. Matthew
adds, “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken
of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold, a Virgin shall be with Child,
and shall bring forth a Son.” If the Prophet whom St. Matthew quotes said
nothing about a “Virgin,” but was only predicting a marriageable maiden,
and a natural birth, St. Matthew’s quotation is not only irrelevant; it
is an attempt, by means of a false translation, to claim for his narrative
the sanction of prophecy. If we are not prepared to say that the ignorance
or the bad faith of the Evangelist is fatal to his authority as a religious
teacher, we must continue to read the Prophet as our forefathers read him;
we must believe him to have foretold that Emmanuel would be born of a Virgin-Mother.
The Birth of Jesus Christ is not unfrequently discussed in our day,
as the birth of a great man, but without reference to the virginity of
His Mother. Isaiah’s prediction and St. Matthew’s narrative are passed
over, as if they were not of much importance to our estimate of the event.
My brethren, it is necessary to say plainly that the account in the Gospel
is either true or false. If it is false, it ought to be repudiated by honest
men as a baseless superstition. If, as we Christians believe, it is true,
then it is a very momentous truth; it implies a great deal more than is
to be expressed by saying that the Son of the Virgin was a great or extraordinary
Man; it carries us beyond the limits of nature and ordinary experience.
Doubtless, here and there in the heathen world, there were legends of
sages or poets who were born of virgins; but these legends are related
to the history of our Saviour’s Birth, as are false to true miracles. As
the counterfeit miracle implies the real miracle of which it is a counterfeit,
so the idea of a virgin-birth, here and there discoverable in paganism,
points to a deep instinct of the human race, and to a high probability
that the Absolute Religion would satisfy it. Men felt, pagans though they
were, the oppression and degradation of their hereditary nature; they longed
for some break in the tyrannical tradition of flesh and blood; they longed
for the appearance of some being who should still belong to them, yet in
a manner so exceptional as to be able to inaugurate a new era in humanity.
Revelation, surely, is not less trustworthy because it recognizes an instinct
which only led men to do it justice, and which was in accordance with moral
truth.
II.
For here we touch upon a primary reason for our Lord’s preternatural
Birth. If He was to raise us from our degradation, He must Himself be sinless;
a sinless Example and a sinless Sacrifice. Our Lord Himself and His Apostles
abundantly insist upon this His sinlessness (St. John viii.; 2 Cor. v.
21; 1 St. Pet. ii. 22.) but how was it to be secured if He was indeed to
become incorporate with a race which was steeped in a tradition of evil?
When, by his transgression, our first parent had forfeited the robe of
grace in which God had clothed him in Paradise, he passed on to his descendants
a nature so im-poverished, as to be biassed in a wrong direction; thenceforth
evil had the upper hand in human nature. It descended, like a bad name
or a disease, from generation to generation; and though here or there,
as with Jeremiah (Jer. i. 5.) or the Baptist, (St. Luke i. 15.) there was
a special sanctification before birth, yet the millions of mankind had
to say with David, “Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath
my mother conceived me.” (Ps. li. 5.) How, then, was this fatal entail
to be cut off so decisively that all should understand the enfranchisement?
The Birth of a Virgin was the answer to that question. The Virgin’s Son
was still human; but. in Him humanity had inherited no part of that bad
legacy which came across the ages from the Fall. And truly, “such an High
Priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” (Heb.
vii. 26.)
This, indeed, as you will have anticipated, is not the whole account
of the matter. The Birth of Jesus Christ, as we Christians believe, marked
the entrance into the sphere of sense and time of One Who had already existed
from eternity. At His Birth, as St. Paul says, He was “manifested in the
flesh;” (1 Tim. iii. 16; cf. pp. 108, 109.) but whether in this passage
He is called God or not, the Apostle’s words at the least imply that our
Lord existed before His manifestation in time. The Father “sent forth His
Son, made of a woman,” as St. Paul again tells us in the Epistle for today.
(Sunday after Christmas Day: Gal. iv. 4.) But the Son existed before He
was sent forth; the expression is evidently chosen to imply this. And this
previous existence did not date from creation; for “in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (St. John i.
1.)
How was the entrance of such a Being into this our world so to be marked
as to show that He did not originally owe existence to a human parent?
We could not have dared to answer such a question beforehand; but we can
see how it is answered by our Lord’s Birth of a Virgin. Was it not natural
that Nature should thus suspend her laws to welcome the approach and the
blessing of her Maker?
III.
The significance of our Lord’s Birth of a Virgin-Mother may also be
gathered from its results.
At this distance of time we can see that no other birth, since the beginning
of history, has involved such important consequences to the human race.
We Christians have had nearly nineteen centuries in which to form comparisons
and to arrive at conclusions. We have had time to take the measure of the
great statesmen, soldiers, poets, teachers, who have been foremost among
mankind. Who of them all has left behind him a work which can compare with
that achieved by Jesus Christ? Napoleon I. once set himself to contrast
the empires of Alexander, of Caesar, and his own, with that of our Lord
and Saviour. Theirs were transient, His is lasting; theirs had reached
a limit, His is ever extending; theirs were based on force, His is based
on convictions. Who, again, of the great men of letters has swayed the
world like Jesus Christ? Doubtless they, too, have an empire. Who can dispute
the influence at this hour of Plato, of Shakespeare, of Bacon? But it is
an influence which differs in kind from His: they only interest the intellect,
while He subdues the will. Nay, compare Him with the great teachers of
false religions; with Sakya-Mouni, who preceded, or with Mohammad, who
followed Him. Certainly Buddhism outnumbers Christendom; and we cannot
deny the activity of Islam in certain portions of the Eastern world. But
these religions are the religions of races with no real future. Christianity
is the Creed of the nations which year by year are more and more controlling
the destinies of our race. And if it be urged that large portions of the
European nations, Christian by profession, are now abjuring Christianity,
it may be replied that such an apostasy will not last. Man cannot dispense
with Religion; and when he has come into contact with the highest type
of Religion, he has thereby exhausted the religious capacities of his nature;
the Absolute Religion makes any other impossible for free and sincere minds.
The present efforts to replace Christianity by an imaginary religion of
the future, distilled out of all the positive religions of the world, is
doomed to a. failure only less complete than the attempt to replace it
by mere negations. There are not wanting signs of a rebound towards the
Faith; there are no signs whatever of a rising religious force capable
of superseding it. Meanwhile, all that is best and most full of hope in
the civilized world dates from the Birthday of Jesus Christ. Doubtless
we owe to the old pagan days some things which rank high in the order of
nature. We owe philosophy to Greece, and law and well-ordered life to Rome.
But the idea of progress, which, however it may have been misapplied, is
perhaps the most fertile and energetic idea in modern public life, is a
creation of the Christian Creed. It springs from these high hopes for the
future, whether of individuals or of the race, which Christ has taught
His disciples to entertain, out of pure loyalty to Himself. And such institutions
as hospitals, which make life tolerable for the suffering classes, that
is, for the majority of human beings, date, one and all, from the appearance
of Jesus Christ, and from the principles which He proclaimed to men with
sovereign authority.
To take one point among many, the position of women in Christian society
is directly traceable, not only to our Lord’s teaching, but to the circumstances
of His Birth. Before He came, woman, even in Israel, was little better
than the slave of man; in the heathen world, as in Eastern countries now,
she was a slave, to all intents and purposes. Here and there a woman of
great force of character, joined to hereditary advantages, might emerge
from this chronic oppression; she might become a Deborah, a Semiramis,
a Cleopatra, a Boadicea, or a Zenobia; she might control the world, or
at least its rulers. But the lot of the majority of women was a suffering
and degraded one. Now, when Christ took upon Him to deliver man, He did
not abhor the Virgin’s womb. In the greatest event in the whole course
of human history the stronger sex had no part whatever. The Incarnate Son
was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. And therefore
in Mary woman rose to a position of consideration unknown before. Nothing
was forfeited that belongs to the true modesty and grace of woman’s nature,
but the larger share of influence, in shaping the destinies of the Christian
races, was secured to her in perpetuity. It was the Incarnation which created
chivalry, and all those better features of modern life which are due to
it. And surely they are no true friends to the real influence and usefulness
of women who would substitute for the Christian ideal of womanhood another,
in which she is to compete for awhile with man in all the bustling energy
of his public life, and in the end to be relegated to some such social
fate as will inevitably follow upon unsuccessful rivalry.
But these outward and visible results of the Birth of Christ were far
from being the most important. It is onceivable that such results as these
might have been due to a religious genius of commanding influence, or to
a man invested with miraculous powers, but still altogether and only a
man. The Birth of Jesus Christ meant much more than this. It was the entrance
of the Word made Flesh into the scene of sense and time; it was the manifestation
of God by His taking our nature upon Him.
Before the Incarnation there was a great gulf fixed between God and
man. Man could think about God; he could pray to Him; he could practise
a certain measure of obedience to His Will. But in his best moments man
was conscious of his utter separateness from God, as the Perfect Moral
Being. He was conscious of sin; and this meant nothing less than separation
from the All-holy.
The Incarnation of Jesus Christ was a bridge across the chasm which
thus parted earth and Heaven. On the one hand, and from everlasting, Jesus
Christ is of one Substance with the Father, Very and Eternal God; on the
other, He was made very Man, of the substance of the Virgin Mary, His Mother.
As the Collect says, “He took man’s nature upon Him.” When He had already
existed from Eternity, He folded around Him, and made His own, a created
form, a Human Body and a Human Soul, to be for ever united to His Eternal
Godhead. Through this His Human Nature He acts, on God’s behalf, upon mankind.
Through this His Human Nature He pleads for man before the Majesty of God.
Thus there is “one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.”
(I Tim. ii. 5.) It is as Man that He mediates between the Creator and the
creature, between sinners and the All-holy; but His Godhead secures to
His mediation its commanding power. If He were not Human, we should be
unrepresented in Heaven, where He ever liveth to make intercession for
us. (Heb. vii. 25.) If He were not Divine, it would be impossible to say
why His Death upon the Cross should have infinite merit; or why “the Body
of Jesus Christ, which was given for us,” should now, in the Holy Sacrament,
“preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life." (Words
of Administration at the Holy Communion.) As Mediator He is at one
and the same moment in the bosom of the Godhead, and in the closest contact
with the souls of His redeemed; and this is a result of His entrance, clad
in a Created Form, into our human world, being as He is the Everlasting
Son, yet withal the Child of Mary.
That this is the deepest meaning of Christmas, and of the Birth of Christ,
is implied in the Name assigned by prophecy (Isa. vii. 14.) to the Virgin’s
Son—the sublime Name, Emmanuel. From the day of the Nativity God was with
man, not simply as heretofore, as the Omnipresent, but under new and more
intimate conditions. From the day of the Nativity there was a change in
the relations between earth and Heaven. To be one with Christ was to be
one with God; and this union with God through Christ is the secret and
basis of the new kingdom of souls which Christ has founded, and in which
He reigns. Who shall describe the wealth of spiritual and moral power which
dates from the appearance of the Incarnate Son in our human world, as our
“Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption?” (1 Cor.
i. 30.) Here and there we see through the clouds, as though by glimpses,
some streaks of the glory of this Invisible Kingdom of souls; but only
in another life shall we understand at all approximately what it has meant
for millions of our race.
IV.
And here, though we are still only on the threshold of the subject,
we must note two points in conclusion.
1. Observe the contrast between the real and the apparent importance
of the Birth of Christ. To human sense, the event which took place at Bethlehem
may well have seemed at the time commonplace enough. An Infant was born
under circumstances of hardship; in a wayside stable. To those who did
not look closely into the circumstances, it might have occurred that a
like event had often happened before, and would often be repeated. Everybody
did not hear the song of the Angels, or mark the bearing of the Virgin-Mother
and of her saintly spouse. The Kingdom of God had entered into history,
but certainly “not with observation.” (St. Luke xvii. 20.) Nay, more, even
among the worshippers of Christ the full meaning of His Birth, as opening
a new era in the history of the human race, was not at once practically
appreciated. For five centuries and a half, Christians still reckoned the
passing years by the names of the Roman consuls or by the era of Diocletian,
just like the pagans around them. It was only in the year 541 that Dionysius
the Little, a pious and learned person at Rome, first ranged the history
of mankind around the most important event in it—the Birthday of Jesus
Christ. Christendom at once recognized the justice of this way of reckoning
time; and no attempts to supersede it, such as that which was made in France
during the First Revolution, have since had a chance of success. But how
often do we use the phrase, “the year of our Lord,” without reflecting
that it proclaims the Birth of Jesus Christ to be an event of such commanding
importance that all else in human history, rightly understood, is merely
relative to it; interesting only as it precedes or follows, as it leads
up to or is derived from it! Yet, as you know, five centuries and a half
passed before this was practically recognized.
So it has been ever since; so it is at this hour. Real importance is
one thing, apparent importance another. The events which move the
world are not always those which men think most noteworthy. The men who
most deeply influence their fellows are not those of whom everybody is
talking. The currents of thought and feeling which will shape the future
are not those which are welcomed by the organs and interpreters of current
opinion. When Christ appeared, the Palace of the Caesar seemed to be more
likely to govern the destinies of mankind than the Manger of Bethlehem.
No, brethren, depend on it, the apparent is net always, or even generally,
the real.
2. The importance of the Birth of Christ must be variously recognized;
by the student of history, by the philosopher, by the divine. But there
is one aspect of it which, for you and me, is more pressing than any other.
What is its practical importance to us now, and in the approaching future?
Probably every one in this Cathedral has said to himself to-day, “This
is the last Sunday in 1878.” Yes, my friends, the hours of this year are
quickly running out; and as those of us who have reached or have passed
middle life look back on it, we are tempted to say, in the phrase of the
Psalmist, “I went by, and lo, it was gone; I sought it, but its place could
nowhere be found.” (Ps. xxxvii. 37.) It seems, indeed, but yesterday when
we were gathered here at the close of 1877; yet since then how much has
taken place, how much has there been to think about! And, after all, thought
and occupation are the wings of time. Certainly it has been a year of anxieties,
a year of struggles, a year of surprises, a year of achievements, a year
in which, whether for good or evil, the nations, as the phrase goes, have
been “making history.” This is not the hour to discuss it controversially;
probably those who come after us will be better able than we to bring a
large knowledge and a calm impartiality to the estimate of what it has
really been to our country and to the human race. But, as it passes, it
leaves us Englishmen with a double burden on our hands; widespread distress
at home, which, according to our means, it should be our care to alleviate;
and one, perhaps two wars, in our dependencies abroad. All who think at
all will find in these facts matters for sober and anxious thought; reasons,
it may also be, for serious misgivings. But, as the year passes, it sweeps
away with it into the abyss of history, into the great company of the dead,
many whom, in private or in public, we have known so well; the aged statesman,
whose long life had been spent in the ardent struggles of political party
; (The Rt. Hon. John, Earl Russell, died May 28, 1978.)
the great missionary bishop, who will rank hereafter in a distant colony
with our own Augustine (The Right Rev. Augustus Selwyn, D.D.,
Bishop of Lichfield, formerly Bishop of New Zealand, died April 11, 1878.)
the divine, in whom, now that he is gone, men have traced the genius and
the spirit of Butler, (The Rev. J. B. Mozley, D.D., Canon
of Christ Church, Oxford, and Regius Professor of Divinity, died January
4, 1878.) the ruler of the largest portion of the Church of Christ
; (Pope Pius IX, died February 27, 1878.) and, not
least, those whom we have most recently mourned—the wife, the Princess,
who has shown us how a high station can be consecrated to God by works
of charity and benevolence. (Her Royal Highness the Grand-Duchess
of Hesse, Princess Alice Maud Mary of England, died December 14, 1878.) Yes! they and many others, nearer, it may be, and dearer to us,
are now among the dead; and as the passing year bears them with it from
our sight, we catch a glimpse of those great realities which we too easily,
all of us, forget. It is certain that many who prayed and listened in this
Cathedral on the last Sunday of 1877 have since passed into the presence
of the Eternal Judge. It is certain that many who pray and listen here
this afternoon will have followed them before the last Sunday of 1879.
Which of us it will be, we know not; but as we think steadily on the undeniable
truth, surely some of the mists of our daily thought clear away, and we
see things more nearly as they are. In that world there will be no England,
but only the souls of Englishmen. In that world there will be no distinctions
of race, or rank, or wealth, or accomplishments, but only the great and
the ineffaceable distinction between the saved and the lost. Surely, as
from this vantage-point of passing time we look out into that coming world,
with its blessed and terrific possibilities, with its glories, its solemnities,
its nearness to each one of us, we must take heed that, for each one of
us, the Birth of the Redeemer shall mark, ere the sacred week has gone,
something more than a milestone on the road of life, or the occasion of
a family gathering. There is one question which every man here should lose
no time whatever in answering, if it be not answered yet: What is my actual
relation to Him, Who, for love of me, was conceived of the Holy Ghost,
and born of the Virgin Mary; my present Redeemer, and my future Judge?
