star to star, across inconceivable chasms, leaping down abysmal depths, searching out the buried seed and raising it up into an hundred-fold as food for us, stealing into our chambers on the wings of the morning, folding their wings around us in the darkness of the night, shielding us from the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday, bearing us up in their hands lest at any time we dash our foot against a stone, these invisible messengers are our loving guardians, our bounteous almoners, bringing down from their Father above and our Father every good and perfect gift to us, whom He has designated to this high honor, to be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.

Yea, more, St. Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, warrants us in going further. He represents the whole creation, not only as charged with this ministry of mercy to us; it awaits with longing desire, as a mother waits for her unborn child, the redemption of our bodies and the time of our manifestation as the sons of God.* Their outbirth into the glory of the new creation shall be her rest and joy. So closely has God bound up this mystery of redemption with this mystery of creation.

And if our eyes are anointed with the eye-salve

*Rom. viii; 19-22.

of His word, if we truly prize these great lights kindled on its pages to guide us through the darkness of this present time, no false lights of human wisdom or science can ever obscure in our souls the light of this bright and Morning Star.

Nothing shall close our eyes to the fact of God's presence all around us, of His loving ministry of mercy and of chastisement, too, through all this system of laws and forces to which we are now subject. Beyond Sirius, beyond those vast fields of light across which Orion leads his bands, we shall discern the shining of this greater light,— "The Lord God is our Sun and our Shield." All nature will seem to us alive with God, and we shall see His hand and feel the warm beating of His heart in all, and all its agencies of good or ill will seem but fingers on the hand by which He is leading us up along our pilgrim path on to the heights of eternal life and glory. There no veil of created things shall any longer hide from us the full vision of our Father. The veil will be lifted, and we shall see Him face to face and know Him heart to heart.

II.

THE WORD MADE FLESH.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.-ST. JOHN i. 14.

No Scripture phrase is more deeply significant than this, "The Word of God." Christ is the complete revelation to us of the Father. Hence He is denominated "The Word." Of Him are predicated the titles, the acts, the names, and attributes of God. "Without Him," St. John affirms, "was not anything made that was made."

It was the special mission of this beloved apostle to present this mystery. The Word, of whom he writes, is not an attribute but a person, who, from everlasting, has been the outgoing of the Father in the works of creation and redemption. This divine Person, he tells us, was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Such is the great mystery of godliness. Jesus Christ, who we know was man, was truly God. The Christian confession concerning Him is that of St. Peter, "We believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." On

this Rock the church is built. And he that so confesses is born of God.

As this is the foundation-truth in the Christian scheme, by which it stands or falls, it is not surprising that the chief assaults of unbelief have been from the first aimed against it. Perhaps from no quarter has it been more plausibly assailed than from the teachings of science, falsely so called. Since the time St. John wrote, "All things were made by Him," science has revolutionized the common conception of the universe. Then men thought the earth the greatest thing in creation. Now we know it to be but a speck in the mighty volume of star-dust the breath of God has rolled through boundless space. A drop to the ocean, a grain of sand to its wide stretch of shore, is all that the earth is to the universe. And yet we are confronted with the amazing announcement that the Maker of all these worlds was born a babe in Bethlehem. "He was made

flesh and dwelt among us." "The world might have believed that," says the sceptic, "eighteen hundred years ago, but the advanced science of our day pities its credulity."

But let us see whether this cavil, so boastingly put forth, has any ground even in reason or science to rest upon. It is a sufficient reply to it to say that there is something grander in creation than all this material glory. The mind that is able

to investigate these subjects, that can reach over these vast spaces and measure these huge orbs, that can range on wings of light through these trackless depths and pay its intelligent tribute of praise to the Maker of these countless worlds, is greater than the worlds themselves. Jesus taught men that the whole world was not of equal value with one human soul. And this mass of worlds, considered as agglomerations of matter, are not worth so much. Moreover, the element of size provides no standard by which to measure the thoughts and ways of God. Before Him, the Infinite, all finite things are equally great or small. If the earth were millions of times larger than it is, and man proportionately enlarged in person and in faculties, the disproportion between him and his Maker would not be one whit the less.

But this objection takes much for granted that is not allowable in an argument that pretends to base itself on the exact teachings of science. It assumes that this multitude of worlds are inhabited, and that these inhabitants are as high, if not higher, in the scale of being than man. But for this assertion it gives no proof. No one has ever seen or conversed with these alleged beings. True, the Word of God speaks of angels. But the objector who will not submit to that Word in one thing must not appeal to it to sustain another.