CHAPTER XI.

GOOD-WILL to all the nations, angels sang,
At our Messiah's birth, in multitude;
The host of heaven, attending at his beck;
Ministering to him in humble attitude;

To stay his hunger, or with garments deck
The prince of heaven, now seen-the "Son of Man."
For what the law had failed to do, he came

To obviate in weakness of our state,

Then fallen and sinful: he came first to give
Power to man, by faith, all sin to hate:
He moved the barriers from the heavenly gate;
That all should glorify his father's name.

For the law having failed in the perfection demanded by the highest conceivable Perfector of good, the Lord our God; and being the occasion of continual vexation, owing to the weakness and infirmity of human nature, in the most obedient of suppliant man; -and stirring up wrath against the

wicked doers, to the bringing down swift vengeance from heaven;-was not able to save, from destruction, those whom God himself designed to save, and to take to him into the kingdom of heaven.

Consequently God, the God of love and of truth, sent his heavenly angels to proclaim his "good will toward men from that time;" namely, the birth of the Saviour King our Lord, which took place at Bethlehem, in the days of Herod. And Herod in his day made an assembly of your chief priests and scribes of the people: together when they were all met, hiding his purpose from them, "he demanded of them where Christ should be born." For he intended to slay your infant Christ: but God prevented this; by taking from Herod's sword, the souls of the innocents whom he needlessly slew in his stead;

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for he was taken by his supposed father and the virgin, his mother, into Egypt, according to the prophet's saying, “out of Egypt have I called my son." And what answer did Herod receive from that convention? Perhaps you will say, you know not. And then I ask more earnestly; why you cannot answer this question? For if you are kept in ignorance of the history of that time, you are imposed on by your fathers from that time to this. Now if you are not acquainted with the answer given to Herod; the testimony of them that received the Saviour King our Lord, declares: "they said to Herod ; in Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it has been written by the prophet, and thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel."

Therefore the Saviour-by his having been born, as it is written in the books of prophetical truth; and by his having fulfilled the law and the prophets' sayings respecting himself, even to death, and to rising again from the dead, annulling all laws but those of justice, mercy, and faith;-is fully proved to be that "Governor " who feeds from heaven, his spiritual Israel, the true offspring of the promise.

For at this publishing the good-will of God towards men from that very time, that is, the birth of the Saviour King our Lord, there is implied, a declaration of something more than usual; of something of an especial kind to men. For it is a good-news

message.

And why was it first proclaimed to the shepherds in the plains, keeping their flocks at night? Was it because

the shepherds are styled, "The stone of Israel?" And did your high-minded Fathers despise so common a revelation of the divine, "good-will to men from that time,-and for ever and ever? So then they began to stumble, through their pride, over the "stone placed in Sion: " for if they had been of the humility of the law of mercy and truth, they would have received the Christ, and given themselves up to his perfections of right; and to the peace of a reconciliation to God through the mediation of the Saviour King, our Lord: -they would have yielded themselves to him, as unable to keep the law, and in capitulatory consciousness of their own defects, submitted themselves to his perfections; adoringly rojoicing in the "imputed" perfections of the Saviour King our Lord. For if David describes the blessed state of that man