therefore, the festival of his nativity is immediately followed by the festivals of those who suffered for him. St. Stephen was a martyr, and the first martyr, both in will and in deed. St. John, the beloved disciple, was such in will, but not in deed, being miraculously preserved from the death intended for him by Domitian. The Innocents were martyrs in deed, but not in will, by reason of their tender age. Of these last, however, it pleased the Prince of martyrs to have his train composed, when he made his entry into the world, as at this season; a train of infants, suited to an infant Saviour; a train of Innocents, meet to follow the spotless Lamb, who came to convince the world of sin, and to redeem it in righteousness. They were the first-fruits offered to the Son of God, after his incarnation, and their blood the first that flowed on his account. They appeared as so many champions in the field, clad in the King's coat of armor to intercept the blows directed against him. The Christian poet, PRUDENTIUS, in one of his hymns, has an elegant and beautiful address to these young sufferers for their Redeemer Salvete, flores Martyrum, Vos, prima Christi victima, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God." To be fit for the inheritance of the saints in light, we must put off the passions which are too apt to infest us as men, ambition, pride, craft, envy, hatred, malice, anger, revenge, covetousness, and concupiscence of every sort, and put on their opposites, humility, meekness, modesty, charity, purity, simplicity; we must become such in heart and mind, by the discipline of religion, as little children are by their age; possessed of the same unlimited confidence in the care of a Father, who, as we are assured, careth for us; looking up to him for all we want, and flying to him for protection from all we fear; never entertaining a suspicion of our being forsaken or neglected by him, nor the least inclination to resist his will; equally insensible to the promises and threatenings of the world; resigned to suffer, and not afraid to die, when we are called so to do; able to smile at the drawn dagger, and ready to embrace the arm that aims it at our heart. This idea of a child of God was daily realized, to the admiration of the whole Pagan world, in the first ages of the church. The same inexhaustible and all-powerful grace will realize it in these latter days, when religion shall be considered by us as an art, rather than a science; when Non magna loquimur, sed vivimas, shall be the device adopted by the Christian philosopher; and the precepts of the Gospel shall be practised with as much diligence as that with which its evidences are studied. And lo, for our encouragement, in the portion of Scripture this day appointed for the Epistle, the veil is rent which separates the two worlds; the prospect is opened into another system; the "holiest of all " is diclosed; the celestial mount is discovered, and on its summit "we see a Lamb stand, with an hundred and forty-four thousand" of the like sweet and innocent disposition, "having his Father's name written on their foreheads. These are they which follow the Lamb, whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile, for they were without fault before the throne of God." From their station they beckon us after them, showing us, for our instruction and direction in the way, that "of such is the kingdom of heaven." "Hail, ye first flowers of the evangelical spring, cut off by the sword of persecution, ere yet you had unfolded your leaves to the morning, as the early rose droops before the withered blast. Driven, like a flock of lambs, to the slaughter, you have the honor to compose the first sacrifice offered at the altar of Christ; before which, methinks, I see your innocent simplicity sporting with the palms and the crowns held out to you from above." So remarkable an event necessarily attracts our attention to that age which is proposed by our Lord as, in many respects, a model for us all to copy, in forming our tempers and dispositions. "They brought young children to Christ, that he should touch them, and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But Jesus was much displeased, and said, Suffer little children to come to me, and for- And now we are ready, perhaps, to say bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of with St. Peter, on an occasion somewhat simiGod." And again, when the disciples "ask-lar, It is good for us to be here! Let us make ed him, who should be the greatest in the our abode on the mount! But the time is not kingdom of heaven, he took a little child, yet. We must return, and conclude, as we and set him in the midst, and said, Except ye began, with the lamenting mothers, whom be converted and become as little children, we left behind us in the valley of tears. Their cries, like those of Rachel, portending the birth of a Benoni, a son of sorrow, teach us, his disciples, to expect sorrow for our portion in this life, and to look forward to another for comfort and joy. another deliverance from the power of the destroyer, another prosperity that should have no end, in another land of promise, which should never be taken from them, and from which they should never be taken; where In the world, as in Ramah, "a voice is they, their parents and their children, should heard, lamentation and weeping, and great meet again, to part no more. What else is mourning." Earthly possessions and satis-"the hope of Israel?" what else can it be, factions of every sort are, by their nature, but a "resurrection from the dead?"* : transient. They may leave us; we must Nothing can be plainer than the words of leave them. To him who views them, in the apostle on this subject. Having enumetheir most settled state, with the eye of wis-rated the ancient worthies, from Abel to dom, they appear, as the air in the calmest David and the succeeding prophets, he thus day does to the philosopher through his tele- concludes: "These all, having obtained a scope, ever undulating and fluctuating. If good report through faith, received not the we place our happiness in them, we build promise," THE promise, emphatically, the upon the wave. It rolls from under us, and grand promise, in faith of which they died, we sink into the depths of grief and despond- and of which all other promises were only dency. shadows, and known by them to be such; Children, relations, friends, honors, houses," God having" all along foreseen and "prolands, revenues, and endowments, the goods of nature and of fortune, nay, even of grace itself, are only lent. It is our misfortune to fancy they are given. We start therefore, and are angry, when the loan is called in. We think ourselves masters, when we are but stewards; and forget, that to each of us will it one day be said, "Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou must be no longer steward." Youth dreams of joys unremitted, and plea sures uninterrupted; and sees not, in the charming perspective, the cross accidents that lie in wait to prevent their being so. But should no such accidents for a while intervene, to disturb the pleasing vision, age will certainly awake, and find it at an end. The scythe of time will be as effectual, though not so expeditious, as the sword of the persecutor; and without a Herod, Rachel, if she live long, will be heard lamenting; she will experience sorrows, in which the world can administer no adequate comfort. She must therefore look beyond it. The patriarchs and people of God, in old time, were often delivered from adversity. They often enjoyed prosperity. But after all the wonders wrought for them, and all the blessings conferred upon them, the issue of things was still the same. These friends and favorites of Heaven still saw their relations, frequently their children, falling around them, and at length dropped, themselves, into the grave, to be mourned over by those that survived them. This was the case even in the land of promise itself. Deplorable indeed, therefore, and desperate, like the worst of the Heathen, would have been their condition, had they not been taught, through temporal deliverance and temporal prosperity, in a temporal land of promise, to contemplate | vided some better thing for us;" better than any of those figurative promises which they did receive; to wit, an eternal redemption and an eternal inheritance, " that they, without us, should not be made perfect," as God intends that we, together with them, at the general resurrection, shall be made perfect in heaven. If, then, the mothers in Judah and Benjamin had been properly instructed in the faith of the ancient church, when Jeremiah addressed to them the words we have been considering though they must understand them immediately as a promise that their children should be delivered from Babylon, and brought back again to their own land; yet their thoughts would naturally be carried on, for further comfort, to that other deliverance and restoration from death, promised by all the holy prophets since the world began; even as we may presume the thoughts of a Christian parent would now be, whose son was a slave in Barbary, should a prophet be sent to him with the following message from God: "Your son is gone into captivity, but he shall certainly be redeemed from it." This, however, is indisputable; that, in the application which St. Matthew has taught us to make of the passage, it can admit of no other construction; because there can be no deliverance from bodily death, but by a bodily resurrection. Learn we, therefore, and a more important and useful lesson cannot be learned-whenever death deprives us of those who are near and dear to us, to comfort ourselves and one another with these words; and let each of us, as occasion for consolation shall offer it And when eight aays were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel, before he was conceived in the womb. THESE Words conclude the Gospel for the beginning of joy, because the beginning of day, taken from a chapter which hath afford- redemption, to the sons of men, for whom ed ample matter of wonder and delight the first blood of the all-propitiating victim through the course of the present joyful sea- was now shed. A stumbling-block it may son, when the church, like the blessed Virgin prove to the Jew, foolishness it may appear Mother, is never seen, but with the holy to the Greek, and to all those, who, like child in her arms. By the portions already the one, desire a sign of earthly splendor selected from it, we have been made to listen and magnificence; or, like the other, seek to the sermon preached by an angel upon the after the wisdom of false philosophy: but subject of the Nativity; and the sweet notes to the intelligent, and therefore humble beof that anthem, sung by the choir of heaven liever, Christ, in this state of weakness, pain, immediately after, are still sounding in our and sorrow, is "the wisdom of God" to ears. With the happy and obedient shep- contrive," and the power of God" to effect herds we have been at Bethlehem, and there the deliverance of his people. have seen "this great thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us ;" and have found reason to return, like them, "glorifying and praising God for all the things that we have heard and seen, as it was told unto us." Nor shall we ever forget, it is to be hoped (at least, never, at this hallowed and gracious time,) to imitate her example, who "kept all these sayings, and pondered them in her heart." We are now conducted from the birth to the circumcision of our Redeemer, an account of which immediately follows the history of the shepherds, in the words of the text. And very meet, and right, and our bounden duty it is, that we should at this time, and in this place, employ our thoughts upon it; seeing it was the beginning of sorrows to the Son of God, and the It is observable, that whensoever, in the Scriptures, mention is made of any particular relative to the abasement, the infirmity, and the shame submitted to by Christ, it is presently contrasted by something concerning his exaltation, his power, and his glory; that so, the objection arising in the mind from a view of the former, may be obviated at once by the consideration of the latter, and the Christian may never lose sight of that capital article of his faith, the union of the two natures, divine and human, in the person of his Saviour. Thus we behold him in swaddling clothes; but instantly we hear the heavenly host singing an hallelujah to him. He lies in a manger; but the brightest star in the firmament points the way to his abode. He expires upon the cross; but all nature suffers with him, almost to a dissolution. And thus, in | ants of the patriarch Abraham, what bapthe instance now before us, ne is circum- tism hath been ever since to the spiritual cised indeed on earth, as the son of Abra- progeny of him who is, in a much higher ham; but a name is given him from heaven, as the Son of God. For in these lowly and ignominious circumstances, he receives the name enjoined before to be imposed on him by the angel; a name above every name; a name which evil spirits fear, and good ones adore; a name, at which every knee should rejoice to bow, and which every tongue should exult to confess; since it is by this name that glory is given to God in the highest, peace restored to earth at war with its Maker, and good-will streams forth to sinful men. sense, the Father of us all; it became the sacrament of initiation into the true church and faith. Now, in a sacrament, the outward and visible sign is intended to introduce us to the inward and spiritual grace figured by it as a sign, conveyed by it as a means, and ensured by it as a pledge. And what the inward and spiritual grace signified by circumcision was, not only St. Paul, but Moses himself will tell us, who in the book of Deuteronomy expresseth himself in these terms: "Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked."* And In order to unfold the mystery of the cir- again: "The Lord thy God will circumcise cumcision of Christ, it will be necessary to thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to inquire into the institution of this rite, with love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, the reason and end thereof. (6 Moses," "and with all thy soul, that thou mayest saith our Lord to the Jews, "gave you cir- live." From these passages laid together, cumcision, not because it is of Moses, but the following truths seem to be fairly deduof the fathers;"* this being one of the cible; namely, First, That circumcision many legal ceremonies, which were origi- was an outward and visible sign of an innally communicated to the ancient patri- ward and spiritual grace to be wrought in archs, and afterwards re-ordained in writing the heart: Secondly, That this inward and by Moses. The first account of it occurs spiritual grace was the cutting off and castin the history of our father Abraham; and ing away of sin: Thirdly, That for this St. Paul, discoursing at large upon the work they were not sufficient as of thempoint,† informeth us, that it was given as a selves, but their sufficiency was of the Lord 66 sign or seal of the righteousness, which their God, who would work in them, and is by faith." Now the object of Abraham's with them, through faith, by the Holy faith was redemption by the promised Seed, Spirit: Fourthly, That the effect and conthat is to say, by Messiah, who should sequence of this spiritual circumcision spring from his loins; and in whom, by would be the love of God shed abroad in reason of that redemption, "all the nations their hearts, with its genuine fruit of unof the earth were to be blessed" with the feigned obedience to his commandments : blessings of eternity. And the righteous- And, lastly, That this would prepare the ness, which is by such faith, consisteth in way to eternal life: "that thou mayest the justification of believers by the cutting LIVE," saith Moses; "that thou mayest off and doing away the body of sin through live," not only on earth, under grace, but. the sacrifice of Christ, by which they are hereafter in glory: since "purification of pardoned and made holy, being separated the heart" is in order to a better life in from sin, and sin from them, in order to a that celestial Canaan, the ultimate end of final separation from every thing that of all the promises, that good land which the fendeth, at the resurrection of the just. Lord our God shall give to every Israelite This is "the righteousness of faith," with indeed, and in which he himself, after havwhich Abraham having been before invest-ing been the shield" of Abraham and his ed, he received circumcision, not as any- seed, shall be their "exceeding great rething which could make him righteous, ward." And so it is written, "Blessed but as a sign and seal of that evangelical righteousness "which he had being yet uncircumcised; to the end that he might be the father of all them who believe, though they be not circumcised;" and that we Gentiles, as well as the Jews, might become the children, and inherit the blessing, of Abraham. But from the institution of this rite to the manifestation of the promised Seed, it became to the natural descend are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Thus do these two texts from the writings of Moses involve in them the substance of the Gospel; they begin with the cleansing of the heart from sin, thence proceeding on to the love of God, till they terminate in the beatific vision of him in an endless life. And could the Jews have read their law, without that veil which infi delity had drawn over the eyes of their understanding; could they have beheld, with open face, the glory of the Lord, enshrined in the Mosaic mysteries; could they have discerned the "apple of gold" through the "network of silver;"* instead of mistaking the casket for the jewel which it contained and preserved, they had then saved an apostle the trouble of informing them, that "he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly, nor is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God."t once undertaken to appear as our surety and substitute, it became incumbent on him "to fulfil all righteousness," to perform what we should have performed, and to suffer for what we did not perform. As the children, therefore, were compounded of flesh and blood, he partook of the same; he was "made of a woman :" as they were circumcised, he was circumcised also; he was "made under the law."* And, indeed, it has profited us nothing that he was made of a woman, had he not likewise been " made under the law;" for then the law could never have apprehended him; the law, with its penalties, having no concern with a person who, like him, was not an We will venture then to suppose, that offender against it. For "the law was not the institution of the rite now before us, made for the righteous, but for the lawless with the reason and end thereof, is suffi- and disobedient." We are the transgressciently cleared, and circumcision proved to ors, the debtors, whose bond was forfeited, be a sacramental sign of the cutting off and and "the hand-writing of condemnation " casting away of sin from the heart. But standing in full force against us. But what inean ye then, as saith St. Bernard, Christ, by submitting to the act of circumby circumcising the child Jesus, who did cision, voluntary put himself under the law, no sin, and knew none; who was conceived and took the whole burden of it, as he did in the womb of a virgin, by the Spirit of the cross, upon his own shoulders: since it eternal purity? why must he undergo this is an axiom in theology, that "if any man painful ceremony? To this we answer, be- be circumcised, he is a debtor to do the sides the example of humility and obedi- whole law." Christ therefore, by being ence herein afforded us by our Lord; as circumcised, became that debtor, and entered also the proof from hence resulting of the into covenant anew, as man's surety, to pay reality of his human nature; besides these the uttermost farthing. But the debt was collateral considerations, I say, the reason not a pecuniary one. The law was capital, why Christ was, as on this day, circum- and death the penalty incurred by the cised, is the same reason why he was born, breach of it. Life was the debt due from why he lived, and why he died. What he us, and paid by Christ to the justice of did, and what he suffered, he did and suf- heaven. And therefore, when he took fered not for himself, but for us. The upon himself the obligation of paying it, whole of this momentous and salutary truth which was, as at this time, the covenant is expressed by the apostle in those few was made in the body of his flesh, and words: "He was made sin for us, who signed with his precious blood; to show knew no sin, that we might become the that in him, now "made sin for us," the righteousness of God in him." He bore body of sin was to be cut off and destroyed; our griefs, that we might enter into his joy: that the curse of the law had seized on he put on the bloody garment of sin and him as the malefactor (for such he vouchdeath, that we might be invested with the safed to be accounted, and among such he white and spotless robes of righteousness did not disdain to be numbered,) and that and life. He became not only one with us, his disciples, who were really malefactors, as the head is with the members; but one might therefore " go their way" free; for us, or in our stead, as a surety is for a the blood now shed being an earnest, that debtor. And therefore, though, as the all-in due time he would shed the whole, and perfect Son of God, he could need neither circumcision nor baptism, yet, as the suffering representative of fallen human nature, he submitted to both, with the same view, namely, "to fulfil all righteousness." This was the argument he used to John in the case of his baptisin, and it holdeth equally in that of his circumcision. For having make his human nature an offering for sin. * Gal. iv. 4. † 1 Tim. i. 9. Gal. v. 3. Col. ii. 14. |