glory. Take that night on Galilee when a storm roared over land and lake, enough to wake all but the dead. The boat with Jesus and His disciples tears through the waves, now whirling on their foaming crests, now plunging into their yawning hollows; the winds rave in His ear; the spray falls in cold showers on His naked face; but He sleeps. I have read of a soldier boy who was found buried in sleep beneath his gun, amid the cries and carnage of the battle; and the powers of nature in our Lord seem to be equally exhausted. His strength is spent with toil; and with wan face and wasted form He lies stretched out on some rude boards—the picture of one whose candle is burning away all too fast, and whom excess of zeal is hurrying into premature old age and an untimely grave. Was the sight such as to suggest the question, Where is now thy God?—how soon it changed into a scene of magnificence and omnipotent power! He wakes—as a mother, whom louder sounds would not stir, to her infant’s feeblest wail, He wakes to the cry of His alarmed disciples; and standing up, with the lightning flash illumining His calm, divine face, He looks out on the terrific war of elements. He speaks; and all is hushed. Obedient to His will, the winds fold their wings, the waves sink to rest; and there is a great calm. “Glory to God in the highest!” How may His people catch up and continue the strain which falls from angels’ lips? In disciples plucked from the very jaws of death, and pulling their boat shoreward with strong hands and happy hearts over a moonlit glassy sea, Jesus shows us how He will make good these sayings, “Fear not, for I am with thee; be not afraid, for I am thy God”—“I have given unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”

The divine glory of that scene is not peculiar to it. For as an eagle, so soon as she has stooped from her realm to the ground, mounts aloft again, soaring into the blue skies of her native heavens, our Lord never descends into the abasement of His meanest circumstances without some act which bespeaks divinity, and bears Him up before our eyes into the regions of Godhead. The grave, where He weeps like a woman, gives up its prisoner at His word. Athirst by Jacob’s well, like any other wayfaring, way-worn traveller, He begs a draught of water from a woman there, but tells her all she ever did. Houseless and poor, His banquet hall is the open air, His table the green grass, His feast five barley loaves and a few fishes from the neighbouring lake, yet this scanty fare supplies the wants of five thousand guests. His birth and life and death, His whole history, in fact, resembles one of those treasure-chests which double locks secure; for as that iron safe yields its hoards of gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones to none but Him who brings to each lock its own appropriate key, so the riches of divine truth, redeeming love, and saving mercy are open only to such as come to Jesus with a belief in His divinity on the one hand, and a belief in His humanity on the other;—who behold in the child, whose birth was sung by angels, the son of Mary, and worship the only begotten, well beloved, and eternal Son of God.

Now this mingling of divine and human characters distinguished Christ’s birth as much as His death. The halo of glory that surrounded His dying, crowned His infant head. His sun rose, as it afterwards set, behind a heavy bank of clouds; but the divinity they screened, touched their edges alike with burning gold; so that He at whose death the rocks were rent, and the sun eclipsed, and graves deserted of their dead, no more entered than He left our world as a common son of Adam. Not that a world which was to reject Him went out to meet its King with homage and royal honours. Omen of coming events, it received Him in sullen silence. But the heavens declared His glory, the skies sent out a sound; and the tokens of His first advent—unlike the thunders which shall rend the skies when He comes the second time to judgment—were all in beautiful harmony with its object. It was love and saving mercy; there were light, music, and angel forms. With this object all things indeed were in perfect keeping,—the serene night—the shining stars—the pearly dews glistening on the grass—snowy flocks safely pasturing—and the shepherds themselves, to whom the annunciation was made; men who, whether going before their charge, or carrying the lambs in their arms, or gently leading those that were with young, or standing bravely between their flocks and the roaring lion, were the choicest emblems and types of Him who, dying to save us, gave His life for the sheep. To them there suddenly appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, turning night into day, and shedding on the soft hills around a bright but gentle radiance. As guard of honour, they had swept in their downward flight by many a sun and star, escorting the Son of God to our nether world. And now—ere they left Him to tread the wine-press alone, and returned on upward wings to their native heavens, and their service before the throne of God—these celestials bent their loving eyes on the stable; and in anticipation of Jesus’ triumphs, of men saved, death conquered, graves spoiled, and Satan crushed, they sang “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

This hymn, sung perhaps in parts by different bands of these heavenly choristers consists of three parts; and we now proceed to the illustration of these.

I.

THAT REDEMPTION YIELDS THE HIGHEST GLORY TO GOD.

I say the highest; for though His absolute glory, like His eternal being and infinite perfections, admits of no degrees, and is affected by no circumstances whatever, it is otherwise with His declarative glory, as old theologians called it. This, which I speak of, and which angels sung of, consists in the manifestation of His attributes. Whatever it be, though only the drop of water, which appears a world of wonders to the eyes of a man of science, any work is glorious which reflects the divine character in any measure, and still more glorious or glorifying which exhibits it in a greater measure. God’s glory expands and unfolds itself as we rise upward in the study of His works—from inanimate to living objects; from plants to animals; from animals to man; from man to angels; from these to archangels, upward and still upward, to the Being who, bathed in the full blaze of divine effulgence, tops the pyramid, and stands on the highest pinnacle of Creation. That Being is God manifest in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ—the redemption which He wrought for us, through blood and suffering and death, being the work which reveals God most fully to our eyes, and forming a looking-glass, so to speak, to reflect the whole measure of divinity. This will appear if we look at—

The Redeemer.—One of His many titles is the Wonderful. Anticipating the royal birth at Bethlehem, and speaking of Christ in terms which no other key can open but the doctrine of His divinity, Isaiah says, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” With pencils of sunlight God paints the rose; by arts of a divine chemistry He turns foul decay into the snow-white purity and fragrant odours of a lily; He fashions the infant in the darkness of the mother’s