rate importance. "This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols."* This same name Jesus Christ oftentimes takes to himself: "I am the way, the truth, and the life," he saith to Thomas. "I am the resurrection and the life :" he saith to Martha. And again he tells the Jews, "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." And in his last prayer-" This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." He of whom the apostle speaks therefore, is not like Adam a mere " living soul," or one who lives by a life infused into him from elsewhere, but he is that very life-giving quickening Spirit" ¶ from whom all life in the creatures is derived.

And what is this but saying, what is said so expressly in many other places, that Christ is very and eternal God. "The Word was with

God, and the Word was God:"**" Before

** 1 John v. 20, 21.
John xi. 25.

John xvii. 3.

** John i. 1.

+ John xiv. 6.

§ John v. 21. 26. TI Cor. xv. 45.

Abraham was I AM."* "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which was, and which is, and which is to come, the Almighty."† Well may our heavenly Father declare, when he sends him. into the world for sinners, "I have laid help upon one that is mighty." And on this day of his nativity especially, well may we say one to another, "O come let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation."§

In order, however, to do this completely, and to 66 sing praises with a full understanding," we must note the third particular of the apostle's description of Christ's person-"That which was from the beginning," even " the Word of life," was, in due time, he tells us,

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manifested;" and in such manner manifested as that he might be heard, and seen, and handled, and was so by John himself and his fellow apostles. That is, the Word was made flesh, as he had said before, and dwelt among us." The Lord Jesus Christ was perfect man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother, and by his apostles was seen, and known, and

John viii. 58.

Ps. lxxxix. 19.

+ Revel. i. 8.

§ Ps. xcv. 1.

|| John i. 14.

understood to be so. * He was born a child at Bethlehem: like any other child he increased or grew in stature: his body was supported by food as ours are: he was sensible of pain, like one of ourselves; and gave up the ghost, or died by expiring his breath, as we do. When he rose from the dead, it was still the same. His disciples thought that they had seen a spirit. But, "Behold my hands and my feet," he says, that "it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." .

"Reach hither thy finger," he saith to Thomas," and behold my hands and reach hither thy hand,

and thrust it into my side." And of so much importance was it that there should be witnesses of this that we are told, in the Acts, that "to his apostles he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs being seen of them forty days."§ And, as we read in the last chapter of St. Luke, eating and drinking before them: so that says St. John,

Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God."|| And again, "This" (namely, any who denies

* See Pearson on the Creed.
↑ John xx. 27.

¶ 1 John iv. 3.

+ Luke xxiv. 39.
§ Acts i. 3.

Christ to be perfect man) "this is a deceiver and an Antichrist."*

But take these several things together, and you have the apostle's doctrine: the doctrine which is according to godliness, and which, through faith, is able to save your souls. "That which was from the beginning:" "the true God and eternal life" was made man; not, indeed, " by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God." Or, putting it the other way, the "one Mediator between God and man;"" the man Christ Jesus," who was born at Bethlehem, died on the cross at Calvary, and in bodily shape ascended up into heaven, and is there in the body now to plead for us: this Man is, in the same person, very and eternal God. He who stands between God and us, is God's Son, of the same substance with the Father, and our brother of the same nature with ourselves. Willing to plead for us, because of his relation to us, sure to prevail because of his relation to God. "Not an high priest, who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,"† but one who knows them experimentally, having tasted them as man. Not an high priest, who cannot succour our infirmities, but one "able + Heb. iv. 15.

* 2 John 7.

his vesture, and on his thigh a name written King of kings and Lord of lords."† A Mediator able to help us, and able to feel for us: qualified alike to merit or to suffer. One with his Father, and one with his people, and so in the complete and consummate sense the "repairer of the breach," who bringeth God and man together again; and the restorer of paths to dwell in," who lifteth up our fallen nature from the dust to inherit the throne of glory.

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This is what John preached; and it is this which we are now assembled to commemorate. For, as on this day, Joseph and the blessed Virgin abode at Bethlehem, and so it was that "the days were accomplished that she should be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger."§ And in this way, so mean to the eye of sense, so glorious to the eye of faith, was the " great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the

flesh," || revealed.

II. We are to consider now the end which

*Heb. vii. 25.

Isa. lviii. 12.

+ Rev. xix. 16.

§ Luke ii. 6.

1 Tim. iii. 16.