the mode as well as of the fact of the great manifestation, since thus without compro.nise of dignity or shadowing of true glory, there is as it were a touch of favour given to those who numerically constitute the great mass of mankind.

us.

II.

Emmanuel-God with us to take away the sin that hinders us from being with God, and from believing fully that God can be with Evidently this is one of the special things that needs to be done by the coming of God among men. If this were not done, nothing else, of any real or permanent worth, could be done. If sin were not taken away from us, no matter what might be brought. Heaven itself might be brought, in description and picture, but of what avail if the elements of hell are left all through the world, and brooding in the individual breast? In a hospital filled with sick and wounded men you may put coloured windows, you may hang pictures on the walls, and you may fill the air with soft music; and the wounded, weary men would probably, most of them, look and listen for a little while with some interest, and then they would say, with only a deeper weariness, "You are very kind, but oh if you could only make us well!" Then, this descent of God in Christ, this drawing near to us in the moral and vital relations of our life in Him, what is it in relation to sin? Certainly no merely artistic treatment of the matter. He does not come as a monarch with a great procession. He does not come as an artist to open galleries of celestial pictures, nor as a philosophic describer and teacher of recondite things, nor as a poetic singer of heavenly lays to be chanted by angelic choirs. He comes as a physician. Right into the heart of this sick, weary, heavy-laden world He comes; and looking round with profoundest sympathy, and as though almost made sick Himself by the sight, says, "I am come to heal you, but I cannot do it by prescription, or by good advice, or by showing the example of perfect health in Myself. No way but one-I must die that you may live." We are presuming thus to put words into the mouth of Christ, but they are words only feebly descriptive of the facts and deeds of His life and history. He is here, as an Infant, introduced into the world by the angels in their brightness and with their songs; but we know that when the years of His youth and opening manhood shall have sped, He will go away, and will have no

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angels to attend Him then. See, He goes away in anguish, in deep death-sorrow, in loneliness, and with a cry," bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," making an end of sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Emmanuel, also, to make an end of sin in us, and to give us a living part in His own holy life. Emmanuel to be born in us, reproducing Himself, a true Christ in every believing breast: thus making thousands of Bethlehems in every part of the world, some higher and some humbler than the first. Christ in us the hope of glory. Christ changing us into His own image, and ever more and more, "from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."

III.

Emmanuel God with us to change weakness into strength, and to keep the strength from failing. After the fever are the days of convalescence. The death-sickness has gone, but the full life-strength has not yet come. That comes slowly, and in part fitfully. To the personal consciousness the strength at times is no more than that of the bruised reed or the bending willow. To will is present, but how to perform that which is good-how to perform the very thing that has been willed

No

is not found. How to find that secret, how to get practical daily strength for daily need and duty, for the carrying out of the practical convictions, for the doing of what the hand has found to do? That is the great discovery. It was never fully made until Christ came: or by those who were expecting His coming. It could not be made. There was no strength anywhere to be discovered. sealed fountains of energy lay in human nature ready to rise at the first unsealing touch. Not in natural virtue or courage did the secret lie. Not in blood, not in flesh, not in the will of man-all these are but the terms of weakness and insufficiency considered in themselves; and there needs to be in them and through them, the strength of all strength, the thought of all thought, the steadfast willing which never changes, nor ever fails of accomplishment. Well, but all this is but to say that our need is a present God, a Lord Jehovah in whom is everlasting strength, in whose power we may work, on whose arm we may lean, by the breath of whose Spirit we may live and move and have this our better being. Jesus is Emmanuel for this end among others to enable us to say that when we are weak then are strong, because His strength is ours, and because it is made perfect in weakness.

we

IV.

Emmanuel-God with us, to wipe away our tears, and to comfort us in our sorrow. This is the child who is to be "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." His human life is to be a burden to Him rather than a joy; He is to weep at graves, to groan and shudder in dark gardens of agony, to raise the piercing death-cry on a cross-and yet, or rather we might say therefore, He is to be

such a comforter of others as never has been in the world before. His voice in sick rooms and on lonely paths will be softer than summer breeze, sweeter than a lover's voice. He is to stand by the bed that holds the dead child gazed at and sorrowed over by the weeping mother; by the bier of the young man carried out to his burial; by the grave after it has received its tenant, and say to every stricken mourner who will hear His words "Let not your heart be troubled." Is not all this some fulfilment already of the beautiful promise-" And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes?"

It is also true that Emmanuel brings sorrow into the world with Him. He teaches us what to be sorry for, and how to weep. "Our affliction aboundeth by Christ." But all such sorrowing ends in joy. The consolation runs quickly and fully along the very channel which has been opened or deepened by the affliction. This weeping endures for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

Emmanuel-God with us, to relieve and soften the deep dark mysteries of this life mysteries which, without Him and His grace, would completely overcloud and, in the spiritual sense, overwhelm us. The real mysteries of this life are, substantially, as deep and as dark now as they were thousands of years ago, indeed, ever since the human world began. Here they stand around us, some of them quite close to us, others farther off making a dim and sad circumference to our life; and all this world's great progress flashes no light upon them, furnishes nothing which approaches or promises even an intellectual solution of them. The Gospel itself is not an intellectual solution of them. It is a moral victory over them; but they are not annihilated or made less. Sin still works in every rational soul. Evil stalks abroad in the light of day, and there is none to hinder it. Monarchs and mighty men who turn whole nations into battle-fields, and whole peoples into armies, are largely on the side of evil.

They call evil good, and there is none to rebuke or answer. Pain racks many gentle sensitive frames, tenanted by gentle and than multitudes of the strong and healthy to sensitive spirits which have sinned far less whom pain never comes. And disaster sweeps like a desolating flood over many a field of human industry. And death, sudden and unexpected, darkens many a happy home. And the grave is as silent as when Abel was buried, as when patriarchs were break with anxiety, and the air may, at times, And hearts may gathered to their fathers. be full of sighs and questionings. But there is no reply. from on high gives answer. Not a grave stirs. Not a star Not the flash or the wafting of an angel passing anywhere; nor the softest words spoken to us by any who have died. And the more, that your wise men can do It sometimes grows awful. just as little as your foolish men, as little as the babes in your cradles, to give explanation.

But now listen-"God with us"-not to reason with us until we shall declare ourselves satisfied; not to explain to us all we we might desire to know; not to institute schools of celestial philosophy, or higher systems of theology all over the world; but God with us to say: "It is I, be not afraid;" to tell us that the world is not fatherless, is not forsaken, is not neglected, that all things are ruled, that nothing is happening by chance, and that we must trust and wait. Yes, the substance of the Divine revelation on the mysteries of our life and of this world is this-and the more we consider it, the greater it will appear-"You do not know, but I know-let that be enough. Keep near to me. Be afraid of no darkness when you grasp my hand. Possess your soul in patience, and watch for the morning."

VI.

God with us, to prepare us for going to be for ever with Him. Out of birth comes death; but out of death comes birth again. Out of change comes that which itself must change and pass away. But all this transiency, and wasting sickness of the world, and perpetual passing away of men, is furnishing to immortal spirits the secret elements of permanence and unchanging life. Time is travailing in pain towards the birth of eternity, and earth will soon pass away in flames, in order to give place to incombustible and incorruptible heavens, where the great Father will make eternal home for his children.

DAY

AY after day, for many weeks past, there has appeared in the London newspapers a very interesting column. It is headed "Mansion House Indian Famine Relief Fund," and in the paper before us as we write (1st November), the sub-title runs, "Sixty-third List. Amounts received this Day." For sixty-three days in succession there has appeared a fresh record of British sympathy and liberality, the aggregate of the contributions at the end of October being upwards of £400,000, giving about £6,600 as the average contribution of each day. Public charity, no doubt, springs from a great variety of motives, many of them sufficiently contemptible; but beyond all doubt this daily stream of silver and gold, which looks, like Tennyson's river, as if it would flow on for ever, represents an immense amount of genuine and very tender feeling; and the feeling appears to pervade all ranks and sects and classes. The mighty river that discharges itself into the Mansion House is composed of numberless streams and streamlets that have gathered their stores from small and great throughout the land-from castle and cottage, from the proud cathedral and the humble Sunday-school, from the soft hand of the lady of fashion and the horny fist of the toiling labourer. We do not think that the records of British philanthropy supply any parallel to this fact, or that a case has occurred, at any place or time, of an offering so large in amount, so long continued in its progress, or so wide in the circle from which it is drawn.

The fact is the more remarkable, that the calamity which has been the occasion of this liberality is a long way off, and affects a population with no member of which the vast majority of our people have any acquaintance, or even visible connection. It is not like the Lancashire cotton famine, nor the pit explosion at Blantyre. In such cases the victims have been under our very eyes, their sufferings have forced themselves on our senses, perhaps the names of some of them are the same as our own. But the Indian famine is on the other side of the globe; and the Indian people-in country, colour, race, language, manners, religion, everything-are quite a contrast to ourselves. It is all the more remarkable that a compassion so profound and so practical

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should have been awakened on their behalf. Many of us probably felt and said that the public purse should have been opened for so peculiar a calamity, but when it was not we opened our own. The calamity could not be left unrelieved; people could not enjoy their own daily bread unless they made a sacrifice for these starving Indians.

The

In India the offering of the British people has been a very substantial boon, but it is working a benefit far more important than any that is measured by material benefits. From various sources we learn that it is regarded, at least by many, with profound wonder and admiration. Such a token of British sympathy for Indian suffering seems to have been quite a surprise. Well, there may have been reasons. India has too often been regarded as a sort of El Dorado, from which the one aim of the Englishman was to carry off as much gold as he could. country has seen but little, at the hands of its masters, to exemplify the saying of their professed Lord, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Now that the English of all classes are spontaneously pouring their wealth into India, it is no wonder if the natives are somewhat bewildered. What does it mean? Is Saul also among the prophets? Is England, so long the sponge that absorbed our life-blood, reversing her old policy, and sending us a golden stream for our famine-stricken people, to the tune of nearly a lac a day? Surely, after all, they must be a generous people!

Back comes this expression of Indian feeling to Great Britain, and it deepens the compassion which first led to the gift. A new thrill of tenderness for the stricken people passes over our hearts when we find that they are thus appreciating our kindness. A new disposition arises to think of them kindly. Let it be admitted that the Indian has his faults-very bad faults, no doubt, and highly provoking and repulsive-still he is a man and a brother. He is subject to the same great troubles and trials as the rest of mankind. Yes, poor fellow, and he knows the grinding misery of famine. He knows what it is to hear his children crying for bread, and to have none to give them. He is doomed to look upon their dying agonies, for in a public famine he cannot find even the poor alleviation of Hagar-