ciated with our Christmas recollections and thanksgiv ings. Perhaps you will feel that I have done something to weaken that application of the words which were spoken to Ahaz. By taking them in connection with the falling and rising again of many in Israel in Isaiah's day, I may seem to have denied the truth of St. Matthew's sentence, "Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us." I hope and trust that I have rather been helping you to see the full power and exact truth of that sentence. If Isaiah gave this sign to Ahaz because he doubted whether the promise would be fulfilled to David, that his seed should be established for ever, the sign could not be fulfilled, that is to say, the perfect meaning of it could not be realized, unless One should be raised upon his throne, of whose kingdom there should be no end. If the wonderful promise had been made to David on the day when he sat before the Lord and meditated on His gracious covenant, "I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son," the king he expected could only perfectly fulfil the sign, provided He were the Son of God. If He were to be the Son of God, and yet to be an actual child, eating ordinary human food, learning like other children to "choose the good and refuse the evil," brought up under actual human guidance, then the sign would only be fulfilled if an actual virgin conceived and bore a son. And yet

again, if this son was He whose goings forth had been of old, from everlasting, the sign could only be fulfilled provided He were then the Emmanuel, the God with us, in whom Isaiah could bid Ahaz trust, in whom he trusted himself, the testimony of whom he bequeathed to his children and his disciples.

We must be content to see the idea of this Divine Person evolving itself slowly in the mind of the prophet; now one aspect of His character, now another, presenting itself to him as he mused and sorrowed and hoped for himself and for his country and for mankind. And, dear brethren, we must be content that the knowledge of Him should evolve itself slowly in our minds; we must be thankful if any perplexities and sorrows, from within or from without, prepare us for it. The Name of Him who was born of the Virgin may be familiar to us, it may be surrounded with many beautiful and venerable associations, it may recall moments of youthful tenderness, or remorse, or enthusiasm. And yet it may rather hover about our minds than be rooted in them; we may be trying by acts of memory, or fancy, or strong, passionate efforts of what we call faith, to bind it to us more closely. What we want, I think, is to know the barrenness and hollowness of our own selves. If there is not some One beneath ourselves, the ground of all that we desire and believe and are, the spring of our hopes and the consummation of them, the fountain of all love in every creature and the satisfaction of its love, life is a very miserable sleep, full of turbulent, broken dreams, mixed with a strange dread of awaking. It is in vain that men seek to soothe us with outward images and pleasant pictures. There is a presence near us and within us that cannot be put by. It haunts us, waylays us, torments us. It is indeed a rock of stumbling and a stone of offence to us. The consciousness of it produces irritation and fever. It seems as if all outward nature presented it to us in dark signs and hieroglyphics that we cannot decipher. But if we have once courage to ask boldly, "Who art Thou that wilt not leave me wherever I am, or whatever I am doing, whose voice I cannot silence, whose

eye will not cease to look into me?"-the awful form of the judge and the accuser will be seen to change into the gracious form of the sympathizing Friend and Brother. And as the face becomes better known, without losing this human aspect, still bearing all the traces, deeper than ever, of birth and poverty, of sorrow and death, it will yet be seen to be royal and divine; we shall be sure that the Man is the King; and the King will be the Emmanuel, God with us;—not with one of us only, but with all of us; most real, though the eye cannot see Him; certainly near, though the heart do not confess Him; He in whom alone we are all men and all brothers; in whom alone our Father can behold us, and we Him.

When we have learnt to live in this conviction, or rather when God, by giving us perpetual experiences of our own failures, and follies, and vanities, has made it impossible for us to live in any other, then we shall not need signs in the height or the depth that He will put down our enemies. Quid times? Cæsarem vehis, The Son of God is in the vessel,- will be an answer to all suggestions of the cowardly nature within us that the Father of Spirits will desert the work of His own hands. "Associate yourselves and ye shall be broken in pieces, powers of darkness and evil! for God is with us." And we shall desire and hope that we and the children whom God has given us may be signs to the world of His kingdom and His victory. The commonest birth into the world will be a wonder, since He has been born into it. The continuance of every family, in spite of its sins and strifes, will speak of Him as the Everlasting Brother, even as the endurance of the earth itself, amidst all that is shaking it, will bear witness that He sitteth above the water-floods, a King for ever.

SERMON XV.

THE LIGHT IN DARKNESS.

LINCOLN'S INN, 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT.-MARCH 21, 1852.

Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For 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. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. - ISAIAH ix. 1 – 7.

THE separation of Israel from Judah reached its consummation in the time of Ahaz. The confederacy of the Samaritans with the Syrians against Judah was encountered by the confederacy of Judah with Assyria against Israel. It was no mere border war. Each sought the extermination of the other. These confederacies betokened the spirit which was at the root of all

the crimes which Isaiah had deplored and denounced. The acknowledgment of a common king had bound the tribes together, so long as that implied the acknowledgment of a common God. Idolatry had broken the tie and had kept them asunder. But the present scheme of Samaria to extinguish its rival, even at the cost of giving an ascendency to the uncircumcised king of Damascus, showed clearly enough that the last link of brotherhood was broken, because the last feeling of the Divine calling, which had made them a nation of brothers, was gone. The more plausible, really more insane, desire of Ahaz to secure the favor of an empire which was the common enemy of all nations, that he might get rid of the two which were tormenting him, showed that faith had departed from Judah also. The idols of silver and gold had driven God out of its heart, and made the worship of Him a mockery.

It was at this time that Isaiah's child was born. He received it, we have seen, as a sign and wonder from the Lord of Hosts. It was a sign of the coming fall of Samaria and Damascus. Before the child had knowledge to cry, "My father and mother," the spoils of both would be taken away before the king of Assyria. But that prospect, however cheering it might have been to Ahaz if he had believed Isaiah, would only have oppressed the prophet himself.

The destruction of a part of the covenant people, even the destruction of any nation, was to him an awful event. Had this been all, the child would have been an omen of evil, not of good. But something was awakened in his mind by the sight of it, and by all the affections and sympathies that accompanied it, which lifted him to a higher and securer ground of confidence for the land and for himself. Laws and principles were connected with that relation of child and father, which