SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE INCARNATION. “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” —Saint John, 1., 14. (By Rev. A_ H. Collins, New Plymouth.) Early in his Birmingham ministry, Dr. R. W. Dale preached a series of sermons on the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. He met’ a brother minister, who said to him: “I hear you are preaching doctrinal sermons to your congregation at Carr’s Lane; they will not stand it.” Dale replied: “They will have to stand it.” Later in life in confessed:

“There was too much*of the insolent selfconfidence of youth,” both in the temper and the form of the reply, though it expressed a conception of the ministry he endeavored to realise to the end of his life.

I am afraid it is still true that congregations resent any serious attempt at doctrinal sermons, with results as obvious as they are deplorable. Nevertheless I am emboldened to attempt it for reasons. First, because no revival of religion that is worth seeking will ever come until Christian people give more thoughtful consideration to the great central facts of the Christian religion. But my chief motive is this,, that we need to find the Christian basis of modern society, and the Christian argument for social reform. To lift the world you must have a solid fulcrum for your lever, and that fulcrum is found in the doctrine of the incarnation.

The reconstruction of Society will never come by some tiddley-winking criticism of this or that social arrangement, or by some patent concoction of human cleverness. It will only come as the conviction grows that the present social position is clean contrary to the Divine order. The misery and the anarchy of the world are due to a departure from the Divine will, and can only be cured by a return to the Divine ideal as revealed in the incarnate life of the Son of God. ' • THE CRADLE AND THE CROSS. It was Bishop Westcott who recalled the mind of the church to the supreme place of the doctrine of the Incarnation. For centuries the emphasis was laid on the cross, and notion the cradle,, on the Atonement rather than the Incarnation, and the emphasis is still laid there. No one who follows the teaching of this pulpit will charge me with neglecting the doctrine of the cross, but the cross would have no meaning apart from the cradle. Multitudes beside Jesus Christ died on a cross. Their sufferings were ■is sharp and their condemnation as unjust as His. The unique glory of Calvary lay in its revelation of the sacrificial life of God. But in order that He might die for men, He needs must be born of a woman, and I say the greatest event in the history of our race is the birth, not the death; the cradle, not the cross; the Incarnation, not the Atonement; and I am going to ask you to ponder the profound saying: “The word was made flesh.” “Great is the mystery of Godliness; God was manifest in the flesh.” And. further, I want you to consider this doctrine in relation to the social movements of the world. The fourth Gospel contains no record of the Holy Nativity. The other evangelists,, or at least two of them. Saint Matthew and St. Luke, tell of the birth of the Child of Mary. Saint John begins with the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. The fact is the same, whether we say: “Mary brought forth her first born Son and laid Him in a manger ” or “The word was made flesh.” The one regards the truth from the earthward side, and the other regards the same truth from its heavenward side. The one is the historic fact; the other is the eternal principle. THE CREATION. But unless you take Saint John’s viewpoint, you cannot understand Saint Luke’s story, and there is really no reason why we should make Christmas what Christendom has made it these two thousand years. The fourth Gospel begins away back beyond Bethlehem the manger bed, the mystic star and the angels carolling, back and beyond creation itself,. and says: “In the beginning was the word, and the word/was with God.” Genesis starts with the affirmation: “In the beginning God created the heavens,” but the beginning of which Saint John speaks lies far away before the heavens

and the earth were formed. That is what Augustine meant when he said that Christianity has been with us from the creation, and that was the daring thought in the mind of Tertullion that through all the ages Christ had been preparing Himself for Incarnation.” “In the beginning was the word.’’ Th (words are a marvel of simplicity,, clarity and depth, the deepest words ever spoken by human lips, or heard by mortal ears. “In the beginning was the word,” personal, eternal. Divine,” and the word was with God, and the word was God,” source of all life, life in plant, and animal, and man, and angel; source of all light, the light of understanding, conscience, reason and goodnes.-.; and this eternal word, personal,. Divine, creative and revealing, was . cradled in a manger!” “He wrapped His Godhead in a veil of our inferior clay,” for the word was made flesh.” “BODY, SOUL AND SPIRIT.” Now that word “flesh” does not mean only this tremulous,, shrinking mortal body of ours, with its heritage of weakness, passion, and pain. It means our whole humanity—what we call body, soul,, and spirit, or any other name we may choose to express the entire sweep, and range, of all that makes a man. Jesus Christ took the nature that lies down in the fisher’s boat and falls asleep, the nature that hungers and thirsts, weeps and suffers, groans and dies, the true human soul that struggles is tempted, has passions and dies. The eternal source of life, and li.g L and gladness, became flesh and tabernacled amongst us. In a passage in “The Conversation in a Common Room, Oxford,” Driver is supposed to say: "But what I want to know is this. The Christ of the churches is incomprehensible to me, probably is tn most men, even to bishops and theologians themselves if they dared confess it. Can you tell me how to find /the real Jesus? “Yes,” said Rutherford, “I .think I can. You will find the real Jesus when you discover that Jesus was a man.” Of course, what I have said is only a fragment of the truth , and poorly stated at that. 1 hope I have not wearied you in stating it, and I hope I have not perplexed you. But I want now to turn from iho doctrine to its social implication. What has the Incarnation to do with the question of social betterment? Has it anything to do with it Well, I hold that it is vitally related. Let me put it this way: The Incarnation reveals the humanity of God and the divinity of man. God is not remote and indifferent. He is near and sympathetic. NEAR TO MAN. Tn the birth of Jesus Christ. God tame nearer to man than He had ever come before. If there had been no incarnation of Jesus Christ, the world would have been waiting for it. for the simple reason that it is a felt need of the human heart. Browning puts this nobly in his “Saul”: “O Saul it shall be, A face like my face shall receive thee; A man like to me, thou sha.lt love and be loved for ever, A hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee, See the Christ stand.” Jesus Christ made God real to a multitude of longing human hearts. Thus Tennyson wrote: “And so the word had breath and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds. In loveliness of perfect deeds. More strong than all poetic thought.” But you may say: “Did not God speak to man ’ere Christ came? Does He not still speak?” Certainly; a dumb God is uiithinkftble. He spoke to men by the beauty of the world. God was in history. He spoke by the prophets. Ho was in Ebenezcr Elliott, when he sang the corn law rhymes whieh made the heart of England sob for the sufferings of the poftr. He was in John Brown when lie stirred the soul of America, to liberate the slave. He spoke by the gentle and tender Francis Willard, the heroic William Ewasfe Sladstoae, and hosts oth-

pi’s. God is always walking the world in human guise. He is dwelling in yo>u at ;this very moment. But if you would know how God thinks and feels, and acts, look at the Incarnate Son of God. Can you conceive of anything you wish to find in God which you do not find in the Son of Mary GOD’S WITNESS. ‘ “The word was made flesh,” and the word is still made flesh, for “the incarnation was not an isolated and abnormal wonder; it was God’s witness to the idea] relation of God to men.” God is not outside the world as a spectator. He is in the world, in every flower and star, and still nlore in every soul of man, and most fully in Christ the Lord. But if that be true, and not simply pulpit rhodomontade. it means the divinity of man. There is no such being as “a mere | man.” Man is not dust aldne; he is dust and deity. He is not a means to an end, but an end. He is not a tool, but a free and deathless spirit. He is not a cog in a wheel to grind out wealth for himself or another. As Carlyle phrased it: “Through every living soul the glory of a present God still beams,” and to oppress, to insult, to degrade man is to insult man’s Maker. If Legree, when he laid the lash on the quivering flesh of Uncle Tom, had realised that the helpless slave was a son of God do you uppose he would have dared to do it? If the villains behind the white slave trade in Europe bethought them that every helpless girl they betray and ruin is a child of the great Father in Heaven, dare they do it? So with al l the social wrongs of the world —drink, gambling, sweating, greed —are as criminal in God’s sight as the Roman butchers who spiked the Son of God to the deadly tree. When you consider the Christian conception of man, made in the likeness of God. with God-like qualities still persisting in him, honored of God Himself with honor so great that he could not be allowed to perish, the object of love so deep that, the joy of redeeming him made the cross endurable, with a destiny that transcends the pgwer of human thought and reaches out to all eternity, and when yon remember that all this is not tlie exclusive privilege of heroes and

scholars and saints, but belongs to man as man, do you wonder that the world is waking to understand that the gospel of the Incarnation is the surest pledge of ■progress, the mightiest motive for social reform, the fullest revelation of God, and the most thrilling and. glorious interpretation of man? The supreme message of the Advent is simply this, that God lives in all and speaks through all. We have to carry Christ to men by being Christs. We have to be His interpreters. We have ta let the hope, the patience, the love of God find expression in us. We are to bo what Christ was—the Light of the world. What is history if not search after God. What is the IncarnaiS tion save God’s answer to search