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I. SUCH AN EVENT AS THAT CAN HAVE NOTHING LIKE IT, OR PARALLEL TO IT, WHILE THIS WORLD LASTS. It is the turning point in the history of the world. The gospel of Christ has made the Incarnation of the Eternal Son what St. Paul made it — the centre of all teaching, worship, obedience, and morality, the fulfilment of all that was old, the starting point of all that was new — the gospel of Christ refuses to compromise with any view of religion which puts this tremendous truth in any less than its sovereign place. God has been with us, and seen our life, what we are, what we do, all our sin and all our need — seen it with the eyes of a man, with a heart as human in its sympathy and brotherhood as it was Divinely perfect in its love and righteousness. God has unveiled Himself to us here, to be as man the restorer of mankind. Is it possible that such a thing could be, and not that all things else be changed by it?

II. The Incarnation was the turning point in the history of the world; and, as a matter of fact, WE HAVE BEFORE OUR EYES THE CONSEQUENCES WHICH HAVE FOLLOWED FROM IT. For each man, as for the world, the Son of God was made man to enable each man to reach the perfection for which he was made. His Incarnation has been made known to us, not only for the public creed of the Church, but for the personal hope and stay of each of our souls. And to know what it means, to realise what it is to us, is the turning point of each man's belief. To think that He who loved with such self-sacrifice is He of whom all may be said that the mind of man can conceive of the everlasting God — this is a revelation to a man's spirit which, whether it comes gradually or suddenly, is one of those things which lift him up out of the common places of routine religion, one of those things which bring him face to face with the real questions of his being — with those fateful alternatives, the choice of which decides the course of life and its issues. We may overload and cloud it with subordinate doctrines, with the theories and traditions of men, with a disproportionate mass of guesses on what is not given us to know — of subtleties and reasonings in the sphere of human philosophy. We may recoil from it as something which oppresses our imagination and confounds our reason; but we may be sure that on the place which we really give it in our mind and heart depends the whole character of our Christianity, depends what the gospel of Christ means to us.

III. We see in the Incarnation HOW GOD FULFILS THE PROMISES HE MAKES, AND THE HOPES WHICH HE RAISES, IN WAYS UTTERLY UNFORESEEN AND UTTERLY INCONCEIVABLE BEFOREHAND, utterly beyond the power of man to anticipate; and, further, we see exemplified in it that widely prevailing law of His government, that in this stage of His dispensations with which we are acquainted — which we call "this world" and "this life" — that which is the greatest must stoop to begin from what is humblest, the greatest glories must pass through their hour of obscurity, the greatest strength must rise out of the poorest weakness, the greatest triumphs must have faced their outset of defeat and rebuke, the greatest goodness start unrecognised and misunderstood. Is it not something almost too great for the mind to endure — the contrast between what the eye of man really saw and what really was; between what was to be, and its present visible beginning? When wonder, adoration, and thanksgiving, if it were possible, without bounds, have had their due, there remain the practical impressions to be laid up for the serious work of life. You are the heirs — you cannot doubt it in presence of that manger cradle — of a hope which passes measuring here. You are the object of a Divine solicitude, interested in an economy of grace and recovery, of which human language is absolutely incapable to reveal the fulness. But, in the meanwhile, you are men and women, with your appointed parts to play on this earthly scene — with time to waste or to elevate, with the risks of unfaithfulness, with the sure rewards of self-discipline, with a character to fashion after the mind of Christ, with an allotted and fast shortening term to finish your work. What can you learn for your own guidance from the mystery of His Incarnation? Is it not, surely, that we must begin our eternal work, as He was pleased to begin His, according to that law which He has laid down for the kingdom of God, by which those who are to reach the highest must have known and welcomed the humblest and the lowest. "Except ye become as little children," is His characteristic word, "ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." Let us think of ourselves as children in the presence of that supreme mystery with which all our destiny is bound up — children before the incalculable humiliation of the Son of God, before the infinity of His greatness and His love; children on the brink and threshold of that vast, unchanging life, to which this one is but a play time and a trial ground, knowing nothing except in part, yet with the fortunes of an eternal existence in our hands.

(Dean Church.)

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KJV: Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

WEB: concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,