Luke 2:6

The days were accomplished

The birth of Christ

The whole of the world’s history led up to this night.

It is the hinge on which the history of man turns. The whole of mankind from Adam waited for this night. All the prophets, from righteous Enoch to John the preacher of repentance, laboured to prepare the way for Him who came on this night. The Word was made flesh to sanctity human nature. God descended to man, to raise man to God. Christmas is the feast of salvation for all mankind. The heathen were at this time celebrating their Saturnalia, in remembrance of the Golden Age, which indeed had never been since sin was in the world, an age when, they said, all the world was full of light, and joy, and innocence. But these were times for ever gone by, times from which every century was removing them further morally, as well as actually. Yet, see! how Christmas comes to turn the vain and wistful backward look into a look forwards. The evening and the morning form the day according to the Divine reckoning, not the morning and the evening. First comes darkness, and then light; first sadness, then joy; first desire, then fulfilment. Christ came to bid the old heathens turn away from contemplation of the past, and through Him look to the coming of the true Golden Age, the age when, from the new heavens and the new earth, sin and sighing shall have fled; when He, who is the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, shall reign in righteousness, and of His kingdom there shall be no end. Christ has not, indeed, founded on earth the Golden Age such as the Gentiles lusted after, any more than He came to be the Messiah such as the Jews longed for; He did not come to give peace to the world itself, but an inner peace, a peace that is hid with Christ in God--not such as the world giveth--a peace which cannot be broken and taken away, a peace to be won through conflict and storm and anguish. He came not to give earthly riches and prosperity, but the true riches, which are spiritual: The Incarnation has made that possible which before was impossible. The heathen looked back to the reign of Peace and Innocence and Plenty as something past and unattainable. Christ shows it as future, and opens the kingdom of the Golden Age to all. Earth and heaven are united. Man is made a citizen of Heaven, a member of the Golden Kingdom that is preparing and awaiting its manifestation. On earth man is subject to temptation, with the world ever striving to stamp out and destroy the spiritual kingdom, as Herod, its type, sought to destroy the infant Messiah; on earth, but not of it, man waits and prepares himself, and prays, “Thy kingdom come,” knowing that the manifestation of the sons of God in the coming Golden Age cannot be till God’s will is done by His subjects on earth as it is done by the denizens of heaven. At the heathen Saturnalia all distinction between slave and master was done away, to return into full force when the feast was over. Christmas shows us Him who is very God made the servant of all, taking on Him the form of a servant, made in the likeness of flesh, that He might redeem men from slavery, and set them free in the glorious liberty of childhood to God. And as on this day the birth of the visible sun was kept, because the days have been shortening, and now appear to lengthen again, Christ calls the Gentiles to look away from the sun that rules the day to Himself, who is the true Light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness, rising with healing on His wings, who comes with promise of a day eternal, in which there will be no created sun or moon, or humanly-made candle, but the Lord God will be the light, and there shall be no night more. (S. Baring-Gould, M. A.)

The joy of Christmas

Christmas Day is characteristically different from other festivals, such as Easter or Whitsunday. It has a softer, tenderer, more domestic interest about it. It falls in with other feelings, and blends with some of the closest and dearest associations of family life. A first-born child in common life--born, it may be, after a season of gloom and distress; an heir, it may be, of a throne, or born in the humblest life, what is a first-born child but the sweet and happy embodiment of hope and promise, of happy days, of daily developing delight, of good and noble manhood? So it is in our common everyday life; and those who do not know it of their own, know it well for their friends, how deeply, thankfully sinks into the heart of man the delight of a newborn, a first-born child. So, I say, of common life and ordinary families. But this day saw the birth, not of the first-born of ordinary human parents, but of the Child of heaven and earth, the Child of God and man, the Child for whom both heaven and earth were waiting in anxious expectation of redemption and restitution, the Child of hopes unspeakable-hopes that could not be frustrated to those who would hold them fast; the Heir of heaven, the Heir of earth, the Heir in whose inheritance all men might regain the inheritance of their Father’s kingdom … Then let us keep this holy day with peaceful, happy, Christian thankfulness. Let it be a day of sober joy, of outpouring charity, of mutual Christian love, of deepminded peace. It is a day of family concord; a day for special parental love, and special filial duty and obedience; a day on which the internal affection of families should be warmest and brightest; a day that should know of no bickerings or irritations between those of the same household, brothers and sisters, fellow-servants, and all others. It is a day for neighbourly kindness, mutual forgiveness, interchange of all friendly offices. It is a day which, opening our hearts in grateful love to God, should open them also in brotherly kindness to one another, and help us all on towards that blessed goal which we all hope to reach, and which none will reach so surely as those who are doing their best to enable others to reach it also. (Bishop Moberly.)

The greatest event on the smallest of scales

And in speaking of the greatness of the event of Christmas Day, let us observe further one peculiarity of its outward circumstances that conveys to us a special lesson concerning greatness of all kinds. This decisive world-historical birthday took place in a small inn of a small village of a small province of a small nation. It was the greatest of events on the smallest of scales. There are some who think that all events and characters are to be measured by the magnitude of the stage on which they appear; there are some who are perplexed by the thought that this globe, on which the history of man is enacted, is now known to be a mere speck in the universe: there are some who are startled on learning for the first time that the heathen world far outnumbers the Christian, and that the famous Indian teacher, Buddha, counts myriads more worshippers than Christ. But the moment we go below the surface we find that the truth conveyed to us by the birth of the world’s Redeemer in the little village of Bethlehem is the likeness of a principle which ramifies far and wide. It was once said to me by a distinguished American, “The truth which needs especially to be impressed upon us Americans is that bigness is not greatness.” It was a truth which a well-known English philosopher had already impressed upon his American audience with a courage which they were honest enough to appreciate. The fact is that the great nations of the world have almost always been amongst the smallest in size. Europe is diminutive compared with any of the other continents, and yet Europe is certainly the seat and centre of the world’s history. Athens in its greatest days was as nothing compared with Babylon and Nineveh, and yet Athens was the eye of the world’s civilization. Palestine was not nearly half the size even of our own little island, and yet Palestine is the cradle of the world’s religion. (Dean Stanley.)

On the most striking circumstances that distinguished the birth of the Redeemer

I. HIS IMMACULATE AND MYSTERIOUS CONCEPTION. Ancient mythology teems with instances of a fictitious correspondence between Divine and human kind. In that credulous age, whoever had the good fortune to excel his competitors in wisdom, arts, or arms, boasted an alliance with heaven. Even the best among them did not scruple to blast maternal honour for the sake of this imaginary distinction. But, fantastical as it was in them, it is an evidence to us, that the idea was then sufficiently popular to warrant and protect the fact from implicit reprobation when it happened. Indeed the various impostures of this kind, which mark the annals of paganism, most probably resulted from some of the earliest predictions of the Messiah’s birth, which might be propagated among the heathen by tradition, as it was preserved among the Jews by Scripture.

II. The era of Christ’s nativity, interesting as it was to the children of men, was NOT ANNOUNCED BY ANY OF THOSE FULSOME FORMS OF OSTENTATIOUS SPLENDOUR WHICH MARK THE BIRTH OF THE GREAT. His kingdom was not of this world, and He deigned not to borrow its rites. But His insignia are stamped in the heavens (Matthew 2:2). Angels announced His advent with strains of highest rapture.

III. THE WORLD WAS LITTLE AFFECTED by this event so essential to its welfare. This, perhaps, is the most extraordinary circumstance of all, that dignified and distinguished that occasion. Those already specified were evidently adapted by Providence to assert the importance, and attest the truth of His character. But what shall we say of the meanness, the ignominy, the contempt to which the Son of God condescended in taking upon Him the form of a man? The gospel accounts sufficiently for this. It is intended to suppress the arrogant, and elevate all the milder sensibilities of the heart. Christ came to inculcate the principles of virtue and religious wisdom; not to swell the passions, or stimulate the wishes of ambition, but to refine fallen and degraded human nature; not to pamper the appetites of men, but to wean them from the sensual and temporary enjoyments of this life, by those of a rational, spiritual, and immortal kind. It was, indeed, one capital object of this Divine embassy, to set the insignificance of those things which dazzle our senses, and mislead our hearts, in the strongest and most affecting point of view. And how could He do it more effectually than by the poverty and abjection in which He made His appearance and progress through life? The most likely means of detaching His disciples from the world, was giving them in this manner an example of living above it. They cannot consistently be covetous of distinctions, which are so uniformly despised by their Master. CONCLUSION: Do not imagine that this festival requires no preparation of you. Let one and all “prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight His paths.” Come, ye miserable sinners, laden with the insupportable burden of your sins; come, ye troubled consciences, uneasy at the remembrance of your many idle words, many criminal thoughts, many abominable actions; come, ye poor mortals, condemned first to bear the infirmities of nature, the caprices of society, the vicissitudes of age, the turns of fortune, and then the horrors of death, and the frightful night of the tomb; come, behold the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; take Him into your arms, learn to desire nothing more when you possess Him. (B. Murphy.)