Revelation 12:2. And she was with child. These words form the second particular of the vision; while the third represents her as at that moment suffering the pangs of childbirth, and the crieth out, travailing in birth, and in pain to he delivered. To the question, Who is this woman? different answers have been given. We need not dwell upon them. In one sense or another she must be the Church of God, yet not the mere Jewish Church, but the Church in the largest conception that we can form of it, as first indeed planted in Israel but afterwards extended to all nations. More will have to be said upon this point immediately. In the meantime, if it be objected that Christ bears the Church, not the Church Christ, it may be sufficient to reply that there is a sense in which Christ may truly be called the Son of the Church. He is the flower of the Chosen Family, as concerning the flesh He comes of Israel. So much is He one with His people that even His conception by the power of the Spirit and His birth of a virgin (who had no power of her own to produce Him) have their counterpart in them. They are born of the Spirit: they are the many children of a mother who was barren (Galatians 4:27). The Church, therefore, may properly be described by images taken from the history of Christ's own mother and of His own nativity.

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Old Testament