cense seized it from the hands of God and shattered it into illegible fragments, lest indulgence should be limited by its decrees. Then Justice rose and in its tribunal man was condemned to death. Or if pardoned, a proper victim must take its place in punishment. Then throughout the wide courts of Heaven rang the voice of God's own Son, "I come to do Thy Will. I accept the punishment that man has merited. So that he live, let Me die."

In the silence of the night this Victim comes into the world to die for it. "Justice and Peace have kissed each other," and they kneel now at the crib of Jesus, and whisper, "The Word is made flesh." In this coming of the God Man is involved His life and death; and in His life and death the welfare, temporal and eternal, of humanity is bound up.

It is not the time now to dwell upon the arguments that prove the Divinity of this Birth. The whole year is devoted to that; for Sunday after Sunday you are called upon to listen to the doctrines that He taught; to hear the words of Wisdom that fell from His lips; to see, as it were, the very works that He performed, and that are the first proofs of His Divinity. To-day we meet here not to ask questions or to answer them. We stand about the crib as did the simple shepherds on that first Christmas morning, and offer to Him our humble but entire adoration. We too "have seen His star in the East, and are come to adore Him." The star of faith leads us to His altar where He lies, as once He lay in the manger at Bethlehem. What matter to us though others doubt and shake their heads, unwilling to acknowledge an infant as their God. We know the declaration of the Apostle of God which says: "The foolish things of the world God hath chosen that He may confound the wise; and the

weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong; and the base things of the world, and things despised hath God chosen, and things that are not to destroy things that are." If God would even now by some wondrous sign confirm His revelation to the world even then would they refuse to believe, and attempt to prove that what they had seen was but some fiction of the fancy or some deception of the senses. When men doubt even that they exist, is it wonderful that they doubt God's word, proved by miracles, attested to by eye witnesses, and handed down through generations of men whose honesty cannot be suspected? When this same Christ hung upon the Cross, the Jews said to Him, "Come down from the cross and we will believe Thou art the Son of God." But when three days after He performed even a greater miracle by raising His dead Body to life again, they swore, even against every contrary proof the most convincing, that His Body had been stolen away.

Noto-day our hearts must speak. To-day the pentup wells of devotion to God's Humanity must burst their confines and fill our souls with grateful adoration. It is for us that He was born. For every soul here present He came from His high place in heaven to dwell upon earth our model and our brother. As Priest He came, and as Priest we worship Him to-day by offering to Him the sublime gift which He Himself has left us. As King He came, and King, indeed, He is over the whole Earth. And to-day, from pole to pole, and "from the flood to the world's end" His subjects kneel beneath His banner and send up to Him the homage of their whole being. A King indeed He is, for before Him all nations bow their heads and acknowledge His law. His reign must be established in our souls; His supremacy must be recognized within

us; our hearts, and not our heads alone, must yield to His gentle sway, else we shall be but treacherous subjects, like those Romans of old, who with murder in their hearts knelt at Cæsar's feet in mock supplication, and while their hands grasped daggers, with their lips cried — Ave Cæsar!

Nearly nineteen hundred years ago He came into the world. To-day He should come not only to the world but to us. Shall we be of the number of those of whom we read "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not"? His advent in the world marked a new era. We mark now the progress of years from the date of His Birth ; as the pagan Romans did from the founding of the city. Let us begin from His Birth in our hearts today to mark this too a new spiritual era. Let our new life begin from to-day.

It is the pleasant custom for friends on this day to interchange tokens of love and esteem. There is a gift richer than gold and jewels, more precious than all the wealth of man, aye, more precious than anything that God has made, that gift even the poorest can offer to our best Friend, our most loving Father to-day. It is the gift which He Himself has given us. It is Himself! Soon upon that altar it will lie, and as the priest raises it on high, no greater, richer, holier gift exists throughout the universe of God. The priest, and all the faithful with him, give it back to God, who sends it to us that we may have something worthy to offer. Do you too unite presently in its oblation, and as you offer to God Himself, offer along with it your own hearts and souls. As it is borne aloft before the Throne of God, He will stoop down to earth and fill your souls with His holy peace, which alone can make this day in truth a very Merry Christmas.

THE UNITY OF THE FAITH

And there shall be one fold and one shepherd. - ST. JOHN, x, 16.

STANDING in the midst of His beloved disciples and surrounded by multitudes of those who, while they closed their hearts to His earnest pleadings, could not close their ears to the sweet music of His words, or their eyes to the fascination of His holy countenance, the Redeemer lifted His voice, and spake forth His sublime doctrines. His words have been recorded by loving hands, and passing intact through centuries of varied history, are repeated again and again as each succeeding festival calls the faithful together to sit in spirit at the feet of their Divine Teacher. They never lose in point of freshness, but gaining in the manifest wisdom and prophetic insight that stamp their utterance, create in the mind at every new recital a deeper and more lasting sense of the divinity and godliness of the Word Incarnate.

Nineteen centuries ago, as Christ by simple figures and humble parables expounded to His followers the sublime truths of the New Dispensation, the fullness and deep significance of these lofty lessons could scarcely have been realized, except by one who, convinced that the Master was God made man, knew whatever He said was truth and wisdom. But we who, besides a knowledge that comes of faith, have before us the recorded experience of the past, who, besides a confidence in revelation, have attested the veracity of Christ's prophecy in the facts of history since His time, understand more inti

mately the inner and hidden sense of many of His sayings which must have been lost in part at least upon those among whom Christ walked in person, and who learned the truth from His own lips.

When they heard Him proclaim to the world that He was the Good Shepherd who knew His sheep and whose flock knew Him; when they heard Him speak of the other sheep, not of the flock, who were to be gathered into the one sheep-fold, so that there might be one fold and one Shepherd, how many, who listened, saw in those simple words all that we see, or dreamt of the meaning which is so obvious to us. We, at least, do not, like them, strive to banish from our hearts the influence of His teachings by ascribing His words to insanity, or refuse to listen to His words because they condemn the contradiction they meet in our daily lives. There are some, however, even to-day who, like those who heard this parable in Jerusalem, fail to comprehend its significance. They would fain twist His words from their lawful and obvious meaning, and because their hearts are not docile to His commands, their minds are not allowed to see the truth so plainly stated in those simple words: "There shall be one Fold and one Shepherd."

As He stands thus speaking in the streets of Jerusalem His mind wanders in prophetic vision across the plain up to Golgotha. In spirit He sees gathered there at the foot of the Cross His tender flock, the young Church, composed of a few faithful souls, who are ready to die to maintain the unity of His doctrines. Then He gazes in spirit down the ages to follow, and sees the realization of the prophecy that when the Shepherd has been stricken the flock shall be dispersed; and before His soul comes up the vision of our age and our time; when church is