for centuries
headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that
bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest
and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar,
sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all
so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of
the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could
spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and
righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an
atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people
and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these
ideas were rooted in the world.

Pagan achievements, also, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the
coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories
of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by
its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally
impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain
nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made
positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a
marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible
and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed
it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the
gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw
light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.

God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the
world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in
no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The
harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months
before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through
millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The
centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from
Abraham to Mary, "but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
his Son."

III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy

This birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had
cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years.
Through all their national vicissitud