is retinue, and men would be chilled and frozen with fear. But He
came as a little child. The great God "emptied Himself"; He let in the
light as our eyes were able to bear it.

"_Unto us a Son is given._" And that is the superlative gift! The love
that bestows such gift is all-complete and gracious. And the Son is given
in order that we may all be born into sonship. It is the Son's ministry to
make sons. "Now are we the sons of God," and we are of His creation.

"Lord, I would serve, and be a son;
Dismiss me not, I pray."

DECEMBER The Twenty-fifth

_CHRISTMAS CHEER_

"_Good will toward men!_"
--LUKE ii. 8-20.

The heavens are not filled with hostility. The sky does not express a
frown. When I look up I do not contemplate a face of brass, but the face
of infinite good will. Yet when I was a child, many a picture has made me
think of God as suspicious, inhumanly watchful, always looking round the
corner to catch me at the fall. That "eye," placed in the sky of many a
picture, and placed there to represent God, filled my heart with a
chilling fear. That God was to me a magnified policeman, watching for
wrong-doers, and ever ready for the infliction of punishment. It was all a
frightful perversion of the gracious teaching of Jesus.

Heaven overflows with good will toward men! Our God not only wishes good,
He wills it! "He gave His only begotten Son," as the sacred expression of
His infinite good will. He has good will toward thee and me, and mine and
thine. Let that holy thought make our Christmas cheer.

DECEMBER The Twenty-sixth

_DAYBREAK IN THE SOUL_

ISAIAH ix. 1-7.

It is a lonely and a chilling experience to sit in the darkness. And the
gloom and the cold are all the more intense when there is death in the
house. In such conditions we are in great need of light and fire.

And that is how the children of men were feeling before the Saviour came.
They "_sat in darkness_" and in "_the shadow of death_." The world was
cold, and sin and death were in it, and they longed for light and cheer.
And "the great Light came," and His wonderful Presence not only illumines
the house but banishes the fear of sin and death. "_They that dwelt in the
land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined._"

Where can we get this living light except in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Everything else is candle-light! It fails us in the midnight. It flickers
amid conflicting currents. It goes out