s this to all the world, and therefore the Angel repeated
it to the shepherds: "Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling
clothes, lying in a manger." The God of heaven and earth, the Divine
Word, who had been in glory with the Eternal Father from the beginning,
He was at this time born into this world of sin as a little infant. He,
as at this time, lay in His mother's arms, to all appearance helpless and
powerless, and was wrapped by Mary in an infant's bands, and laid to
sleep in a manger. The Son of God Most High, who created the worlds,
became flesh, though remaining what He was before. He became flesh as
truly as if He had ceased to be what He was, and had actually been
changed into flesh. He submitted to be the offspring of Mary, to be
taken up in the hands of a mortal, to have a mother's eye fixed upon Him,
and to be cherished at a mother's bosom. A daughter of man became the
Mother of God--to her, indeed, an unspeakable gift of grace; but in Him
what condescension! What an emptying of His glory to become man! and not
only a helpless infant, though that were humiliation enough, but to
inherit all the infirmities and imperfections of our nature which were
possible to a sinless soul. What were His thoughts, if we may venture to
use such language or admit such a reflection concerning the Infinite,
when human feelings, human sorrows, human wants, first became His? What
a mystery is there from first to last in the Son of God becoming man!
Yet in proportion to the mystery is the grace and mercy of it; and as is
the grace, so is the greatness of the fruit of it.

Let us steadily contemplate the mystery, and say whether any consequence
is too great to follow from so marvellous a dispensation; any mystery so
great, any grace so overpowering, as that which is already manifested in
the incarnation and death of the Eternal Son. Were we told that the
effect of it would be to make us as Seraphim, that we were to ascend as
high as He descended low--would that startle us after the Angel's news to
the shepherds? And this indeed is the effect of it, so far as such words
may be spoken without impiety. Men we remain, but not mere men, but
gifted with a measure of all those perfections which Christ has in
fulness, partaking each in his own degree of His Divine Nature so fully,
that the only reason (so to speak) why His saints are not really like
Him, is that it is impossible--that He is the Creator, and they His
creature