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THE CHRISTMAS 
 CANTICLES 
 
 By 
 GEORGE ELLIOTT 
 
 Love came down at Christmas, 
 Love all lovely. Love Divine; 
 
 Love was born at Christmas, 
 Star and angels gave the sign. 
 
 — Christina Rossetti, 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
Copyright, 1922, by 
 GEORGE ELLIOTT 
 
 Printed in the United States of Americft 
 
TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 IN MEMORY OP 
 
 OUR MANY CHRISTMASES 
 
 WHICH HAVE REVEALED TO ME THE 
 CHRISTIAN HOME AS THE HOLY FAMILY; 
 ALL MOTHERHOOD AS SACRED AND 
 EVERY CHILD AS "THAT HOLY THING." 
 
 BKi^C^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Prelude 7 
 
 I. The Canticles of the Incarna- 
 tion 9 
 
 II. The Virgin Mother— the First 
 
 New Testament Singer 16 
 
 III. The Magnificat — the Madrigal 
 
 of Mary 32 
 
 IV. The Silenced Priest— the Sec- 
 
 ond Singer 48 
 
 V. The Benedictus — the Hymn of 
 
 the Gospel Dawn 54 
 
 VI. The Day-Spring from on High . 61 
 
 VII. The Angel's Sermon Before the 
 
 Angelic Anthem 70 
 
 VIII. "Good Tidings of Great Joy" . 78 
 
 IX. Gloria in Excelsis 83 
 
 X. Naming the Child — a New 
 
 Year's Meditation 96 
 
 XI. The Prophetic Prince of the 
 
 Four Names 105 
 
 5 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PA.GB 
 
 Xn. The Sages, the Star and the 
 
 Saviour 112 
 
 Xni. The King and the Kings — an 
 
 %, Epiphany Meditation 117 
 
 XIV. Nunc Dimittis — the Swan-Song 
 
 of a Saint 123 
 
 XV. The Blessed Boyhood of Jesus . 133 
 
 A Postlude 139 
 
A PRELUDE 
 
 "There's a song in the air! 
 There's a star in the sky!" 
 
 The Psalter has been called "the hymn- 
 book of all the ages." Its poetry is set 
 to music. It is made to be smig. 
 As Carlyle says, all poetry is "musical 
 thought." To this collection of sacred 
 lyrics, begun by David and not com- 
 pleted imtil after the exile in which 
 Hebrew harps were hung on the willows 
 beside the Babylonian stream, the New 
 Testament adds another group of Mes- 
 sianic psalms, recorded by Luke in his 
 beautiful story of the Advent of the 
 Christ. 
 
 Whenever heaven touches earth and 
 God and man come together, the celestial 
 harmonies take the sounds of this world, 
 clothe their disorder with rhythm, arrange 
 their jangling sequences into melody, and 
 blend their harsh dissonances into eu- 
 phony. Christmas lends a new splendor 
 to the stars and a new sweetness to song. 
 
 7 
 
THE CHRISTIVIAS CANTICLES 
 
 This little book is born out of nearly 
 fifty years' meditation at Christmas time 
 on the Canticles of the Incarnation. 
 Four of its chapters have appeared as 
 Christmas editorials in the Methodist 
 Review, These with the others which 
 appear for the first time in print are now 
 sent forth to all friends, known and un- 
 known, wishing them "A Merry Christmas 
 and a Happy New Year!" 
 
 George Elliott. 
 New York City, 1922. 
 
THE CANTICLES OF THE 
 INCARNATION 
 
 TRADITION claims that Saint Luke 
 was an artist, a painter, to whom we 
 are indebted for the portrait of our 
 Lord. For that there is little proof. But the 
 artistic temperament is revealed in his lit- 
 erary style. Renan calls his Gospel "the 
 most beautiful book in the world." Poetry 
 and music meet on his pages, and even his 
 prose sings in rhythmic cadence. He places 
 the chancel in the very porch of his 
 cathedral of holy history and many voices 
 sing at the gateway. The Virgin Mother in 
 the glad madrigal of the Magnificat; Zach- 
 arias the priest intoning the Benedictus, 
 song of the Gospel dawn; Elisabeth greet- 
 ing her kinswoman Mary in a rhythmic 
 chant; and the aged Simeon, singing the 
 sunset hymn of his life, the Nunc Dimittis 
 — these are the human quartet whose 
 solos, on varied keys, succeed each other 
 
 with strange harmony. And overhead God 
 9 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 sends an angelic chorus rendering that 
 heavenly anthem, the Gloria in Excelsis. 
 
 It was fitting that the newborn Re- 
 deemer should be greeted with psalms of 
 praise. As of old around the ark of the 
 covenant the Levitical musicians marched 
 with trumpets and cymbals, and as about 
 the throne of God the ranks of shining 
 seraphs render their Trisagion of "Holy, 
 holy, holy!" so now earth and heaven agree 
 in a great Christmas oratorio. To the 
 Babe of Bethlehem wealth and wisdom 
 from the East brought their offerings of 
 gold and fragrance; so Poetry the most 
 intellectual and Music the most spiritual 
 of the arts came also with their beauteous 
 tributes of psalmody and song. 
 
 Criticism, indeed, has seen a difficulty in 
 the picture of four pious people, of humble 
 birth and surroundings, suddenly breaking 
 out in a flame of poetic rapture and then 
 sinking back into prosaic silence. But 
 criticism to reach correct results must not 
 exclude imagination and intuition. The 
 poetic splendor of these passages does not 
 lift them out of the sphere of history. It 
 is not unnatural for the Oriental mind to 
 
 10 
 
CANTICLES OF THE INCARNATION 
 
 think in symbols and for Oriental speech to 
 blossom with flowers of rhetoric. "All 
 passionate language does of itself become 
 musical. All deep things are Song." ^ 
 
 Abbe Didon, in his Life of Jesus Christ, 
 has stated the case strongly and simply: 
 
 Poetry is the language of intense expression and 
 sublime ideas. Among the Jews, as all Eastern 
 people, it overflowed with inspiration. Every soul 
 is poetic, and joy or grief sets it singing. If ever a 
 heart should have burst into an inspired hymn, it 
 would certainly be that of a young maid chosen of 
 God to be the mother of the Messiah. She borrowed 
 from the Bible stories of the women who before her 
 had been deeply moved by their maternity, as Leah 
 and the mother of Samuel, the phrases which she 
 expanded and transfigured. National hymns which 
 celebrate the mercy, wisdom, power, and faithful- 
 ness of God, constantly return upon lips like hers 
 accustomed to sing them. 
 
 This is a characteristic of religious revi- 
 val. Every moral and spiritual awaking 
 of the mind of man finds its emotional out- 
 let in sacred song. The early Christians 
 were a singing people. Luther, with his 
 rugged battle-hymns of trumpet meter, 
 conquered northern Europe as much by 
 
 1 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 11 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 music and song as by sermon. John Wesley 
 well knew that the lyrics of his brother 
 Charles were worth as much to Method- 
 ism as his own propaganda by voice and 
 pen. 
 
 Back of this fact lies the fundamental 
 philosophy of all true art. God is greatest 
 of all artists. He is the supreme Poet, and 
 Creation is his poem. He is the Infinite 
 Musician, and Redemption is his song. 
 "Nature lays her beam in music," and the 
 ancient myth of the "music of the spheres" 
 is but a symbol of that rhythm which 
 underlies all the handiwork of God. The 
 true and highest muse is the Holy Spirit. 
 When the creative Spirit brooded over 
 chaos he attuned it to cosmic melody, and 
 when the redemptive Spirit touched the 
 lips of the dumb priest and entered the life 
 of the Virgin of Nazareth, the primeval 
 anthem of the morning stars became the 
 New Song of the kingdom of God. The 
 loftiest lyrics are not sparks from the anvil 
 of genius, but live coals from the altar of 
 God. Music is closely linked to worship* 
 Singing is the speech of holy joy as prayer 
 
 is the language of holy desire. 
 12 
 
CANTICLES OF THE INCARNATION 
 
 "Devotion borrows music's tone 
 And music takes devotion's wing." 
 
 All loftiest art was born at the altar of 
 God and to that shrine should return with 
 its richest gifts. 
 
 The Bible is a book of songs. It begins 
 and ends, like creation, in music. 
 
 "From harmony, from heavenly harmony 
 This universal frame began; 
 From harmony to harmony 
 
 Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
 The diapason closing full in man."^ 
 
 Not only nature but revelation is filled 
 with the Divine Presence and therefore 
 vibrant with the rhythm of law, the melody 
 of beauty, and the harmony of love. The 
 Songs of Scripture are God-Songs. They 
 are from God, about God, for God, and to 
 God. God sings, for Zephaniah says, "He 
 shall rejoice over you with singing." 
 Nature sings, for we are told that "the 
 mountains and the hills break forth into 
 singing" before the Lord. And at last His- 
 tory sings, for into the discords of its sin 
 and strife God sends his Son to subdue the 
 
 * John Dryden. 
 
 13 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 harsh dissonance of earth with the har- 
 monies of heaven. 
 
 It is because the Bible is not a cold 
 treatise on either science, history, philoso- 
 phy, or theology, but real literature in 
 which feeling and imagination play as large 
 a part as reason and understanding, that 
 we dare not interpret it by the crude lit- 
 eralism of formal logic but in terms of life 
 and love. 
 
 These Messianic Psalms of the New 
 Testament which we have called the 
 Christmas Canticles, are constructed in the 
 literary form of Old Testament Psalmody. 
 Hebrew poetry is pecuhar in its structure. 
 While it is not without music to the ear, 
 its real rhythm is to the soul, that thought- 
 rhythm expressed both by parallelism and 
 antithesis, which Herder has described as 
 like "the rapid stroke of alternate wings," 
 and the "heaving and sinking of a troubled 
 heart." This thought rhythm is like the 
 music of nature, the beating of waves, the 
 swelling of tides, the throbbing of hearts, 
 the coming and going of light. 
 
 Not only in structure but in substance 
 these canticles of Christmas are like ancient 
 
 14 
 
CANTICLES OF THE INCARNATION 
 
 Hebrew poetry. They repeat with new 
 emphasis the ideas of psalmist and prophet. 
 This itself is a strong proof of their genuine- 
 ness. Had they been composed later, they 
 would have been full of personal references 
 to the Christ who had come, and would 
 have been alive with Christian phrases like 
 the hymns heard by the apocalyptic seer. 
 Their very reserve as to the facts of the 
 incarnation and atonement testifies to their 
 historic truth as being salutations to the 
 newborn King and not the reflective 
 hymns of a later generation. 
 
 Christmas is the day of songs, for on 
 this day the music of eternity came into 
 time. God is the supreme Poet and Jesus 
 Christ his perfect Poem. Can we better 
 spend that festival week between 
 Christmas and the New Year than in 
 studying the singers and meditating upon 
 the songs .'^ 
 
 15 
 
II 
 
 THE VIRGIN MOTHER— THE FIRST 
 NEW TESTAMENT SINGER 
 
 SAINT LUKE puts his choir of Mes- 
 sianic singers in the porch of his 
 Gospel; he also leads us through 
 the Beautiful Gate of the Temple into 
 the court of the women. Perhaps it was 
 his profession as a physician that filled 
 him with feministic sympathy, and it may 
 have been helped by his pastorate of the 
 Philippian church, the center of whose 
 life was a group of holy women. A 
 tinge of the Lydian purple has possessed 
 his historic spirit. It is he who pictures 
 Elisabeth the priest's wife and Anna the 
 prophetess; he mentions the ministering 
 women, the widow of Nain, the sisters of 
 Bethany, and many more. His is the 
 most human of Gospels, the gospel of 
 tenderness and tolerance. 
 
 It seems quite certain that as mes- 
 sages from the lips of Joseph supplied 
 16 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 the material for the infancy stories in 
 Matthew, it was personal memoirs of the 
 Virgin Mother that inspired the first 
 three chapters of Luke — the most lovely 
 literature of the world. 
 
 Mary, a maiden of Nazareth, tradi- 
 tionally the daughter of Joachim and 
 Anna, was probably related to both the 
 tribes of Judah and Levi. So in her 
 Son are united the royal and sacerdotal 
 lines. As King, he sways the scepter of 
 universal dominion; as Priest he swings 
 the censer of perpetual intercession. 
 
 To her home in Nazareth came Gabriel, 
 
 the messenger of God. What was the 
 
 scene of the annunciation? Was it at 
 
 that fountain where the girls of Galilee 
 
 still gather.^ or in a garden where this 
 
 Rose of Hebrew womanhood stood among 
 
 the lilies of the annunciation .f^ Better 
 
 still, and more likely, it may have been 
 
 in her own home, the true sanctuary of 
 
 all motherhood. She may have been at 
 
 work weaving sacred linen for the Holy 
 
 Place at Jerusalem and embroidering them 
 
 with the lily-work which is still her 
 
 symbol. Or she may have been at prayer. 
 17 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 As her body became the shrine where met 
 the divine and the human, so her chamber 
 was doubtless the true temple of her wor- 
 ship. This last is made probable by the 
 phrase "he came in unto her." 
 
 Then she is saluted with those heav- 
 enly courtesies which are not as mean- 
 ingless as those of earth. "Hail, thou 
 highly favored one!" The angelic salu- 
 tation witnesses her fitness for the heav- 
 enly honor of a divine motherhood. Plena 
 gratioel — "full of grace," there was in 
 her nature such a wealth of beauty and 
 grace as made her worthy among women 
 for this high choice. And then he an- 
 nounces the mission of Mary and the 
 mystery of the virgin birth. Great and 
 sublime are many missions to which God 
 has called men; but surely there never 
 was one so great as this, the highest 
 which heaven ever addressed to a mortal. 
 Through her royal motherhood the Eternal 
 Son of God came into brotherhood with 
 you and me. Can we imagine the soul 
 lifted at once to such an earthly and tem-, 
 porary shame and such an heavenly and 
 
 eternal fame.^^ 
 
 18 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 To the daughters of Israel there was 
 no dream so divine as that of Messianic 
 motherhood. Before the gates of Eden 
 were bolted with flame, there came the 
 Protevangelion, "The seed of the woman 
 shall bruise the serpent's head," and the 
 sad face of the first mother fallen in 
 sorrow at the foot of the Tree of the 
 Knowledge of Good and Evil is lighted 
 by a gleam from the looks of Jesus flung 
 back through the ages. And now promise 
 comes to fulfillment and that first name 
 of the mother of all living, EVA, is trans- 
 posed into AVEy Hail! that greets the 
 mother of Him who shall again open 
 the gates of paradise and lead us to the 
 Tree of Life. 
 
 The primal grace of her character is 
 purity. It is as the Virgin Mary that we 
 honor her. Hers is the charm of the 
 undefiled soul. No painter has violated 
 this tradition. While she fills in Chris- 
 tian art the place taken by Venus in 
 paganism, it is with a marvelous differ- 
 ence. The gaze of Mary is always one 
 of mingled innocence and sadness. This 
 charm of chastity is the inner secret of 
 
 19 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 man's reverence for woman. There can 
 be no shock to human nature greater 
 than loss of faith in this which is the 
 pride and glory of the world. 
 
 Another trait is her submissiveness. 
 *'Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be 
 it unto me according to thy word." God 
 stands on ceremony with his finite crea- 
 tures; he awaits our consent to his 
 mandate. Her soul did not tinge with 
 any colors of its own the white ray of 
 the heavenly will; she is filled with the 
 pure simlight of the divine purpose. She, 
 the daughter of Abraham, is called to a 
 test of fidelity not less severe than his, 
 is called to the surrender of the dearest 
 possession of maidenhood, her fair fame; 
 is called to endure the suspicion of her 
 betrothed, and the possible scorn of 
 friends. And her pure soul proceeds to 
 penetrate the black cloud of humiliation 
 with the white light of holy self-abnega- 
 tion. The modern craze for self-expression, 
 born of fake psychology, is a poor thing 
 beside the nobler task of winning a self 
 which is worthy of expression. 
 
 Hers was a true patriotism. We have 
 
 20 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 already noted the passionate hope of 
 Messianic motherhood. No women have 
 ever been more intensely national in 
 spirit than the daughters of Israel. Love 
 of their historic ideals is mingled with 
 the life-blood in their veins. This is the 
 supreme need of America and of every 
 land. When women become frivolous, 
 selfish, and vain, men will be vicious, 
 dishonest, and brutal. No great cause 
 can ever succeed without the aid of 
 womanhood. Not in a man's way, nor 
 by abandoning her nobler functions for 
 his, but from the imperial throne of a 
 divine motherhood shall she rule the race. 
 This is the woman's patriotism, whose 
 theme soimds again and again in the 
 Song of Deborah, the Hymn of Hannah, 
 and the canticle of the Magnificat, 
 
 The thoughtfulness of Mary is sig- 
 nificant. Her outburst into song is excep- 
 tional; for the most part hers is the 
 reserved beauty of a quiet life. She is 
 sparing of speech. The gospel has re- 
 corded this phase of her psychology: 
 "She considered in herself"; "she pon- 
 dered in her heart." Who shall disclose 
 
 21 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 the hidden poetry of a mother's heart? 
 Men and women, have you ever allowed 
 yourselves to guess how deeply the little 
 things of your lives have sunk into your 
 mother's soul and there formed that 
 fairest mosaic of her thought of you? 
 
 Her thoughtfulness prepared the way 
 for her great renunciation. The sword 
 soon enters her heart. All parents must 
 faintly feel a like experience. The coming 
 of our children to independent life produces 
 a perplexity hard to understand and 
 harder still to bear. At Cana, at Caper- 
 naum, and at Calvary she passed through 
 both a spiritual and a physical bereave- 
 ment. This is the pathetic history of the 
 generations, "Mine, yet mine no more!" 
 
 This human tragedy of life and love 
 has its compensation of high joyfulness. 
 Her hymn is one of triumphant gladness. 
 ''Mater Dolorosa,'' "Our Lady of Sorrows," 
 she shall share in the gift of Pentecost; 
 she is now nearest the throne of glory. 
 
 What is the true glory of Mary? We 
 
 must lay aside both the traditions of 
 
 Rome and the prejudices of Protestantism 
 
 — those colored glasses we too frequently 
 22 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 use to avoid the glare of Papal super- 
 stitions — if we want a true portrait of 
 the Virgin Mother. 
 
 The dangerous dogma of the immaculate 
 conception of the blessed Virgin was 
 delivered by Pope Pius IX, in spite of 
 the fact that it had been opposed by 
 many of the greatest theologians, both 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant, in all 
 the Christian centuries. And the Vatican 
 Council confirmed the doctrine by de- 
 claring the Pope infallible! There is no 
 hint of this papal heresy in the Holy 
 Scriptures, although they do ascribe the 
 highest honor to Mary. 
 
 Without doubt, Mariolatry grew by the 
 
 perversion of a partly lost truth of the 
 
 incarnation — the need of a human God 
 
 and of the divine Fatherhood. When 
 
 Christ had lost his humanness in mediaeval 
 
 dogmatism, and when men saw in him 
 
 only the stern Judge and King of the 
 
 Byzantine mosaics, a world submerged in 
 
 sensuality and strife found its path to 
 
 the heart of God through the mother love 
 
 of Mary. One can see the result to-day 
 
 in all Roman CathoKc coimtries. There 
 23 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 is real pathos and a true, though dis- 
 torted, meaning in the tawdry dolls 
 surrounded by candles in the shrines and 
 chapels dedicated to the Virgin, and the 
 heart-breaking appeal, Maria Helf! The 
 bruised heart needs not philosophy but 
 compassion. The Dark Ages would have 
 been saved from their blindness and gloom 
 had they kept the Christ who wept as well 
 as him that shall judge. For in our Lord 
 there is not only the manly brain but the 
 womanly heart, and we shall ever be con- 
 quered by the "mother in his eyes." 
 
 Poetic Uterature abounds in these per- 
 verted pictures of the Virgin Mother, 
 which if persisted in would as surely 
 destroy her humanness as mediaeval dog- 
 matism that of her Son. Such a great 
 Christian Platonist as Henry Vaughan 
 dared to write: 
 "Bright Queen of Heaven! God's Virgin Spouse, 
 
 The glad world's blessed maid! 
 Whose beauty tied life to thy house 
 
 And brought us saving aid. 
 Thou art the true Lover's-Knot; by thee 
 
 God is made our ally. 
 And man's inferior essence he 
 With his did dignify." 
 24 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 These lovely lines need not be interpreted 
 in terms of Roman dogma, as must this 
 audacious passage from Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti's poem "Ave": 
 
 "Mother of the fair delight. 
 Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight. 
 Now sitting fourth beside the Three, 
 Thyself a woman-Trinity, 
 Being a daughter born to God, 
 Mother of Christ from stall to rood. 
 And wife unto the Holy Ghost." 
 
 More moderate and not without a some- 
 what exaggerated vision of the real truth 
 are these stanzas from Robert Steven 
 Hawker : 
 **A shape like folded light, embodied air; 
 
 Yet wreathed with flesh and warm; 
 All that of heaven is feminine and fair. 
 
 Molded in human form, 
 
 **She stood, the Lady Shechinah of earth, 
 
 A chancel for the sky. 
 Where woke to breath and beauty God's own Birth 
 For men to see him by." 
 
 There is, however, a real Nemesis in 
 
 Mariolatry. It wrongs the human race 
 
 and cheats Christ's sisters of their sweet 
 
 queen. When at last removed from human 
 
 sympathies, if she had no knowledge of 
 25 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 sin and has assumed a quasi-divinity, 
 then her tenderness is lost, and even now 
 Romanists are beginning to call upon 
 Saint Joseph and Saint Anna to speak to 
 the Virgin for them. Safer, sounder, and 
 sweeter is the vision of Mrs. Browning 
 of this "blessedest of women": 
 
 "I am not proud! 
 Albeit in my flesh God sent his Son; 
 Albeit over him my head is bowed 
 As others bow before him. Still my heart 
 Bows lower than their knees. O centuries. 
 Say of me as the Heavenly said, *Thou blessedest 
 Of women!* Blessedest, 
 Not holiest, noblest— no high name 
 Whose hight misplaced may pierce me like a shame 
 Where I sit meek in Heaven." 
 
 Mary has a true glory, but a glory that 
 we mortals may share. We may claim 
 the high qualities that made her "highly 
 favored.*' Ours may be that stainless 
 purity, sweet submission, lofty enthusi- 
 asm, thoughtful tenderness, and lowly 
 self-sacrifice which have made her worthy 
 to be praised by all the generations. So 
 Keble sings: 
 
 ^^Ave Maria! thou whose name 
 
 All but adoring love may claim, 
 26 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 Yet may we reach thy shrine. 
 For he, thy Son and Saviour, vows 
 To crown all lowlj% lofty brows 
 
 With love and joy like thine. 
 
 "Blessed is the womb that bore him, blest 
 The bosom where his lips were pressed; 
 
 But rather blest are they 
 Who hear his word and keep it well 
 The living homes where Christ may dwell 
 
 And never pass away." 
 
 All motherhood and childhood are glori- 
 fied by the incarnation. The curse of 
 Eden has been transformed into a crown. 
 Every child has become "that holy thing." 
 Everj^ theory of woman's work which 
 makes anything nobler than maternity is 
 condemned by the blessed example of 
 this White Rose of Israel, this fairest 
 flower of w^omanhood. May this be true 
 of every man and woman: 
 
 "Make her hands like the hands of Mary 
 Blessing the little one; 
 Make her lips like the lips of Mary 
 Kissing her Blessed Son." 
 
 Mary did not doubt as did Zacharias 
 when Gabriel came with his astounding 
 
 27 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 annunciation. She wondered as to the 
 mode — "How can this come to me, an 
 mimarried woman?" — but she questioned 
 not the fact, and asked no sign nor proof. 
 Strange paradox! Mother and virgin! but 
 not more strange than the union of God 
 and man. So faith brings to reason its 
 high assurance. 
 
 We may not wish to use the ancient 
 title given to Mary, "Mother of God" — 
 but she was the mother of Him in whom 
 God was manifested in the flesh. She 
 was not a goddess-mother; she was a truly 
 human mother. Out of her flesh He took 
 flesh; his bodily frame was inherited from 
 his human mother. Probably some fea- 
 tiu'es of his face and form resembled her 
 and revealed his earthly heredity. Did 
 he also inherit a human soul from her.f* 
 Biblical psychology never shall be able 
 to decide between the contending theories 
 of Creationism and Traducianism. Ter- 
 tullian and Jerome, Augustine and 
 Pelagius, and theologians in all time will 
 differ. Even a materialist like Lucretius 
 was puzzled with this problem of par- 
 entage: 
 
 28 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 "For it cannot be said what are the conditions of 
 the soul. 
 Whether it is itself begotten or produced in those 
 that are begotten." 
 
 Theology, in the formula of the Council 
 of Chalcedon, has rather doubtfully denied 
 the element of personality to the human- 
 ity of our Lord. But dare we do it when 
 we remember that personality is the 
 chief est of all human attributes? Whether 
 his human soul came by inheritance from 
 his mother or by the direct creation of 
 God, of one thing we are assured — ^he 
 was the Son of Man, possessing all human 
 quahties, and the heir and representative 
 of all mankind. 
 
 While physically he was the Son of 
 Mary, and may have resembled her in 
 form and feature, psychically he was the 
 Child of all humanity, as spiritually he 
 was the Son of God. He is Kinsman of 
 all kindreds. Art has tried to express 
 this truth by portraying him with racial 
 features as to his bodily form. Italian 
 artists paint him in lovely Latin lines; 
 French, German, and Spanish painters 
 have pictured him as transformed into 
 
 29 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 their own national types; and, even now, 
 Hindoo Christians are dreaming of an 
 Oriental Christ. He does belong to all 
 races and each can rightly claim him as 
 its own, but his full being is composite 
 of them all. We do not know in what 
 manner God may reveal himself to other 
 worlds. 
 
 "Nor in our little day. 
 May his devices with the heavens be guessed, 
 
 His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way 
 Or his bestowals there be manifest."^ 
 
 In some future time we may compare 
 with the citizens of the constellations "in 
 what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lion, 
 the Bear," and — 
 
 "O, be prepared, my Soul! 
 To read the inconceivable, to scan 
 The million forms of God thoise Stars unroll 
 "When, in our turn, we show to them a Man."^ 
 
 And so the Virgin mother soon came 
 to see that her Son was more than her 
 Son — that he had a "Father's house" at 
 Jerusalem as well as the humble home 
 at Nazareth, that there were mysteries 
 
 1 Alice Meynell. 
 
 30 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER 
 
 in his inward thought that even her 
 maternal insight could not penetrate, and 
 that he could find a higher brotherhood 
 and motherhood in all who could share 
 his harmony with the Father's will. 
 
 All this does not belittle the glory of 
 Mary. It was high honor that she be- 
 came the frail vessel of earth through 
 which the whole of humanity received 
 their Child and Brother. No higher 
 function has ever been granted to earthly 
 flesh and blood and of that honor none 
 could have been more worthy than she. 
 
 "Praise Mary Mother! 
 Mary, none other 
 Welcome might the Holy Ghost 
 Because her soul was pure the most."^ 
 
 For us all she brought forth the Christ. 
 Shall we not , share her joy and make 
 our own rhapsody her Messianic Psalm, 
 the Magnificat? 
 
 2 Lionel Johnson. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MAGNIFICAT—TRE 
 MADRIGAL OF MARY 
 
 THE heart of the Nazarene maiden, 
 made happy by the promise of 
 Messianic motherhood, a gladness 
 darkened by the gathering clouds of social 
 misunderstanding, seeks the solace of 
 holy sisterhood. She finds it far away 
 in the home at Hebron, near the oak of 
 Father Abraham, the graves of the patri- 
 archs, and that of her great ancestress, 
 Sarah, to whom had come, as to her kins- 
 woman Elisabeth, the miracle of sterile 
 age suddenly flowering into fertility. 
 
 It was a long journey southward across 
 the plains of Esdraelon, filled with the 
 martial memories of Gideon and Barak, 
 and past the brook Kishon beside which 
 Deborah sang. Perhaps she quenched 
 her thirst at Jacob's Well, where later her 
 Son shall lead an erring woman to the 
 light. Then through Jerusalem and Beth- 
 
 32 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 lehem, past Rachers tomb and the fields 
 where Ruth had "stood among the golden 
 corn." Then by rugged roads up the 
 high hills to Hebron. Here these two 
 common village women met and by their 
 meeting were transformed into prophet- 
 esses and poetesses by the overshadowing 
 Spirit of God. Surely some memories of 
 the road are in the rapturous psalm that 
 Mary sings. The long journey had sug- 
 gested many thoughts, and her presence 
 had added a new sacredness to the places 
 she had passed. 
 
 "Blest earth, whereon she trod. 
 Put forth your fragrance sweet: 
 Blest hills that felt her feet 
 The mother with her God. 
 
 "More blest ye friends, whose guest 
 She now doth silence break, 
 Of heavenly things to speak, 
 And where her footsteps rest."^ 
 
 Any touch of sorrow that checked the 
 rising rapture of her spirit was ended at 
 once by the salutation of Elisabeth. She 
 greets her young relation with the first 
 beatitude of the New Testament. Like 
 
 I The Paris Breviary. 
 
 33 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 the canticles, it is expressed in Hebrew 
 rhythm and in two strophes of four lines 
 each: 
 
 "Blest among women art thou 
 And blessed the fruit of thy womb! 
 
 And whence this to me 
 That the mother of my Lord should visit me? 
 
 "For lo! as the voice of thy greeting reached my ears, 
 The babe in my womb leaped for joy. 
 And blessed is she who believed the fulfillment 
 Of the Lord's words to her." 
 
 It is pleasant to meet a friend, but 
 divine is the delight when the presence 
 of a third one, the Holy Spirit, makes 
 understanding secure and sympathy per- 
 fect. And now her spirit, to whom that 
 Holy Presence has already come in adum- 
 bration of the approaching birth, breaks 
 out in sacred song. Her hymn is a mosaic 
 of the psalmody of Israel. She is like a 
 Puritan maiden to whom the phrases of 
 Holy Writ have become the native atmos- 
 phere of thought and speech. She must 
 have known by heart many Hebrew 
 hymns, for the Magnificat contains at 
 least fifteen Old Testament phrases, inter- 
 woven and transmuted into a new beauty 
 34 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 and meaning. "The pure heart makes 
 the best Psalter." Shall we be astonished 
 if the humble consciousness of her high 
 and holy designation as the Mother of 
 the Lord draws forth from Marj-'s heart 
 and lips the most magnificent cry of joy 
 that ever leaped from the human soul? 
 
 The Magnificat links the old dispensa- 
 tion and the new, it is an interlude be- 
 tween the Law and the Gospel. It is 
 the swan song of Hebraism and an over- 
 ture for Christianity. It finds its basic 
 material in the hymn that Hannah san.<^ 
 after the birth of her son Samuel. But 
 a new spirit inspires this canticle. There 
 is a legend that Mary found a flower 
 without perfume in the garden at Hebron 
 and, having touched it, that flower has 
 been filled with fragrance ever since. So 
 she took the triumphant ode of a proud 
 woman of the past and filled it with the 
 sweetness of her gentler spirit. 
 
 The Magnifix^at is a song of the soul. 
 "My soul doth magnify the Lord." Soon 
 the shepherds shall hear a chorus in the 
 sky, but she finds one in her heart. Not 
 the lips alone, but the inward being 
 
 35 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 sings. The faculties of mind and heart 
 form a choir for the praise of God. So 
 may all that is within us bless his holy 
 name. Reason with its majestic bass. 
 Love with its full-voiced soprano, Con- 
 science with clear-toned tenor — all are led 
 by Will in the praise of the Lord. "The 
 Lord" — that is the keynote of her song. 
 It is a true Te Deum, full of suggested 
 doxologies. There is an underlying rhythm 
 of life, an inward music that the soul 
 alone can sing, a secret heaven in the 
 breast where already the choirs of glory 
 have begun their harmonies. 
 
 God is the supreme theme of all music 
 and poetry. "Sing unto the Lord," cry 
 the minstrels of the past. He inspires the 
 song of Moses as he chants, "The Lord 
 is my strength and my song," and Mary 
 echoes that strain of old, "I will sing of 
 the mercies of the Lord." 
 
 The Magnificat celebrates the might of 
 
 God. Elisabeth had praised Mary, but the 
 
 meek maiden transfers the eulogy to the 
 
 great and mighty God. It is not an answer 
 
 to the greeting of Elisabeth, nor is it an 
 
 ascription of adoration to the Almighty; it 
 36 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 is, rather, a (description of the worshipful 
 meditation going on in mind and heart. 
 She is overpowered with a sense of the 
 divine greatness and adoringly prostrates 
 her finite littleness before the vision of 
 the Infinite One. It is a comfort in our 
 weakness to know that we have a great 
 God. Our frailty takes courage when we 
 can hide under the shadow of the divine 
 strength. The universe has a single source 
 of power — it is the arm of God. Not 
 only is it true, as Mary sings, "He hath 
 done a deed of might with his arm," but 
 back of all forces works the Omnipotent 
 will of God. 
 
 The Magnificat sees the Almighty God 
 as the master of history. All earthly 
 pomp and power vanish at his touch. 
 The new life that stirs within the Virgin 
 Mother shall subdue all mundane strength. 
 Gibbon remembered a phrase of this song 
 as he sat on the steps of the Capitol at 
 Rome and planned The Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire. So passed and shall 
 pass all earthly priests and potentates — 
 Pilate and Herod, Caiaphas and Caesar, 
 Sanhedrin and Senate — but God lives and 
 
 37 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 Christ, the Son of the Most High, lives, 
 and shall live and reign forevermore. 
 
 The Magnificat in one phrase pictures 
 the moral character of God. **Holy is 
 his Name!'' Isaiah seven hundred years 
 before had seen the divine splendor and 
 contemplated the divine character, inter- 
 preted for him by the seraph's Tersanctus, 
 **Holy, holy, holy!" And his favorite 
 name for Jehovah was "the Holy One 
 of Israel." And that most evangelical 
 prophet in his message of hope to his 
 own age had promised a mystic birth of 
 a delivering Prince — a dream which be- 
 came an ideal of Israel to be fulfilled in 
 the future. And now, with that won- 
 derful birth starting songs in her soul, 
 Isaiah's vision becomes her own, and her 
 inner life is flooded with the white light 
 of the holiness of God. 
 
 The Magnificat magnifies the mercy of 
 God. We join with her as we sing Heber's 
 glorious hymn to the blessed Trinity: 
 "Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty." 
 Religion never can rest in the natural 
 attributes of God. If he were nothing 
 
 but strength, we should be afraid of him 
 
 38 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 and flee from him. It is highest joy to 
 know that his boundless power is ruled 
 by a huge tenderness. God is not only 
 great but good, and goodness is the high- 
 est greatness. "Saviour" is in the first 
 strophe of her song and "Mercy" in the 
 last. It is a strain echoed a little later 
 in the Benedictus when the husband of 
 Elisabeth tells of "the tender mercy of 
 our God." Mercy is a little gift in human 
 lives but in the divine nature it becomes 
 clothed with his greatness. It is no 
 longer a slowly dropped cordial from a 
 jeweled vase, or the trickling of a slender 
 rill, but it becomes wide and wealthy as 
 sunlight, as broad and bright as the skies, 
 as impartial as the heavenly gift of rain. 
 It is a celestial river rising in the heart 
 of God, which shall flood the earth with 
 the river of salvation. And "Saviour" 
 was a new word to the pagan world. It 
 filled that dark realm of unrest and 
 despair with wonder and a new hope. 
 There is an old story of a Roman orator 
 who had seen it somewhere engraved on 
 a tombstone and wrote, "Salvator — a new 
 word but very beautiful it seems to me!" 
 
 39 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 But it was an old word to Israel, w^ho had 
 heard Jehovah speak: "Look unto me and 
 be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth." 
 Now it burst forth big with new mean- 
 ings and bright with higher hopes. The 
 message of mercy has gone singing down 
 the Christian centuries. We hear its 
 echo in such strains as Johann Rothe, the 
 Moravian, sings in a hymn which, like 
 the Magnificat^ is a mosaic of many pas- 
 sages of Scripture: 
 
 "O love, thou bottomless abyss, 
 
 My sins are swallowed up in thee; 
 Covered is my unrighteousness, 
 
 No spot of guilt remains in me; 
 TVTiile Jesus' blood through earth and skies 
 Mercy, free boundless mercy, cries!" 
 
 And Charles Wesley in that historic hymn 
 which is one of the "birth songs of the 
 Evangelical Revival," shouts shortly after 
 his own conversion: 
 
 "'Tis mere}" all! let heaven adore. 
 Let angel minds inquire no more." 
 
 For mercy is the attribute by which man 
 rises to share the holiness and be pro- 
 tected by the power of God. It modulates 
 40 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 the minor chant of the "still sad music 
 of humanity," lost in sin and sorrow, and 
 turns it into the triumphant melody of 
 the new song of ransomed souls — "Salva- 
 tion unto our God and to the Lamb." 
 
 The Magnificat is the Marseillaise both 
 of a spiritual and a social democracy. 
 Mary knows that her exaltation from the 
 low estate of a slave girl (the literal mean- 
 ing of the word rendered "handmaid") 
 to be honored in the praises of all coming 
 generations, that the choice of a country 
 carpenter's bride to be the mother of the 
 Messiah — that these are divine testimonies 
 to the equal standing of all souls before 
 the sovereignty of God. 
 
 But why does our democratic songstress 
 use the past tense when she declares "He 
 hath scattered the proud in the imagina- 
 tion of their heart, he hath deposed dynasts 
 from their thrones".^ Certainly, there is 
 little reason for such grammatical explana- 
 tions as that she spoke in Hebrew, using, 
 as was common, its past tense in the 
 future sense, nor that it is a Greek gnomic 
 aorist used to describe the habitual. 
 What is surely meant is that what has 
 41 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 already come into her own experience by 
 the angelic annunciation and the Holy 
 Spirit's presence is the seed of that com- 
 ing kingdom whose full blossom and 
 fruitage will be spiritual liberty, equality 
 of human rights, and perfect fraternity of 
 all souls. The incarnation of God in man 
 is the necessary end of all autocracy in 
 government and society. 
 
 It is not enough to claim that the 
 democratic movement in history has come 
 from our Lord's teaching of the Father- 
 hood of God and the brotherhood of 
 man. Modem freedom is more than the 
 fruitage of a mere didactic message. Its 
 germ was actually sown in the person of 
 Christ. By the incarnation of God in the 
 form of a Jewish carpenter, a new picture 
 of personal worth has come to all human 
 thought; and by the atonement in which 
 *'he tasted death for every man," he has 
 enabled all humble souls to dye their 
 rags of serfdom in that purple flood of 
 sacrificial love which transforms them 
 into the robes of royalty. The divine 
 democracy is not a Marxian socialism, 
 leveling down to a proletariat standard, 
 
 42 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 but a lifting up of all life imtil all men 
 may share with Christ his kingship. 
 
 The history of the world is still stirred 
 by this Messianic revolution. Every 
 Christmas day is a true Independence 
 Day for all mankind. Thrones are still 
 tottering at the touch of his scepter. 
 When a stable and a carpenter shop are 
 made the mansions of God's Anointed 
 and a cross becomes his throne, all social 
 selfishness and injustice, all business base- 
 ness and greed, all political despotism and 
 cruelty, are doomed. 
 
 "Almighty God to all mankind on Christmas Day 
 said he: 
 *I rent you from the old red hills, and rending made 
 
 you free. 
 There was charter, there was challenge in a blast 
 
 of breath I gave; 
 You can be all things other; you cannot be a slave. 
 You shall be tired and tolerant of fancies as they 
 
 fade, 
 But if men doubt the charter, you shall call on 
 
 the crusade — 
 Trumpet and torch and catapult, cannon and blow 
 
 and blade. 
 Because it was my challenge to all the things I 
 made.' " 
 
 Neither Mary nor her Son would have 
 
 43 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 indorsed all the teachings of these stirring 
 lines by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Jesus 
 Christ will not enforce his Charter of 
 Democracy by cannon or by sword. His 
 kingdom cometh not by observation. The 
 weapons of his holy warfare are not carnal 
 but spiritual. Nor will its final victory 
 be through political methods. Nothing but 
 a birth from above opens the doors of 
 his kingdom. The divine democracy will 
 triumph by the entrance of Christ into 
 human hearts, the transformation of life, 
 and the supplanting of selfishness by the 
 spirit of brotherhood. But although its 
 source is spiritual its results will be 
 external. A Christianity that is not 
 applied is denied. Earthly kings must 
 be deposed if the King of kings is to rule 
 the world. The heaped-up gold of cap- 
 italistic greed must melt away in the fires 
 of holy love and sacrificial service until 
 poverty shall pass away. The rich must 
 empty their purses if the hungry are to 
 be filled with good things. Room, room in 
 the seats of the noble for the sons of the 
 lowly! for by the manger birth the poor 
 man has become a king. 
 44 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 *'Now Christ is Lord of heaven and hell. 
 And all the words of Christ are true. 
 He touched the cottage and it grew. 
 He touched the palace and it fell. 
 
 **But the sun streams in at the cottage door 
 That stands where once the palace stood. 
 And the workman, toiling to earn his food. 
 Was never a king before."^ 
 
 Slaves have often been sweet singers — 
 but there has always been a minor note 
 of melancholy in their minstrelsy. Democ- 
 racy and freedom have always been the 
 real environment of music. Christ is the 
 chorister who leads the anthem of free- 
 dom. He it is who comes to proclaim 
 "liberty to the captive and the opening 
 of the prison to them that are bound." 
 In all human history the pilgrims toward 
 the lands of liberty have burst forth into 
 song at the moment of deliverance. The 
 Israelites leaving behind them the sub- 
 merged army of despotism face the wilder- 
 ness of their freedom with the Song of 
 Moses: 
 
 "Sound the loud timbrel over Egypt's dark sea. 
 Jehovah hath conquered, his people are free!" 
 
 ^ Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. 
 
 45 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 And our Pilgrim Fathers as their feet 
 touched the wild wilderness of the New 
 World did it with "hymns of lofty cheer." 
 
 "Amid the storms they sang. 
 
 And the stars heard and the sea; 
 And the somiding aisles of the dim woods rang 
 With the anthem of the free!" 
 
 We have called the Magnificat the 
 
 madrigal of Mary. Really, it might be 
 
 called her galliard. "My spirit doth 
 
 rejoice in God my Saviour." The Greek 
 
 word for "rejoice," Tj-yaXMaae, may be 
 
 the root of that gay dance called the 
 
 galliard. Her ancestor, David, danced 
 
 before the ark of Jehovah. And now her 
 
 inward spirit bounds in joy before that 
 
 inward presence in her heart and life, "my 
 
 Saviour." Saviour! did she sing her song 
 
 in the vernacular tongue of Palestine, the 
 
 Aramaic? If so, she spoke that word 
 
 which the angel had given her as the 
 
 name of the coming child. We may not 
 
 find Christ in her song; there is a silence 
 
 of the winged cherub so near the ark 
 
 that it may not speak. But Christ is in 
 
 the song for all that. That minor strain 
 
 of dissonance which jarred the music of 
 46 
 
THE MAGNIFICAT 
 
 her mind in Nazareth as she faced the 
 shame of a virgin birth has now been 
 resolved into a great major chord of 
 holy rapture sung by the choir of her soul 
 as thought, feeling and will leap and sing 
 before the promised presence of the in- 
 carnate God. When Jesus comes into the 
 heart a new song begins. 
 
 47 
 
IV 
 
 THE SILENCED PRIEST— THE 
 SECOND SINGER 
 
 ALL that was best in Judaism was 
 the heritage of the Messiah and 
 of his forerunner, the Baptist. Holy 
 and happy homes were those in Nazareth 
 and Hebron where Jesus and John spent 
 their childhood. The royal lineage of 
 David and the sacerdotal succession of 
 Aaron were worthily represented in the 
 blameless and unsullied lives of Joseph 
 and Mary and of Zacharias and Elisabeth. 
 The latter are pictured by Saint Luke 
 as indeed a model pair; they were one in 
 love and in the Lord. Their constant 
 employment in sacred tasks had not made 
 them irreverent; the sanctity of religious 
 service was not staled to them by its 
 commonness. Yet one grief clouded the 
 gladness of this priestly household. Back- 
 ward they can trace their Levitical ped- 
 igree to Aaron, but Providence has given 
 48 
 
THE MUTE PRIEST AND HIS SONG 
 
 them no forward look; the reproach of 
 childlessness, so abhorrent to the Hebrew 
 heart, is upon the pious pair. It is 
 always a calamity when the homes best 
 fitted for the right nurtm-e of childhood 
 furnish neither citizens to the state nor 
 members to the church. 
 
 We cannot doubt that this private and 
 personal longing lent some coloring to 
 the public ministry of Zacharias. When 
 his turn comes to serve in the Holy Place, 
 kindling the altar fires, trimming the 
 sacred lamps, and swinging the smoking 
 censer before the curtains of the Unseen 
 Holy, his hungry longing burned with 
 the flames, and his passionate desire 
 mingled with the fragrance that went 
 up to God. 
 
 A minister is the more qualified for 
 his ministrj^ by the sympathy with hu- 
 man need born of his own sorrow. Out- 
 side the people are praying and watching 
 for the rising vapor cloud which shall 
 float heavenward with their petitions; 
 within the aged priest is wafting the 
 odorous offering, made more fragrant by 
 the perfume of his bruised spirit. And 
 
 49 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 so this day, God, by his angel, broke the 
 silence of centuries with, "Fear not, 
 Zacharias, thy prayer is answered." 
 
 We are acquainted with the names 
 of but two of the great angels of the 
 Presence, Michael, the messenger of judg- 
 ment, and Gabriel, the angel of promise. 
 Yet why should our modern Sadduceeism, 
 so credulous of the scientific marvels 
 wrought by "impersonal force" (is there 
 such a thing .^) lose the glory and blessing 
 of the lesser wonder of our personal allies 
 in the unseen realm? They still fill the 
 air with their radiant beauty; they still 
 help us with their holy ministries. Those 
 that are "heirs of salvation" are still 
 honored with seraphic service. Especially 
 when we are doing God's business, as 
 was this good priest in the Temple, 
 attending to the sacred routine of wor- 
 ship, do we draw near the veil of mystery 
 that hides the unseen world, and forth 
 from the thick darkness of the Holiest 
 shall come the big, bright messengers of 
 grace. The carved twin cherubim that 
 bend above the Mercy-Seat, trying to 
 guess the secret of the sprinkled blood, 
 50 
 
THE MUTE PRIEST AND HIS SONG 
 
 are but earthly pictures of the holy host 
 that help in all true human worship. 
 When we sing at the holy communion, 
 "Therefore with angels and archangels and 
 all the company of heaven," surely our 
 hearts feel that all the heavenly stairways 
 are filled with shining ones bearing peti- 
 tions up and bringing blessings down. 
 If we could hear and see them, it is a 
 marvelous tale they would tell, that our 
 lives with their plans and purposes are 
 known and regarded in heaven and that 
 strong seraphs are given the care of our 
 dearest interests. There is some sym- 
 bolic truth in such a lovely legend as 
 that of Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer, 
 of whom Longfellow sings: 
 
 **And he holdeth our prayers as he stands. 
 And they turn into flowers in his hands. 
 
 Into garlands of purple and red; 
 And in through the gates of the portal. 
 Through the streets of the city Immortal, 
 
 Is wafted the perfume they shed." 
 
 Do not marvel that the pious priest 
 was astounded at the acceptance of the 
 prayer of years. We are all like that, 
 and sight would be more terrible to most 
 
 51 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 of us than faith. What amazement would 
 come to many Christian congregations if 
 their bold petitions were suddenly 
 answered! It is not surprising that his 
 fearful heart and bewildered reason called 
 for a confirmation of the promise. God 
 graciously gives him a sign. The transient 
 dumbness imposed as a penalty for his 
 hesitant faith was more than punish- 
 ment; it was a pledge for the fulfillment 
 of the promise. Under that seal of silence 
 in the hushed chambers of his spirit, for- 
 ever filled with the music of the messenger, 
 he is beginning to shape that glorious 
 anthem which shall break forth from his 
 lips when the budding promise breaks 
 into the flower of fulfillment. 
 
 The promise that the mute priest car- 
 ries in his heart is the climax of the old 
 covenant and the beginning of the new. 
 The expected child shall close the priestly 
 succession of Aaron and the prophetic 
 line of Elijah. "He shall be great," says 
 Gabriel, but, as we read the record, it 
 is a strange greatness, a greatness of the 
 desert wastes, of unworldly sacrifice, and 
 of bloody martyrdom. His is no glory 
 
 52 
 
THE MUTE PRIEST AND HIS SONG 
 
 like that of Herod, miscalled "the Great"; 
 *'he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, 
 and shall be filled with the Holy Spirit." 
 Already new standards of worth are 
 coming into the world, which the manger 
 cradle shall confirm and make a perma- 
 nent possession. 
 
 Out from the Holy Place comes the 
 mute priest to dismiss the congregation; 
 only by gestures can he convey the 
 Levitical blessing. But though the hturgic 
 benediction is hushed upon his lips, the 
 Benedictus begins to burn within his soul. 
 
 63 
 
THE BENEDICTUS—TEE HYMN 
 OF THE GOSPEL DAWN 
 
 THE Benedictus, sung by Zacharias 
 as the birth-song of his son, John 
 the Baptist, was the hymn of the 
 gospel dawn. As in the myth of Memnon, 
 the stony lips of the Egyptian deity mur- 
 mured a strange, sweet melody at sun- 
 rise, so, when the rays of the Sim of 
 Righteousness touched the dead lips of 
 earth, they broke forth into music. After 
 nine months of dumbness and suppression, 
 the song which has been shaping itself in 
 the hushed temple of his heart breaks 
 forth like some pent-up mountain stream 
 or like the sudden bursting of a flower 
 bud with a "Bless the Lord!" and very 
 soon the angels will respond "Glory!" 
 
 The Benedictus is characteristically a 
 priestly song. As the Magnificat has a 
 regal note, befitting a daughter of David's 
 
 race, there is a sacerdotal strain in the 
 54 
 
THE BENEDICTUS 
 
 Benedidus, as is natural to a son of Aaron. 
 It is set, however, to the key of a higher 
 ritualism already instinctively foreshad- 
 owed by a seer of the ancient days as he 
 sang, "0 worship the Lord in the beauty 
 of holiness." That gleam of the white 
 raiment of a universal priesthood which 
 had thus dawned in the days of old, now 
 brightens into a loftier liturgy, as all life 
 becomes worship, as a redeemed human- 
 ity shall "serve him without fear in 
 holiness and righteousness before him all 
 our days." 
 
 The Benedictus is also a family hymn. 
 Probably if we had this Canticle in the 
 original Aramaic, which was the native 
 tongue of Zacharias, we should find the 
 whole family of the forerunner lending 
 their names to strike the chords of 
 promise. Zacharias means "the memory 
 of Jehovah"; John (Hananiah), "the mercy 
 of Jehovah"; and Elisabeth, "the oath 
 of God." The whole hymn condensed 
 into a single sentence is this: God has 
 remembered his oath of mercy. Blessed 
 home at Hebron where the first three 
 
 Canticles of the incarnation were sung 
 55 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 and where the very names sum up the 
 great messages of Israel to the world and 
 its subhme promise for the future. 
 
 The Benedictus is a father's hymn. Not 
 only the priest but the father speaks. 
 His paternal pride sees in his infant son 
 one who shall be more than a mechan- 
 ical priest, who shall rise to the higher 
 dynamic function of the prophet. "And 
 thou, child, shalt be called the prophet 
 of the Most High." If the proud father 
 sings about his child, it is because that 
 son is to be the avant-courier, the harbinger 
 of the dawn, the morning star that runs 
 before the rising sim and is soon lost in 
 his rays. As in an ocean voyage, we at 
 last breathe the fragrance of a nearing 
 shore, the bud of historic hope shall soon 
 bluest into the blossom of fulfillment. 
 Although Zacharias is a priest, in this 
 song he is inspired by a prophetic note. 
 As the Magnificat of Mary echoes the 
 psalmody of the Old Testament, the 
 Benedictus of Zacharias echoes the pro- 
 phetic sermons. In him the voice of 
 Israel's hope again awakes, and it shall 
 sound its last great call to righteousness 
 
 56 
 
THE BENEDICTUS 
 
 in the preaching of the boy whose birth 
 it celebrates when his voice shall be 
 heard crying in the wilderness, "Prepare 
 ye the way of the Lord." He shall stand 
 on the margin of the golden gospel sum- 
 mer to which prophecy is the spring. 
 
 But the supreme strains of the song 
 are about God. The Virgin's song circles 
 about the throne, and magnifies the 
 mighty and merciful King in his righteous 
 sovereignty; but the priest's song brings 
 God down to earth, the God of salvation. 
 
 The Benedidus adumbrates the God of 
 redemption. Heaven stoops to earth; God 
 visits man. It is not we who have climbed 
 the skies and conquered heaven; it is 
 God who knocks at our doors, bringing 
 the gifts of his grace and the pledges of 
 his immortal friendship. "He hath visited 
 and redeemed his people." Redeemed! it 
 means the slave set free, the exile restored 
 to citizenship, the convict pardoned, the 
 bankrupt released, the ransom paid. 
 Zacharias did not see the cross, but in 
 that word "redeemed" he dimly fore- 
 shadows its glory and its gloom. God 
 visits earth, but he does not come empty- 
 
 57 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 handed; he brings the price of souls in 
 hands that are pierced on the way. 
 
 Zacharias sings the faithfidness of God, 
 which he himself had doubted as too good 
 to be true. Israel is above all the nation 
 of the covenant; it boldly dared to con- 
 ceive God as placing himself under bonds 
 to his own. The rainbow after the flood, 
 pledge of the permanence of natural law, 
 the rite of circumcision, the words of 
 Sinai — these were some of the seals on 
 the great contract that pledged the Eter- 
 nal God to the service of humanity. And 
 it was more than a contract for service; 
 it was a bond of friendship, a seal of 
 fellowship. The God of the Bible is the 
 God of the Amen, the God of the oath, 
 the God of promise. Will he keep faith? 
 There are times when faith is hard, when 
 our blind eyes do not discern him work- 
 ing in the affairs of men. 
 
 "But right is right, since God is God, 
 And right the day must win; 
 To doubt would be disloyalty. 
 To falter would be sin."^ 
 
 If he is unfaithful, he loses more than 
 
 1 Frederick William Faber. 
 
 58 
 
THE BENEDICTUS 
 
 we; he loses his character of truth, a 
 possession worth more than all his worlds. 
 The character of God is the highest pledge 
 of stability in the universe. There is an 
 old story that in the tent of Charles V 
 a bird had built her nest, and when his 
 army moved forward the emperor for- 
 bade its being disturbed until it had 
 brooded its young. So has our God given 
 his word that "heaven and earth shall 
 pass away, but my word shall not pass 
 away." He is the Lord of Hosts, and 
 may command his armies of stars to march 
 on, but love may safely brood its young 
 in the eaves of his tabernacle. 
 
 The Benedictus is the matin song of 
 the coming day. Its closing strophe is a 
 beautiful picture of a caravan lost in the 
 darkness of the desert, to whom the 
 breaking dawn discloses the path: "The 
 dayspring from on high hath visited us, 
 to give light to them that sit in darkness 
 and the shadow of death, to guide our 
 feet into the way of peace." 
 
 The glory of the ancient world was the 
 glory of night with its splendor of stars 
 and the changing radiance of the moon, 
 
 59 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 full of false and artificial lights and 
 deceitful will-o'-the wisps. Now the world 
 lies in the twilight of a new day, the 
 gray of dawning is awaiting the glory of 
 God, and the pilgrims of the night turn 
 eager faces toward the East. 
 
 60 
 
VI 
 
 THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH 
 
 THE Benedictus ends with that 
 picture of a caravan in the desert. 
 We can imagine it wrapped in 
 the gloom of midnight, the wild beasts 
 howling about the travelers, the waste 
 winds wailing, and the road lost. They 
 cannot go on, but, sitting, wait for the 
 day. At last dawn breaks on the desert 
 and reveals the path. This is the last 
 word of the prophecy of the old dis- 
 pensation. It takes up the old-time 
 message of hope; it is the cry of the 
 watchman — "The morning cometh!" In 
 the Benedictus the Old Testament and the 
 New meet, prophecy is passing into ful- 
 fillment. "The night is far spent, and 
 the day is at hand." 
 
 Night is a true picture of the world 
 without Christ. Its darkness is a symbol 
 of doubt and despair. Like those chil- 
 dren who formerly were born and brought 
 up in the mines, and never saw the sun 
 61 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 or plucked a flower, are the wanderers in 
 pre-Christian deserts. Like those chil- 
 dren, they may have been told about the 
 sun — that it looks like a safety -lamp; but 
 what do they know of the glory and 
 beauty of the star of day? 
 
 Night is filled not only with gloom but 
 with terror. It is entirely natural to be 
 afraid in the dark. Night is the time 
 of mists that shroud and miasma that 
 poisons; in it foul things come out, ghostly 
 bats cleave the air, and ill-omened owls 
 hoot in the darkness; then savage beasts 
 prowl from their lairs and unclean hyenas 
 skulk among the tombs; then walk forth 
 the pestilence and all the most horrid 
 forms of vice; then bestiahty reels through 
 the streets; then is heard the infant's 
 wail, and wives and mothers timorously 
 listen for the coming of unsteady steps; 
 then from upper chambers come the 
 rattle of dice and the silly laughter of 
 the debauchee; it is then that wicked 
 conspiracies are hatched and cruel re- 
 venges are plotted. Night is the harvest 
 time of ignorance and sin, of disease and 
 death. Night robs the world of its beauty; 
 
 62 
 
THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH 
 
 the brightest sky becomes leaden, the 
 greenest landscape is a waste, the rose 
 is bereft of its redness, and its lovehness 
 is lost to the lily. 
 
 Such was the moral darkness of the 
 world before the Advent. "Darkness 
 covered the earth, and gross darkness the 
 people." Never was the world's gloom 
 denser. Rome was filled with religious 
 experiments; Greece had more gods than 
 men, and in despair had named an altar 
 to the UnknowTi God. Nature had no 
 answers to the passionate questionings of 
 man as to God and immortality. Life 
 was anguish and death was terror. The 
 wheels of life stood still; the way was 
 lost in the dark; there was nothing to do 
 but to sit down and wait for the dawn 
 of the day. It is even so now in indi- 
 vidual life before He comes. Many a soul 
 is blind in the very land of sunshine, 
 like Milton's Samson. 
 
 *'0 dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. 
 Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, 
 And with no hope of day." 
 
 Who has not longed for the day.^ "My 
 soul waiteth for God more than they that 
 
 63 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 watch for the morning." The sailor 
 chnging to the shrouds through the driving 
 storm, the soldier lying wounded on the 
 battlefield, the lonely night watcher beside 
 the sick bed, the fevered patient himself 
 tossing with restlessness, the benighted 
 wanderer in the forest or on the lonely 
 moor — how often they cry — "Would God 
 it were morning!" Imagination peoples 
 the obscurity with forms of terror. Did 
 you ever suffer from insomnia .^^ Then you 
 have learned that "truly the light is 
 sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the 
 eyes to behold the sun." 
 
 The world's night is not wholly dark. 
 It has stars in it and long reaches of 
 silver moonlight. It is often filled with 
 strange dreams of beauty and its night- 
 ingales fill the dark hours with song, 
 "smoothing the raven wing of darkness 
 till it smiled." There was a pre-Christian 
 revelation. Its stars came out one by 
 one, until the whole sky was spangled 
 with oracles proclaiming the advancing 
 splendor of a coming dawTi. The whole 
 note of the ancient world is longing, with 
 
 here and there a gleam of light. 
 64 
 
THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH 
 
 Spurgeon somewhere in a sermon pic- 
 tures a family at Christmas time, expect- 
 ing an elder brother who is absent to 
 arrive by a midnight train. The other 
 children beg to be allowed to sit up to 
 meet him. "No," the father answers, 
 "you shall see him in the morning." So 
 the prophets longed to see our Elder 
 Brother, Jesus, but were compelled, one 
 by one, to He down in the cold bed of 
 death. David cried, "Let me see this 
 son of mine who is greater than Solomon." 
 Job implored, "Let me look upon the face 
 of my Living Redeemer." Malachi be- 
 seeches, "Father, I am the last one up, 
 let me wait and behold the Sun of Right- 
 eousness." And then two aged saints in 
 the Temple say, "We have studied the 
 time-tables; the train is almost in; let us 
 behold the Consolation of Israel." And 
 the Father granted their request, and 
 Simeon cried: "Let now thy servant de- 
 part in peace." 
 
 The Benedicfus discloses the source of 
 
 light — "the mercy of the heart of our 
 
 Lord." The common day spring blushes in 
 
 the east, pillowing its chin upon the 
 65 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 Orient wave. God's dawn breaks out of 
 his heart. "God is Hght" — this is the 
 message of the gospel — "in him is no 
 darkness at all." What wonder that the 
 highest form of heathenism is sun-worship.'^ 
 The ancient Thraeians had a strange sym- 
 bol — a sun with three rays — one falling 
 on ice and melting it, one on rock and 
 fusing it, and one on a dead man, bring- 
 ing him back to life. All earthly light has 
 been kindled from his heart, and his 
 city "hath no need of the sun." 
 
 Light is therefore the child of love. 
 Salvation is born out of the heart of 
 God; it comes from the inmost of his 
 being. His wisdom may direct it, his 
 power perform it, but in his heart it was 
 born. Love is not blind; it has the clear- 
 est of all vision. How heartily God loves! 
 The first word of creation came out of 
 God's very heart, "Let there be light." 
 He has not stopped saying it, and will 
 not until all chaos is conquered and all 
 darkness dispelled. 
 
 So light is the gentlest of forces, yet the 
 mightiest. It falls so gently that it does 
 not crush the petals of a rose nor hurt 
 
 66 
 
THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH 
 
 the eyelids of a sleeping babe, yet it 
 builds the forest and commands the tides. 
 Not alone in the thundering pomp of fiery 
 law is God revealed but in the tender 
 mercy of the gospel dawn. 
 
 "The people that si't in darkness have 
 seen a great light." In the Genesis poem 
 of creation, when the world was four days 
 old, God centrahzed the primeval light 
 into the sun, moon, and stars. So, when 
 the Adamic race had passed four thousand 
 years, he took the light of patriarch and 
 prophet, of saint and sage, and poured 
 its full radiance into the life of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, who proclaims, "I am the light 
 of the world." 
 
 Sunshine is a daily victory. City- 
 dwellers rarely see the sunrise, unless they 
 belong to the tin-pail brigade. The day 
 begins its work before most of us. The 
 gray grows to gold, the mountains first 
 surrender, kindled with the altar fires of 
 morning worship, and then the widening 
 splendor at last wraps the whole world 
 with robes of light. Our Lord, the Sun of 
 Righteousness, is, like the day, the true 
 revealer. It is the sun that makes a dial 
 
 67 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 show the time of day. You cannot inter- 
 pret a dial by the gleam of stars or moon, 
 or by gas or the electric blaze. So it is 
 Jesus, and not philosophers or sages, that 
 can interpret life. Not all at once — we 
 have a great Christ whose glory grows 
 with the ages; the Christ of to-day is 
 larger in the world's vision than the dawn 
 that broke on the prophet's vision or the 
 shepherd's eyes. He is the only source 
 of perfect light. 
 
 "The night has a thousand eyes 
 And the day but one; 
 Yet the light of the bright world dies 
 With the dying sun. 
 
 **The mind has a thousand eyes. 
 The heart but one; 
 Yet the light of a whole life dies 
 When Love is done."* 
 
 Day brings joy. The Hyperborean 
 watchers of Arctic climes dress themselves 
 in festal garments and climb the hills to 
 greet the returning light, crying, "Behold 
 the sun!" So does the world feel the 
 approaching joy of the Christmastide. The 
 night of sin and sorrow is past. Thus 
 
 » F. W. BoxirdUlon. 
 
 68 
 
THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH 
 
 the morning is God's daily preacher of 
 hope. The herald angel proclaimed: "Be- 
 hold, I bring you good tidings of great joy." 
 "Light is sown for the righteous, and 
 gladness for the upright in heart." 
 
 Still the Benedictus sings its blessed 
 music of a holy hope to those who dwell 
 in darkness and the shadow of death. 
 "Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and 
 the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." 
 Saint Paul afterward sang a httle morn- 
 ing hymn to arouse dead souls: 
 
 "Awake, thou that slecpest. 
 Arise from thy deadness. 
 And Christ shall shine on thee." 
 
 69 
 
vn 
 
 THE ANGEL'S SERMON BEFORE 
 THE ANGELIC ANTHEM 
 
 O LITTLE town of Bethlehem! It 
 was indeed a little town, "least 
 among the thousands of Israel," 
 but it was one of the most ancient and 
 illustrious villages in Palestine. It is 
 crowded with many noble memories. Near 
 it stands what is affirmed to be the tomb 
 of Rachel, the fair mother of Joseph and 
 Benjamin. Here in these fertile fields 
 about it, many centuries before, Ruth, the 
 Moabite maiden, gleaned Hberal hand- 
 fuls of golden grain left by the reapers of 
 Boaz. And here, a millennium before, the 
 ruddy grandson of Ruth, David, had 
 kept his father's sheep, protecting them 
 from the woK, the lion, and the bear. 
 
 Wheat fields and pastures! The word 
 "Bethlehem" means the "House of Bread," 
 and here at last the Bread of Life comes 
 down from heaven. Near it was the 
 Tower of the Flock where were kept the 
 70 
 
THE SERMON BEFORE THE SONG 
 
 sheep destined for the Temple offerings at 
 Jerusalem, and here is born the Lamb of 
 God who at the Sacred City shall be 
 sacrificed "for the sin of the world." 
 Luke speaks of it as the "City of David"; 
 but that name is also given to Jerusalem, 
 six miles away. He was not born in that 
 great city, but in the little town; not in 
 a palace on Mount Zion, but in the lowly 
 manger of that caravansary at Bethlehem, 
 which was probably the ancient inn of 
 Chimham, son of Barzillai, the servant of 
 David. The little Bethlehem becomes the 
 birthplace of joy and Jerusalem the scene 
 of tragedy. 
 
 *'Sing Bethlehem! Sing Bethlehem! 
 Ye daughters of Jerusalem; 
 Keep sorrow for Gethsemane 
 And mourning for Mount Calvary.' 
 
 "He came unto his own, and his own 
 received him not." The citizens of his 
 own town disown him; "there was no 
 room for him at the inn." The heavenly 
 sermon and song came not to the town- 
 dwellers, but to shepherds who kept the 
 flocks in the fields near-by. They were 
 
 1 Lionel Johnson. 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 in the place of duty. Idle souls do not 
 see visions. These pastoral folk were not 
 even playing harps at a sacred concert 
 or painting pottery for a synagogue fair; 
 God sent his concert to them at their 
 work. To them came the heavenly glory, 
 an angelic preacher, and a heavenly 
 chorus. 
 
 We do not know the name of this 
 seraphic sermonizer. It may have been 
 Gabriel, the messenger that brought the 
 glad promise to Zacharias and Mary. Or, 
 as it was a "multitude of heavenly sol- 
 diers" who sang the anthem after the 
 sermon, it may have been Michael, the 
 generalissimo of the armies of the skies 
 who came at their head to pronounce the 
 recitative that preceded their chorus. He 
 is simply described as the "angel of the 
 Lord." 
 
 This angelical message is evangelical — it 
 is a proclamation of good news. For joy 
 is not the sole note of celestial messages. 
 They have come again and again with 
 tearful tidings, with denunciations of 
 doom, and they sound the terrible trum- 
 pets of judgment. But no minor modula- 
 
 72 
 
THE SERMON BEFORE THE SONG 
 
 tions mar this message. It proclaims joy 
 to the shepherds — a joy that widens into 
 joy to the world. Shepherds do rejoice 
 when a lamb is born, and the whole world 
 should sing Jubilates when they "behold 
 the Lamb of God that taketh away the 
 sin of the world." 
 
 Does blinding glory bring terror? Out 
 of the dazzling radiance the seraphic 
 preacher speaks his exordium, "Fear not!" 
 This was the prelude to every Advent 
 message. Fear not! Zacharias, thou trem- 
 bling priest in the temple. Fear not ! Holy 
 Virgin in thy humble home. Fear not! 
 lowly shepherds guarding your flocks in 
 the chill winter night. All fear is turned 
 into joy by the Advent of our Lord. All 
 royal birthdays are festal days, and this 
 birthday brings joy from the land of 
 joy, joy from the joyful heart of a happy 
 God. 
 
 The sermon announces a Saviour, and 
 that is what a lost world needs. Soter, 
 Christos, Kurios — "Saviour, Christ, Lord." 
 Saviour! as the angel doubtless spoke in 
 Aramaic, the current speech of Judaea, 
 which the shepherds could understand, the 
 
 73 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 word which he used would be Jesus, the 
 personal name of the newborn infant. 
 Christ! the delivering King of Hebrew 
 hope, the Anointed One who shall become 
 King of kings and Lord of lords. Lord! 
 the substitute name given Jehovah, the 
 God of the Old Testament, whose sacred 
 name it was irreverent to pronounce. 
 And so this angelic sermon is doctrinal — 
 its divinity including both Christology and 
 soteriology. 
 
 The sermon discloses a sign. The 
 divine Messiah of his doctrine is revealed 
 in a helpless babe. The incarnation is a 
 veiling of the Divine. It is an infant 
 that they will find. "Infant" is a strange 
 term, derived from the Latin infans, 
 meaning "speechless." The Eternal Word 
 appears without a word! He silently 
 steals into the life of humanity. Yet the 
 sign is seen not merely in the baby form 
 but in his surroundings. Where shall the 
 shepherds seek and find him? Not in a 
 palace but a stable, not in a royal man- 
 sion but a village barn, not in a silk- 
 lined cradle but a straw-lined crib. He 
 shall not be known by any earthly badge 
 74 
 
THE SERMON BEFORE THE SONG 
 
 of glittering gems, shall bear no heraldic 
 crest, shall not be robed in a purple mantle 
 of princely pomp, shall lie in no cradle 
 of ivory. God's sign of greatness goes 
 past these marks of rank, and chooses the 
 peasant garb. He becomes one of us. 
 Swaddling bands still bind the babies of 
 the Orient. They were used everywhere 
 in Europe until Jean Jacques Rousseau, in 
 his educational novel Emile, condemned 
 the custom. 
 
 What does it all mean — this sign? It 
 means what the Nicene Creed announces. 
 He was made man. As the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews says: "Truly not 
 of angels doth he take hold; he taketh 
 hold of the seed of Abraham." And the 
 angel preacher and the angel singers did 
 not disdain this act, that he assumed not 
 angelic but human form. "God manifest 
 in the flesh" was "seen of angels," and 
 longing to penetrate the great mystery of 
 godliness, they look with wonder on the 
 scene. He is not one of them, but the 
 seraphic speaker must congratulate the 
 human kinsmen of the Christ — "Unto you 
 8L child is born"; and the celestial choir 
 
 75 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 make majestic melody over the astound- 
 ing revelation of God's good will to man. 
 
 Perplexed mortals find intellectual diffi- 
 culties in the doctrine of the Deity of 
 Christ, but wondering angels stand in 
 rapturous adoration before the astound- 
 ing fact of his humanity. Paganism is 
 full of apotheoses, of mortals exalted to 
 deified positions. Christianity alone re- 
 veals the One Eternal God humbling him- 
 self to take the form of human flesh. The 
 God of the New Testament does not re- 
 gard crowns, thrones, scepters, starry 
 splendors, celestial glorias as the true 
 signs of divine value. He will not grasp 
 them; rather does he empty himself of 
 this transcendent glory and takes the 
 form of a servant, and is found in fashion 
 as a man. God's sign of greatness is not 
 the skyey portent for which the Jews 
 sought; it is, rather, the swaddling clothes 
 and the manger. Not by bees that come 
 bringing honey for his lips, not by stran- 
 gled serpents about his cradle, not by a 
 shining aura about him as Correggio paints 
 in his Holy Night, were the shepherds to 
 identify him as Saviour, Christ, Lord! 
 76 
 
THE SERMON BEFORE THE SONG 
 
 Real greatness is more than bigness. God 
 gives his measure of the highest values by 
 entering the world through a stable door 
 and leaving it by a grave. Love, which 
 is the greatest thing in the world, is re- 
 vealed at its highest through sacrifice. 
 And the sacrifice of Jesus begins with his 
 birth. As Dorner said, "Love is the power 
 of God over his own omnipotence." 
 
 "This shall be the sign!" Some blazing 
 meteor may reveal the newborn King to 
 wealthy Wise Men from the East, but 
 the pledge given to humble shepherds by 
 the angelic preacher is a peasant babe 
 wrapped in swaddling bands and lying in 
 a manger. This is God's "good tidings 
 of great joy" to all the common folk of 
 earth. 
 
 77 
 
VIII 
 "GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY" 
 
 ALL was silent in the world of nature, 
 and all was indifferent in the world 
 of man. No convulsion of nature 
 or history marked the greatest birth of 
 time. But heaven was all astir and the 
 armies of the sky cannot contain their 
 joy. Of all the dwellers on earth a few 
 humble shepherds alone see the glory- 
 light and are permitted to join in the 
 gladness of the celestial world. It was on 
 historic ground where a thousand years 
 before David had kept his father's sheep, 
 and near the tower of the flock, where 
 were kept those designed for the Temple 
 offerings, that the Shekinah, long with- 
 drawn from Israel, reappears. It had 
 flashed like a brand of fire at the closed 
 gates of Eden, it had blazed in the uncon- 
 sumed bush before the astonished gaze of 
 Moses, it had glowed through the gloom of 
 the nights in the desert to guide the 
 78 
 
"GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY" 
 
 advancing hosts of Israel, it had flung a 
 luminous cloud between the cherubim 
 above the ark of the covenant, it had 
 filled the Holiest Place in the Temple of 
 Solomon with its dazzling radiance; but 
 for five hundred years it had vanished, 
 and now again its splendor bursts on the 
 plains of Bethlehem. It was not a waste 
 of glory to brighten the sky with angels 
 and poiu* down from the steeps of the 
 heavenly Zion cataracts of tumultuous 
 song. For this event, so unnoted in all 
 secular chronicle, is the watershed of 
 human history from which the streams of 
 time flow backward toward the dark; from 
 whence the rivers of the future flow for- 
 ward to swell the ocean of eternal light. 
 
 Fear was turned into joy by the advent 
 of our Lord. To Zacharias, to Mary, to 
 the shepherds, the angel brings one mes- 
 sage, "Fear not." The pagan world was 
 joyless, with a constant undertone of sad- 
 ness beneath its merriest songs: this had 
 come to its climax at the period of the 
 coming of the Christ. The experiments of 
 nature and of philosophy had failed. The 
 politicians of Rome and the philosophers 
 
 79 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 of Greece were alike impotent to answer 
 human need. 
 
 "On that hard pagan world disgust 
 And secret loathing fell; 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell."^ 
 
 Man was like a harp unstrung, giving back 
 to every touch only harsh discords, but 
 the greater Son of the great harper, David, 
 came to restring the harp of human life 
 and restore its lost harmonies. 
 
 Christianity is a religion of joy. It was 
 good news to the slave, to the workman, 
 to the child. It began with a song out of 
 the sky and earth soon began to vibrate 
 in sympathy with the angelic music. 
 Barbarism with its cruelty melts away, 
 chains snap, dungeons crumble, fetters fall, 
 tyrannies topple. It would be a mistake 
 to say that there was no joy in the world 
 before he came; there were the beauty of 
 the sky, earth, and sea, the laughter of 
 little children, and the dear dehghts of 
 love. But he took away the bitter drop 
 of despair" that poisoned these cups of 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 80 
 
"GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY" 
 
 rapture and added the new ecstasy bom 
 of his own heart of love. 
 
 The Advent reveals God in a joy -giving 
 way. God made flesh — that is the sov- 
 ereign remedy for the world's fear. There 
 was an older revelation of God; it was on 
 a burning mountain, amid pealing thun- 
 ders and thrilling trumpets, and in an 
 awful voice that spoke solemn words of 
 law. Even Moses, who was allowed to 
 enter the supernal splendor, said, "I 
 exceedingly fear and quake." But Jesus 
 reveals the Father; that name was perpet- 
 ually upon his lips, and its meanings con- 
 stantly unfolded in his life. When he 
 speaks from a mountain it is not in tones 
 of thunder that terrify, but to say, 
 "Blessed, blessed, blessed!" 
 
 The Advent reveals man in a joy- 
 giving way. We do not judge a tree by 
 the blighted trunk and blasted leaves, but 
 by the full glory of foliage, flower, and 
 fruit. So we do not really see the full 
 possibilities of our manhood in the wreck- 
 age wrought by sin, but in the face of 
 Jesus Christ. At last we see of what man 
 
 is capable and what he may become. 
 81 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 Man has received God; he has intempled 
 the Infinite. God became the Son of man, 
 that man might become the child of God. 
 What wonder that the redemption song 
 resumes the gladness of the creation 
 chorus, for it consummates creation. The 
 Babe of Bethlehem discloses the full im- 
 port of the primitive revelation, that man 
 was made in the image of God. 
 
 The joy of the Advent is unique, for it 
 manifests the true glory of God. It is a 
 strange contrast, the scene so simple and 
 the song so sublime. Outside, the blazing 
 Shekinah and the burst of song — inside, 
 the lowly manger and the helpless Babe. 
 The angels know better than we what 
 constitutes true greatness. Man finds 
 glory in climbing up, but God in coming 
 down. The incarnation is the riddle of 
 reason, but religion finds more of God 
 in the Man of Sorrows than in all the 
 splendor of opened heavens. Love is 
 more royal than power; sacrifice is more 
 sovereign than wisdom. He came to us 
 by a stable door, he left by the gateway 
 of a grave. This is the true glory of the 
 incarnation, the true "joy to the world." 
 
 82 
 
IX 
 
 GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 
 
 IN the operas of Richard Wagner one 
 of the interesting characteristics is 
 what is called the leit-motiv, a musical 
 phrase which appears again and again 
 as the person or position it represents 
 reappears in the drama. So in that 
 divine symphony of the universe, of 
 which God is author, the creative motive, 
 uttered when the jubilant shouting of 
 the angels of God joined to the singing 
 of the morning stars, is again heard with 
 fresh variations, as the first creation 
 passes into the new creation and nature 
 blossoms into grace. 
 
 One can hardly understand why they 
 had been silent so long — so soon was that 
 primeval anthem silenced by the sad 
 story of sin. Then comes a long hour 
 of hushed hallelujahs and a strange twi- 
 light of revelation. But now the fault 
 of the first Adam, with its sad heredity 
 
 83 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 of evil, is met by the birth of the second 
 Adam, the first of a new race of the sons 
 of God, and the angels sing again. That 
 ancient chant of creation, checked by the 
 gleam of fiery swords barring the way to 
 a lost paradise, becomes the incarnation 
 hymn, bursting the open gates of paradise 
 restored. Heaven and earth join in the 
 great oratorio. That strange earthly 
 quartet, the priest and his wif Cj the Virgin 
 Mother and the aged saint, sing their 
 parts while above them from the sky 
 galleries comes the celestial chorus. 
 
 If we only knew the score of that 
 seraphic song! Did not the shepherds 
 hum it on their homeward way as they 
 sang their own glorias? May not some 
 strains of it still linger, unrecognized, in 
 the minstrelsy of the church .^^ Surely 
 much of our highest and holiest melodies 
 have come down to us from heaven. 
 
 What holidays do they keep in heaven.'* 
 There are two earthly festivals to which 
 they sent delegates — Christmas and Easter 
 day. Beside our visible world there is an 
 unseen world that thinks in sympathy 
 with ours. Heaven sends special trains to 
 84 
 
GLORIA' IN EXCELSIS 
 
 all the great spiritual events of human 
 history. For earth is the school of angels. 
 The principalities and powers in heavenly 
 places are supremely interested in the 
 mystery of redemption. "Which things 
 the angels longed to look into." Even 
 the stars are sympathetic, and a new 
 radiance starts out of the darkness to 
 grace the scene of His nativity. The 
 shining ranks of the heavenly host stand 
 entranced before earth's highest fact, and 
 descend to adore the newborn King. 
 AVhen he bringeth his First-Begotten into 
 the world he saith, "Let all the angels of 
 God worship him!" 
 
 The Gloria in Excelsis brings heaven 
 and earth together in a dual song. It 
 has two notes — Glory and Peace. The 
 angels keep in mind the heaven from 
 which they come and the earth to which 
 they sing. They send a strain both to 
 God and man. Long ago the psalmist 
 had a hint of this celestial and terrestrial 
 duet: "Let the heavens rejoice and let 
 the earth be glad." 
 
 The Gloria in Excelsis, like the In- 
 carnate One it celebrates, is both divine 
 85 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 and human. It lifts a praise to the skies 
 and floats a blessing down to earth. It 
 celebrates the twin fruits of redemption, 
 a higher glory to God and a richer glad- 
 ness for man. For the incarnation itself 
 is the union of God and man, the mar- 
 riage of heaven and earth. The Son of 
 man is the heavenly ladder by which the 
 angels travel up and down, and by him 
 glory goes upward to God and peace 
 comes down to man. Let us study these 
 two entwined strains of sacred song in 
 which the Magnificat and the Benedictus 
 are so blended. 
 
 Glory to God ! this is the first and last 
 note of every true hymn. In the Euchar- 
 istic Hymn this canticle has been worked 
 out in greater fullness: *'We praise thee, 
 we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify 
 thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great 
 glory." And we give a new climax to the 
 praise of the ancient psalmody, by the 
 Gloria Patri, a doxology to the Holy 
 Trinity. It is the recurring motive in 
 the universal song of nature and history. 
 God is glorified in all things. Stars write 
 the shining splendor of his name against 
 86 
 
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 
 
 the blue vault of the sky, and flowers 
 the beauty of his character on the green 
 plams of earth. The heavens declare the 
 glory of his power, and earth reveals his 
 creative wisdom. 
 
 No verb appears either in the Greek 
 or English version of this anthem. Did 
 they mean "All glory is to God" or "Let 
 glory be to God".^ Certainly both, it is 
 both assertion and command. The angels 
 not only sing God's glory but they invite 
 our songs. They stand ready to assist 
 our praise and present it perfect before 
 God. All religious worship is union with 
 the celestial choirs. "Therefore with 
 angels and archangels and all the com- 
 pany of heaven we laud and magnify thy 
 glorious name, evermore praising thee and 
 saying, Holy, holy, holy. Lord God of 
 Hosts! Heaven and earth are full of thy 
 glory; glory be to thee, O God most high!" 
 The angelic songsters are a heavenly 
 megaphone which, taking our feeblest 
 adoration and catching the faintest ripple 
 of our poor praise, swells them into majes- 
 tic symphonies of glory and bears them to 
 the highest places. Edward Perronet, who 
 
 87 
 
THE CHRISTIVIAS CANTICLES 
 
 wrote that noble hymn, "All hail the 
 power of Jesus' name!" whispered with 
 his dying breath, "Glory to God in the 
 heights of his divinity, glory to God in 
 the depths of his humanity, glory to God 
 in his all sufficiency!" Surely, that fail- 
 ing mortal breath stirred the air of heaven 
 with a full strain of devotion. 
 
 Already we have noted that the angels 
 began to sing when they heard the seraphic 
 preacher name the sign of the swaddling 
 clothes and the manger. "Manger" was 
 the last word of the sermon and "glory" 
 the first word of the song. Heaven comes 
 down to earth to create a new sort of 
 glory — a beauty not of blazing splendors 
 but of a lowly birth. Read further on in 
 the Gospel and you shall find the song 
 only a prelude to sorrow, the preface to 
 the cross. The meanness of the crib be- 
 tween the ox and the ass becomes the 
 scandal of the cross between two thieves. 
 The angels differ from worldlings in their 
 concept of glory. They do not see it alone 
 in the beauty of form and color, the splen- 
 dor of stars, the flashing of jewels, and the 
 
 pomp of kings. There is a moral beauty 
 
 88 
 
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 
 
 born of love and revealed in sacrifice and 
 service to which earthly vision is often bKnd, 
 but which spiritual sight can see. John 
 says, "We beheld his glory," but defines 
 it, not as power and wisdom, but as grace 
 and truth. Love is more splendid than 
 power, for it is moral power that shall 
 subdue all the might of matter. Sacrifice 
 is more glorious than wisdom, for it is 
 the divine secret that shall solve all the 
 problems of life. Paul found the object 
 of his glorying in the cross. It is the 
 descent of our God down the long stairs of 
 humiliation and pain that starts the shout 
 of glory that mounts to the highest heav- 
 ens. Somewhere an Anglican divine says 
 quaintly, "He that came in clouts shall 
 come again in clouds." 
 
 Peace on Earth ! Glory has too often 
 been a military dream, but we dare not 
 divorce God's glory from earth's peace. 
 Yet the marvel of it is that it is a celestial 
 army that comes singing peace. John 
 Wiclif gave us a literal translation of the 
 text when he describes the angelic chorus 
 as "a multitude of heavenly soldiers.''^ 
 The hosts of heaven fight for peace, not 
 
 89 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 with carnal weapons but with the holy 
 harmony of law, the sword of truth, and 
 the divine dynamite of love. "The Son 
 of God goes forth to war," not to kill 
 and destroy, but to save and redeem. He 
 himself is the first victim of his holy war 
 against sin and death. 
 
 Peace on earth! was it assertion, prayer, 
 or prophecy.^ Doubtless it was all three. 
 For there was a strange peace on earth 
 at that moment. For the third time in 
 seven hundred years the gates of the 
 temple of Janus at Rome were closed — a 
 symbol of the great Augustan peace. 
 
 *'No war or battle sound 
 Was heard the world around; 
 
 The idle spear and shield were high uphung; 
 The hooked chariot stood, 
 Unstained with hostile blood. 
 
 The trumpet spoke not to the armed throng; 
 And kings sat still with watchful eye 
 As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by. 
 
 "But peaceful was the night 
 Wherein the Prince of Light 
 
 His reign of peace upon the earth began; 
 The winds, with wonder whist. 
 Smoothly the waters kissed. 
 
 Whispering new joys to the mild ocean; 
 90 
 
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 
 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave,* 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed 
 wave." 
 
 There was peace upon the earth, but it 
 was not the peace of God. It was a Ro- 
 man peace, the peace of power and con- 
 quest. 
 
 Peace was the prayer and prophecy of 
 the angels, but they are not yet fulfilled. 
 It sounds like a cynical sarcasm when we 
 think of two thousand years of carnage 
 and slaughter. The soil of earth is still 
 soaked with blood, and nations, miscalled 
 Christian, still load it with vast armaments 
 of destruction. 
 
 "Strange prophecy! if all the screams 
 
 Of all the men that since have died 
 To realize war's kingly dreams 
 
 Had risen at once in one vast tide, 
 The choral voice of that vast multitude 
 Had been o'erpowered and lost amid the uproar 
 rude." 
 
 In the last decade we have seen four 
 Christmases, not white, but crimson with 
 the most hellish slaughter of all timje. 
 But international war is not the worst 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 91 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 violation of this song of peace. What a 
 satire on the mission of our Lord is church 
 history with its theological hates and 
 cruel persecutions! Worse still are our 
 personal hates and private wars of selfish- 
 ness and greed. How human life still 
 jars and spoils the music of heaven! We 
 have only sung half the hymn, the glory 
 in the highest; and that half is a poor 
 bit of praise until we let the full heavenly 
 chorus fill our hearts with the heavenly 
 peace. For heaven's peace shall bring a 
 new glory to earth and peace on earth 
 waft a greater glory to the skies. 
 
 But personal peace does come to the 
 soul that learns from the Incarnate One 
 to trust the Father's will. Peace is to the 
 men of peace, the men of good wiU. Peace! 
 where is it.^ not in valleys or on mountain 
 tops, not in palaces of power nor on the 
 thrones of kings. But real peace does 
 dwell in hearts that know the holy hush 
 of harmony with heaven. It is not a far- 
 off song, but an inward experience. 
 Through all life's tumult we may bear a 
 present heaven in the heart. 
 
 Shall angels sing and men be silent? 
 92 
 
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 
 
 Can Gabriel and Michael, who cannot 
 know the full gladness of redemption, say 
 "Glory to God!" like the redeemed soul? 
 Sweeter than seraph's song is the shout 
 of the saint. 
 
 Peace did come on Christmas day, it 
 is coming now, and some day the divine 
 harmony of God's music which is Jesus 
 Christ shall drown out all earth's discords. 
 This motive, creative and redemptive, 
 sounds high above all the dissonances of 
 life earth, and one day shall be woven 
 into every strain of life. 
 "Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; 
 
 East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel 
 cease; 
 
 Sing the song of great joy that the angels began. 
 
 Sing of glory to God and of goodwill to man! 
 Hark! joining in chorus 
 The heavens bend o'er us! 
 
 The dark night is ending and dawn has begun; 
 
 Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun; 
 
 All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!"^ 
 
 In the Middle Ages they fought so much 
 that it became necessary to agree upon a 
 rest from fighting four days in every week, 
 from Wednesday night until Monday 
 
 ' John Greenleaf Whittier. 
 
 93 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 morning, which was called the "Truce of 
 God." And in our time the nations are 
 planning at Washington and Genoa for a 
 ten years' holiday from war. It is a good 
 thing to do, but is a poor scrap from the 
 divine program of universal and perpetual 
 peace. And that shall come, as Isaiah 
 and Micah prophesied, "for the mouth of 
 Jehovah hath spoken it!" The angels have 
 gone away into heaven, even as a lark 
 vanishes in the upper air, but still the 
 song of the unseen host, with its heavenly 
 vision of glory and its earthly promise 
 of peace, broods over the discords of the 
 ages. One day a rebellious world, defiant 
 of God and belligerent toward men, shall 
 be loyal and loving. The Kingdom shall 
 come when the will of earth surrenders 
 to that of heaven. 
 
 "Babe of a thousand birthdays, we that are young 
 
 yet gray, 
 White with the centuries, still can find no better 
 
 thing to say. 
 We that with sects and whims and wars have 
 
 wasted Christmas Day. 
 
 "Light thou thy censer to thyself, for all our fii*es 
 are dim, 
 
 94 
 
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS 
 
 Stamp thou thine image on our coin, for Caesar's 
 
 face grows grim 
 And a dumb devil of pride and greed has taken 
 
 hold of him. 
 
 "We bring thee back great Christendom, churches, 
 
 and towns and towers. 
 And if our hands are glad, O God, to cast them 
 
 down like flowers, 
 'Tis not that they enrich thine hands, but they 
 
 are saved from ours."^ 
 
 In this chaos of confusion and unrest 
 that has followed the World War, in 
 which the twin dragons of Reaction and 
 Revolution are struggling for mastery, let 
 the Church of Christ arise to hush the 
 clamor of selfishness and cruel din of 
 militarism, that the world may again hear 
 the angels sing. 
 
 » Gilbert Keith Chesterton. 
 
 95 
 
NAMING THE CHILD— A NEW 
 YEAR'S IVIEDITATION 
 
 BY what name shall we call the child? 
 Many are quite careless in naming 
 the baby, for a name may become 
 a blessing or a burden. It should have 
 dignity, euphony, and significance. It 
 may be true that "a rose by any other 
 name would smell as sweet," but does not 
 the word "rose" sound more sweetly to 
 the ear than the word "cabbage" .^^ We 
 are not surprised, therefore, that when the 
 supreme birth of all time came even noble 
 parents as Joseph and Mary were not 
 allowed to choose his name, but heaven 
 announced it even before his conception 
 to each of them separately. 
 
 The Bible everywhere places great em- 
 phasis upon names, for in the Hebrew 
 psychology a name was more than a con- 
 ventional distinction, it was a picture of 
 
 personality. A crisis in life and character 
 96 
 
NAMING THE CHILD 
 
 brought a change of name: Abram becomes 
 Abraham; Jacob the supplanter becomes 
 Israel, a prince of God; Simon becomes 
 Peter, the rock; and Saul the persecutor 
 becomes Paul the missionary. So names 
 are more than external badges; they stand 
 for inner attributes of the human spirit. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures give us many names 
 of God, marking the progressive revela- 
 tion of his nature to man. In Genesis 
 we see his power in the name El Shaddai, 
 "the Almighty"; in Exodus his providence 
 in the sacred Tetragrammaton, "Jeho- 
 vah"; Isaiah shows us his moral character 
 as the Holy One of Israel. And still the 
 world waited for another word, and Jesus 
 taught us to say "Our Father." What 
 name mil best fit him who is both God 
 and man.f^ 
 
 New Year's Day, one week after Christ- 
 mas, is the Feast of the Circumcision, the 
 anniversary of that day when He who 
 was to do away with the law became a 
 son of the law, by that historic rite which 
 corresponds to Christian baptism, in which 
 we to-day name our children. 
 
 What name shall He bear? what word 
 
 97 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 shall go down to history to be enshrined 
 in human hearts, borne aloft in human 
 prayers and tuned to melody in human 
 songs? "And when the eight days were 
 fulfilled for circumcising him, his name was 
 called Jesus, which was so called by the 
 angel before he was conceived." It was 
 not an uncommon name for Jewish chil- 
 dren; he must not be separated from man- 
 kind by some ingenious invention of a 
 unique title. There are not less than three 
 in Holy Writ who bore it, chief of whom 
 was Joshua, the great successor of Moses. 
 When the "Prince of Jehovah's host" 
 appeared to Joshua in his vision may not 
 that captain of the unseen army have 
 been one with him who coming in human 
 flesh took as his human name that of the 
 great Hebrew commander.^ For the true 
 successor to Moses, by whom the law was 
 given, is not Joshua the son of Nun, who 
 conquered Canaan, but Jehoshua ben 
 Miriam, Jesus the son of Mary, in whom 
 the Gospel came that shall conquer the 
 world. 
 
 Jesus is a personal name. The highest 
 use of a name is to mark individuality. 
 
 98 
 
NAMING THE CHILD 
 
 The Bible gives him other names. He is 
 the Shiloh of Jacob's deathbed song, the 
 Branch of Jeremiah's dream, the Prince of 
 the Four Names in Isaiah's prophecy. 
 And he calls himself by other names. 
 He is Son of David, Son of man, the Way, 
 Truth, and Life, the Good Shepherd, and 
 the Apocalypse loves to call him the Lamb. 
 
 There is only one other word that can 
 rival the name of "Jesus" in common use, 
 he is frequently called the Christ. But, 
 like the names above mentioned, it is the 
 title of an office. Christ is simply the 
 Greek rendering of the Hebrew word 
 Messiah, the Anointed One, the title given 
 to the promised delivering King of Israel 
 by psalmist and prophet. 
 
 Shall we call him Jesus or Christ.'^ Of 
 course it is proper to call him either or 
 both, but the personal name brings a 
 closer sense of fellowship than an official 
 title. Do we have a dear friend who 
 holds a high office.^ and do we call him 
 president, governor, mayor, general? Is 
 he not nearer in that personal name by 
 which we have known him since we were 
 boys together.'* So the name "Jesus" 
 
 99 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 is repeated more than ten times as often 
 in the four Gospels as the title "Christ." 
 It was by this name that his mother 
 called him from his play in the fields and 
 his work in the shop at Nazareth; by this 
 name the twelve apostles knew him; and 
 "this same Jesus" the angels of the ascen- 
 sion call him as he sweeps by cloud 
 chariots to his native home. 
 
 This human name, given in his humil- 
 iation, identifies him with us. It has be- 
 come a divine name, borne by the King 
 of kings and the Judge of all mankind. 
 And it always was a divine name, divinely 
 ordered, hinted in prophecy, and an- 
 nounced by angelic messengers to his 
 earthly parents. Are we not right in 
 assuming that not man alone, not even 
 the blessed Virgin herself, could be trusted 
 to find out a name for this wonderful 
 child .f^ His Father purposes to call him by 
 that name which shall suggest the shining 
 forth of that attribute of mercy concealed 
 in the old divine titles, and now shining 
 forth in splendor from his sweet human 
 name. 
 
 Jesus is also a name of Power. Its 
 
 100 
 
NAMING THE CHILD 
 
 literal meaning is "Jehovah is Salvation/^ 
 "His name shall be called Jesus, for he 
 shall save his people from their sins." 
 He saves! This is the testimony of faith, 
 the experience of love, and the thrill of 
 hope — and every time we say it we speak: 
 a bit of his name. 
 
 He alone saves: "There is no other 
 name given among men by which they 
 may be saved." Read the many references 
 to "the Name" in the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles, and we shall learn that Jesus, and not 
 his word, his ordinances, nor his church, 
 can redeem and deliver the world. This is 
 the one thing that separates Christianity 
 from all other religions; it centers in a 
 personal Saviour. Confucianism is an 
 ethic, Buddhism a philosophy, but Jesus 
 Christ is salvation. 
 
 He saves from sin; not from wrath only, 
 nor from poverty, disease, pain or death, 
 but first and foremost from sin and there- 
 fore, finally, from all other woes. This 
 name of "Saviour" has a growing mean- 
 ing. "In His Name" has been wrought 
 out every great deliverance of history; and 
 the other great names — Paul, Augustine, 
 
 101 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 Luther, Wesley — are great only because 
 he made them so. "His name shall con- 
 tinue so long as the sun and moon endur- 
 eth." All other names, even those dear 
 ones of father, mother, friends, are lost 
 in this "name which is above every name." 
 It is highest in the eternal hall of fame, 
 above poets, philosophers, conquerors, or 
 statesmen. All stars grow pale before 
 this Morning Star. It is the one supreme 
 name that time carries forth into eternity. 
 Jesus is a precious name. As Saint 
 Bernard said, "it is honey in the mouth, 
 harmony in the ear, melody in the 
 heart, and joy in the life." 
 
 "There is no name so sweet on earth. 
 No name so dear in heaven, 
 The name before his wondrous birth 
 To Christ our Saviour given.*' 
 
 It is a name of real beauty — two musical 
 syllables, especially as in other tongues 
 than ours they preserve more of its an- 
 cient cadence by saying Yesu. The child 
 speaks it without effort, and "'tis music 
 in the sinner's ears." A freed woman 
 who was learning to read, after wrestling 
 with the alphabet, asked first to be taught 
 
 102 
 
NAMING THE CHILD 
 
 the name of Jesus, for, she said, "after 
 that all the rest will be easier." 
 
 "Sweetest note in seraph song. 
 
 Sweetest name on mortal tongue. 
 Sweetest carol ever sung, , 
 
 Jesus, Jesus, flow along." 
 
 Jesus! it is the watchword of every 
 New Year. It is the holy magic by which 
 we open the gates of divine power. "For 
 Jesus' sake" — this is the penitent's plea; 
 "in His name" — that is the Christian's 
 law of life. 
 
 We all possess two names; one a family 
 name which points to an earthly parent- 
 age and kinship, the other, received in 
 holy baptism, we call our Christian name, 
 symbol of a new heredity from a heavenly 
 Father and a new kinship in the spiritual 
 family of our Lord. 
 
 Our Christ is not unchristened; we do 
 not have an anonymous Lord. His divine 
 name in prophecy is Immanuel, "God 
 with us," his human name in history is 
 Jesus, the Saviour. So earth by its hu- 
 man prophet proclaims his divinity and 
 heaven by its angelic messenger discloses 
 
 his humanity. 
 
 103 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 The year ends with the birth and 
 begins with the naming of our Lord. 
 Let his be the one Name of names with 
 which we praise the past and welcome 
 the coming year. He is our Child, the 
 gift of God and the heir of humankind. 
 His name should be written in every 
 family record as our own. 
 
 * 'Given, not lent. 
 And not withdrawn once sent. 
 This Infant of mankind, this One, 
 Is still the little welcome Son. 
 
 "New every year. 
 Newborn and newly dear, 
 He comes with tidings and a song 
 The ages long, the ages long."* 
 
 ' Alice Meynell. 
 
 104 
 
XI 
 
 THE PROPHETIC PRINCE OF 
 THE FOUR NA:MES 
 
 WE celebrate at Christmas the 
 greatest birthday of all time, but 
 it is more than that, it is above 
 all a birthday in our own family, a source 
 of personal joy. Its message is both uni- 
 versal and individual. 
 
 *TFnto you a child is bom," sang the 
 herald, and that is all an angel could 
 say, for the whitest-winged seraph could 
 have no such interest in the incarnation 
 as do we, and yet the angels were glad 
 to sing glorias over our good news. But 
 "not to angels did he take hold"; he did 
 not become an angel, he became a man, 
 and therefore the prophet Isaiah, being 
 himself a man, proclaims "Unto us a 
 child is bom." 
 
 So did this joy send its glory back seven 
 hundred years and made musical the lan- 
 guage of saints and seers. One wonders 
 
 105 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 if that prophetic message in the ninth 
 chapter of Isaiah does not unconsciously 
 reveal a double birth in its Hebrew parallel- 
 ism. "Unto us a child is born.'' That is 
 the earthly fact of human parentage; 
 "Unto us a son is given." That is the 
 heavenly act of the Eternal Father. 
 
 How shall God come to earth? Men 
 have dreamed strange dreams of his 
 appearing, sky signs of splendor, pomp 
 of fiery chariots, salvos of thunders, ban- 
 ners of fire, careering comets, etc. But 
 his most princely path of approach was 
 by the gateway of a lowly birth. 
 
 What name shall we give to this Child 
 of us all.? Many significant titles have 
 been assigned to him: Immanuel, God 
 with us, Christ the Anointed One, Jesus 
 the Saviour. But none are fuller of mean- 
 ing than the four great prophetic names 
 of Isaiah 9. 6. 
 
 1. Wonderful Counselor. The prophet 
 proclaims a prophet. Isaiah, himself a 
 statesman and the wise counselor of 
 kings, foretells the most marvelous states- 
 man of all history. "Master," "Teacher," 
 such his disciples called him, and the 
 106 
 
PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 
 
 multitude that heard him were astonished 
 at his teaching, for here was a philosopher 
 beside whose sayings all thought grows 
 foolish, a poet whose creations transcend 
 all art, a statesman who alone can carry 
 permanent dominion upon his shoulder. 
 
 '*He spake as never man spake," from 
 the first words of wisdom that "Mary 
 treasured in her heart" to the last divine 
 promise that transformed the old despair 
 into undying hope, "Lo, I am with you 
 always." His method as teacher is "won- 
 derful"; it is the voice of immediate 
 vision; he stands in the unsullied radiance 
 of unclouded Truth; he speaks as one 
 having authority, an authority that never 
 reasons, argues, or doubts, but possesses 
 the absolute compulsion of spiritual and 
 moral certainty. Could any counselor be 
 more wonderful .^^ 
 
 2. Mighty God, To wisdom he joins 
 power. He is not only the Counselor to 
 legislate, but also the King to execute 
 his laws. His glory is not of the Word 
 only, but also of the Deed. He is the 
 God-Hero, the Deliverer on whose shoul- 
 ders rests the weight of the world's govern- 
 
 107 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 ment. He is the world's conqueror, of a 
 sort unlike the historic destroyers, Alex- 
 ander, Csesar, Napoleon. His might is a 
 different kind of might, which wins through 
 love and convinces through right. He 
 touches tyranny and it crumbles, slavery 
 and it vanishes, wrong and it falls. Around 
 his cradle, like that of Hercules, lie the 
 slain serpents of false philosophies, effete 
 civilizations, dead institutions, and selfish 
 social order. He is the Victor in the 
 eternal conflict between light and darkness. 
 
 In the noble words of Richter: "He, 
 the mightiest among the holy and the 
 holiest among the mighty, with his pierced 
 hand has lifted the gates of empire from 
 their hinges, turned the stream of cen- 
 turies from its channel and still governs 
 the ages." 
 
 Above all he has overcome Sin and 
 Death. 
 
 3. Everlasting Father. We could never 
 be satisfied with a God who was only 
 wisdom and might; the heart longs for 
 love. He is a Father forever. This is 
 the supreme significance of the incarna- 
 tion; it opens up the heart of God. We 
 
PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 
 
 see the hand of God in the heavens, the 
 mind of God in the earth, but the love 
 of God is seen nowhere else as in the 
 glory of grace and truth which shine in the 
 face of Jesus Christ. 
 
 "He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father." He reveals Fatherhood by Son- 
 ship. This is Saint Paul's statement of 
 the Advent: "God sent forth his Son." 
 From his first recorded words, when he 
 suggested that the place to find him was 
 his Father's house, to the last word of 
 the cross, commending his Spirit to his 
 Father's care, he was revealing the Father. 
 
 Other loves fail; his Fatherhood is 
 eternal. Our earthly fathers die and the 
 world seems a desert, but "Thou art the 
 same, and thy years shall not fail." Dying 
 men need and have an undying Christ. 
 
 "Come to this God, ye weepers, for he weeps; 
 Come to him, ye who suffer, for he cures; 
 Come to him, ye who fear, he pity keeps; 
 Come to him, ye who pass, for he endures. "i 
 
 4. Prince of Peace. Fatherhood creates 
 brotherhood. And so the Christmas angels 
 sing, "Peace on earth." 
 
 1 Victor Hugo. 
 
 109 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 This twentieth century has passed 
 through four of the most terrible Christ- 
 mas days of history, not white but crim- 
 son Christmases. The angeHc hynm has 
 been drowned by the horrid din of war. 
 Marching armies, burning cities, ruined 
 homes, bHghted beauty, weeping widows, 
 wasted wealth — has Christianity failed? 
 Does a remedy fail when men will not 
 take it? Christianity has not yet been 
 tried. 
 
 It is the mundane theory of life that 
 has failed. The deification of force, the 
 great illusion of personal and national 
 self-interest, the preposterous theory of 
 preparedness as insurance against war, 
 the doctrine of grab and get which rules 
 politics and business — all have failed, and 
 we are paying the penalty. "The Empire 
 is peace," said Napoleon, but so is a grave- 
 yard. "They make a desolation and call 
 it peace." 
 
 What has failed? Government, politics, 
 commerce, science, invention, society, bus- 
 iness — all have failed, but "He shall not 
 fail nor be discouraged until he has set 
 judgment in the earth, and the isles shall 
 110 
 
PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 
 
 wait for his law." There can be no peace 
 in an un-Christian world, a world without 
 Christ. He has not failed ; he has brought 
 peace to many humble hearts. He will 
 bring it to the world. In the context, 
 Isaiah pictures the burning up of the 
 implements and munitions of war. That 
 is what the Conquering Christ will do 
 with cannon and Dreadnaughts. 
 
 The Prince of the Four Names shall 
 convince the world by his wisdom, sub- 
 due it by his might, inspire it with his 
 love, and bless it with his peace. 
 
 Ill 
 
XII 
 
 THE SAGES, THE STAR, AND 
 THE SAVIOUR 
 
 ALL things are prophetic to the 
 instructed soul. Columbus could 
 see a new world in a floating 
 branch; to the star-gazers of the Orient 
 a new sign in the sky announced the 
 birth of a Deliverer and King. Suetonius 
 tells us that during the reign of Augustus 
 "throughout the East an old and estab- 
 lished opinion was disseminated that it 
 was decreed by fate that they who were 
 to possess the sovereignty of the world 
 were to arise from Judaea." The hope of 
 Israel had filled the world with longing 
 hearts and looking eyes. 
 
 Parseeism, the religion of Zoroaster, was 
 perhaps the purest of the ethnic faiths 
 outside of Judaism. These worshipers of 
 flame found in the stars of heaven the 
 secrets of destiny. There is an inner 
 truth in the false science of astrology, 
 this — that there is deep sympathy between 
 
 112 
 
THE SAGES, STAR, AND SAVIOUR 
 
 the sensible and the spiritual worlds. 
 When Deborah sings, "The stars in their 
 courses fought against Sisera," it is more 
 than splendid poetry; it is the sublime 
 assertion that the universe is pledged to 
 righteousness. 
 
 "Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven! 
 
 If in your bright leaves we would read the fate 
 Of men and empires — 'tis to be forgiven 
 
 That in our aspirations to be great 
 
 Our destinies o'erleap our mortal state, 
 And claim a kindred with you, for ye are 
 
 A beauty and a mystery, and create 
 In us such love and reverence from afar, 
 That fortune, fame, power, life have named them- 
 selves a star."i 
 
 God has various voices by which he 
 speaks to men and guides them. A song 
 leads humble shepherds to the Lamb of 
 God, the inward Spirit shows Simeon the 
 Messiah in the Babe, Joseph is taught by 
 a dream, and the wise men by a star. 
 God speaks to every faculty; by the roads 
 of reason, feeling, and imagination he 
 finds a way to the life of man. So true 
 wisdom leads to the Christ. "A little 
 philosophy inclineth man's heart unto 
 
 1 Lord Byron. 
 
 113 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 atheism, but depth of philosophy bring- 
 eth us to providence and deity." 
 
 "Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 And more of reverence in us dwell. 
 That mind to soul according well 
 May make one music as before."^ 
 
 Lichtenburg well says, "When the mind 
 rises, it throws the body on its knees." 
 
 Nature guides to grace. The star led 
 the sages to the Holy City, where they 
 foimd the Holy Book which should direct 
 them farther in their search. The sky 
 sign pointed to the place in Micah, "Thou, 
 Bethlehem, out of thee shall come a gov- 
 ernor whose goings forth have been from 
 everlasting." All the words of God in 
 spangled heavens, on sacred page, and on 
 the face of a little child, speak the same 
 message. "Search and see" is the demand 
 of the intellect. The sages follow the 
 gleam of their own star study, and we 
 see the caravan of camels hasting across 
 the desert wastes and up the Judsean 
 hills in the city of God and the cradle 
 of the Christ. There may be false lights 
 that mislead the mind of man, but all 
 
 2 Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 114 
 
THE SAGES, STAR, AND SAVIOUR 
 
 true lights of nature and reason lead at 
 last to the Light of the world. Star, 
 Scripture, Son — such is the threefold reve- 
 lation of the redemptive purpose. 
 
 The heavens have ever been telling the 
 glory of God. Monotheism was born in 
 the desert, "where man is distant and 
 God is near," and where there is nothing 
 worth looking at but the star-studded 
 vault of the sky. When Jean Bon 
 St. Andre, the atheistic revolutionist, said 
 to a Breton peasant, "We will pull down 
 all your church steeples," the undaimted 
 believer responded, "But you can't pull 
 down the stars." Young said, "The 
 undevout astronomer is mad," and Kepler, 
 the founder of modem astronomy, ex- 
 claimed, "I think God's thoughts after 
 him." 
 
 They sought a king; they heard a Baby 
 cry. In a small inn, in a little town in 
 an obscure province of an enslaved people, 
 they found the "Desire of all nations." 
 There is no higher wisdom than that 
 which knows that bigness is not great- 
 ness. The sages see the Saviour in the 
 
 young child, more glorious in his helpless 
 115 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 infancy than any blazing meteor of their 
 adored heavens, and "they worshiped 
 him." True wisdom bows to the Babe 
 and sees God in the manger. If we had 
 insight enough to see in every newborn 
 child a "holy thing," the incarnation would 
 soon cease to puzzle our reason, through 
 the light it gives to the heart. Words- 
 worth's apostrophe to the Child in his 
 "Intimations of Immortality" most beau- 
 tifully expresses the truth that God could 
 nowhere in nature or life reveal himself 
 more perfectly than in the babe. 
 
 "Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie 
 Thy soul's immensity, . . . 
 Haunted forever by the eternal mind, 
 
 Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 
 
 On whom those truths do rest 
 Which we are toiling all our lives to find." 
 
 116 
 
xni 
 
 THE KING AND THE KINGS— AN 
 EPIPHANY MEDITATION 
 
 MORE than the Oriental Magi were 
 looking for some great birth of 
 time at the period of the advent 
 of our Lord. Only a few years previously 
 Virgil, in his Fourth Eclogue, had sung 
 of a child who should bring back the age 
 of gold. The hope of Israel had filled the 
 world with longing and looking. In his 
 marvelously beautiful tragedy of Herod, 
 Stephen Phillips has made us feel 
 
 "A sense of something coming in the world, 
 A crying of dead prophets from their tombs, 
 A singing of dead poets from their graves." 
 
 No wonder that Herod was troubled. 
 There is no terror to tyrants like the 
 coming of a new order. The forces of 
 reaction take advantage of every time 
 of social and political unrest to scare the 
 people because they themselves are 
 alarmed. But there is a holy insurgency 
 in history which is forever dooming the 
 117 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 dominion of the regulars. The kings 
 cower before the coming of the King. 
 And so it is true in every age when the 
 ever-returning Christ makes his world to 
 pass through the furnace of transforma- 
 tion, that "the kings of the earth set 
 themselves, and the rulers take coimsel 
 against Jehovah and against his Anointed." 
 The kings cannot understand the King. 
 The rulers who gather armies and build 
 warships cannot comprehend the Prince 
 of Peace. Herod, the friend of Antony, 
 the ally of Augustus, the builder of cities, 
 the maker of marble magnificences, has no 
 kinship of spirit with the Carpenter-King 
 who has his throne in human hearts and 
 whose spiritual craftsmanship shall build 
 a spiritual city outlasting all pyramids and 
 palaces. And thus the poet has inter- 
 preted his fearful mood: 
 
 "Wandering night by night 
 Among the people of Jerusalem, 
 I hear a whispering of some new King, 
 A child who is to sit where I am sitting, 
 And he shall charm and soothe, and breathe and 
 
 bless; 
 The roaring of war shall cease upon the air, 
 Falling of tears and all the voices of sorrow, 
 118 
 
THE KING AND THE KINGS 
 
 And he shall take the terror from the grave; 
 A gentle Sovereign. Ah, might there not be 
 Some power in gentleness that we dream not of?" 
 
 The proud, passionate Idumean tyrant 
 cannot learn that lesson; he knows no 
 way to meet the peril to his selfish sover- 
 eignty but to trample, crush, corrupt, and 
 kill. He is a type of that world spirit 
 which still possesses the nations, which 
 knows no path to power and prosperity 
 but that opened by reeking swords and 
 roaring cannons. 
 
 In old tradition, the Wise Men who 
 came from the East were three kings, who 
 fulfill in their adoration the prophetic 
 word that kings should come to the 
 brightness of his rising, falling down before 
 Him and offering gifts. Kings they may 
 not have been in any political sense, but 
 they were, indeed, princes in the empire 
 of the mind. It is the prerogative of true 
 wisdom to see the reality which forever 
 hides behind the shows of sense. 
 
 "To see the world in a grain of sand 
 And heaven in a wild flower, 
 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 
 And eternity in an hour."^ 
 
 1 WiUiam Blake. 
 
 119 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 These visitors from the land of dawn 
 came with the morning freshness in their 
 souls; they had the kingliness that could 
 recognize real royalty. When Herod slew, 
 they offered tribute; when he was troubled, 
 "they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." 
 The wise man is the world's true sov- 
 ereign; he can read divine meanings in 
 the stars and see God in a little child. 
 The true monarchs of mankind are not 
 those who were born in the purple and 
 whose brows bear the diadem, but the 
 men of vision who follow the gleam of 
 the ideal. You will always find these true 
 kings, the supreme poets and prophets, 
 prostrate at the cradle of the Christ. The 
 incarnation is a stumbling-block only to 
 little minds without the sense of spir- 
 itual values. 
 
 The Babe in the Virgin's arms has 
 given the world a new notion of kingship; 
 more than that, he has unveiled a new 
 vision of God. Slaves to our senses, 
 fooled by the pomp and glitter of external 
 things, we needed a new measure of 
 worth. So when he found all chambers 
 full he lay down in manger-bed; when all 
 
 120 
 
THE KING AND THE KINGS 
 
 other mansions were occupied he moved 
 into the carpenter shop; when all other 
 crowns were taken he chose a crown of 
 thorns; when all other thrones were full 
 he made a cross the seat of his spiritual 
 sway. He is still "the Revealer of hearts," 
 *'a sign to be spoken against." 
 "A King without regalia, 
 
 A God without the thunder, 
 A Child without the heart to play; 
 
 Aye, a Creator rent asunder 
 From his first glory, cast away 
 Upon his own world."^ 
 
 The * 'wisdom" which none of the rulers 
 of this world knew is ours, if, like the 
 kingly Magi, we can confess the true 
 King, and bring some worthy gift, the 
 gold of royalty in service, the incense of 
 worship, and the myrrh of sacrifice. 
 
 The Kings of Orient have brought 
 The treasures of the earth and sea, 
 
 Fit presents for the King they sought; 
 What offering is there left for me? 
 
 I cannot bring to crown my Christ 
 
 From far Cathay its glittering gold. 
 Nor Araby's perfumes unpriced, 
 Nor pearls from India's seas uprolled. 
 
 2 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 121 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 Nor of the wealth that decks the mind, 
 The gold of thought and fancy's flowers. 
 
 In one fair diadem entwined. 
 To fitly crown this King of ours; 
 
 But I with humble shepherds come. 
 With them the heralds' hjTnn I hear; 
 
 O make, dear Lord, this heart thy home. 
 And turn to pearl each bitter tear! 
 
 122 
 
XIV 
 
 NUNC DIMITTIS—TBE SWAN 
 SONG OF A SAINT 
 
 BRIEF biographies are the best. The 
 Bible is rich with these vivid pic- 
 tures of human hfe, penned in a 
 few striking phrases. The story of Simeon, 
 the singer of that sweetest canticle, the 
 Nunc Dimittu, is a very cameo, cut ^^th 
 perfect art. Little as is told, he is counted 
 worthy of one of the "Beholds!" of the 
 Bible. That index finger of high value 
 is followed by a perfect picture of the 
 character of a saint. 
 
 Simeon had an all-round religion; he is 
 described as a "just and devout man." 
 He was righteous toward his fellow men 
 and reverent toward God. Heaven and 
 earth were joined in his character; piety 
 and morahty met in his life. In him were 
 united both the inward inspiration and the 
 outward expression of true reHgion. 
 
 This saintly soul had a noble patience; 
 
 123 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 he was "waiting for the consolation of 
 Israel." Hebrew history had been filled 
 with such watchers and waiters. The for- 
 ward look is the chief characteristic of 
 patriarch and prophet. As Jesus has told 
 us, Abraham rejoiced at the sight of his 
 coming day. And although the voice of 
 prophecy had been silent for centuries, 
 still to the Temple at Jerusalem there came 
 seerlike souls whose faces were turned 
 toward the dawning. We know the names 
 of two of them — Anna, the aged prophet- 
 ess on whose lips still trembled the mes- 
 sage of divine inspiration, and Simeon, 
 whose eyes, dimmed w^th age, were sud- 
 denly lighted with the gleam of the new 
 day. 
 
 God needs patient waiters as well as 
 earnest workers, for waiting is a part of 
 the discipline of life. 
 
 "God doth not need 
 Either man's work or his own gifts; who best 
 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state 
 Is kinglj^; thousands at his bidding speed 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest. 
 
 They also serve, who only stand and wait."^ 
 
 1 John Milton. 
 
 124 
 
NUNC DIMITTIS 
 
 Simeon was well aware that real wait- 
 ing is more than mere passivity, but 
 includes watching. So he was constantly 
 in the house of God; he was there when 
 the lily-shafts of the Temple caught the 
 crimson glory of dawn, and when the 
 evening lamps were lighted he lingered 
 still. How every rumor made his heart 
 throb with expectancy! Had the shep- 
 herds' story reached his ears? How he 
 must have scanned the face of every Httle 
 child brought into the Temple courts! 
 And in that place of duty and worship, 
 there came at last the revelation. 
 
 His was an inspired old age. Youth is 
 not better than age when the latter is 
 filled with holy fire. He had December 
 on his head, but May within his heart. 
 Such fives are like the evening primrose 
 whose color and fragrance await the 
 gathering shadows to develop its perfect 
 beauty. No spell can keep the heart 
 young like the grace of God; it is the 
 genuine elixir of life, the true fountain of 
 youth. It is vastly fine for age to look 
 forward in our times as well with hope 
 for the church and the world; when it 
 
 125 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 takes the child in its arms then will fall 
 the prophetic fire. And this length of 
 forward vision gives breadth as well. 
 Simeon, who is waiting for the consolation, 
 must include in his canticle that fine 
 phrase from the ancient Oracle of Con- 
 solation which describes the Servant of 
 Jehovah as a "Light to lighten the Gen- 
 tiles." Spirituality clears his soul of 
 bigotry. Beautiful old age, when hope 
 lingers and when the mind grows broader 
 and not narrower with increasing years! 
 
 God had promised Simeon that "he 
 should not see death until he had seen 
 the Lord's Christ." In some senses all 
 life is conditional; "a man is immortal 
 until his work is done" — that is, until the 
 piupose of a life is consummated. Healthy 
 folks do not want to die. As Horace says, 
 "No man goes satisfied from the feast of 
 life." Muhlenberg was disappointed in 
 love when he wrote, "I would not live 
 alway." But to see Christ consummates 
 life; it is to behold life's full pattern and 
 guess its deepest secret. When this full 
 vision comes, then only can the soul sing 
 Nunc Dimittis, the sunset hymn of life 
 
 126 
 
NUNC DIMITTIS 
 
 after the day's work is done, the golden 
 melody of a softly fading light that melts 
 into the eternal morning. 
 
 "Mine eyes have seen thy salvation!" 
 What did he see? Surely no aureoled 
 brow, no infant marked from others by 
 an encircling nimbus of light; he saw only 
 the peasant Babe in swaddling clothes 
 that the shepherds found in the manger at 
 Bethlehem. He has that loftier vision that 
 knows that redemption cannot come by 
 power but by love. And so he takes the 
 child in his aged arms, while he himself 
 rests his soul in the spiritual strength of 
 the Divine Child. To see Jesus by faith 
 is to see salvation. 
 
 To see Christ is to prepare for death; 
 it prepares life's flower for plucking and 
 its fruit for gathering. Though we Hve 
 far inland, it is sometimes good to lend 
 an ear to the seaward breezes that bring 
 to us the music of the far-off ocean; so 
 it is often well in hours of strength and 
 joy to think of death. "See death," we 
 must, every one of us; but have you 
 seen the Lord's Christ? See him before 
 you die, and you shall not be afraid to 
 
 127 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 see him beyond that horror-haunted chasm 
 mortals call the grave, but which Christ 
 has made the portal of paradise. 
 
 Let us listen to Simeon's song in its 
 entirety : 
 
 "Now, Master, let thy servant go. 
 Go in peace, as thou didst promise. 
 Mine eyes have seen thy saving power 
 Which thou hast prepared before the face of 
 
 all peoples. 
 A light of revealing to the Gentiles 
 And the glory of thy people Israel." 
 
 Death is release to the faithful servant; 
 it is emancipation to the slaves of mor- 
 tality. Jesus has transformed death from 
 doom into deliverance. In iEschylus' 
 tragedy of Agamemnon^ he pictures a 
 house servant, watching on the roof of 
 the palace at Mycenae, waiting for the 
 signal of the fall of Troy. Seeing that 
 sign will release him from his long vigil. 
 At last it comes, the beacon fires blazing 
 from isle to isle across the iEgean, and he 
 descends from weary waiting to find sleep 
 and rest. So it was with Simeon. He 
 had tarried long in expectation, and at 
 
 last the herald angels flashed the good 
 128 
 
NUNC DIMITTIS 
 
 tidings from star to star across the seas 
 of space until it reached the earth and 
 the child who had come from the bosom 
 of the Father to the bosom of Mary passes 
 to the longing arms of Simeon, the son of 
 the promise. Deliverance has come! 
 
 In the Old Testament we often meet 
 dark views of death. The words fairly 
 shudder as they fall from the pen of the 
 WTiters: "Lover and friend thou hast put 
 far from me, and mine acquaintance in 
 darkness." But in this swan song of 
 Simeon, Nunc Dimittisy Christmas looks 
 forward to Easter Day in its testimony of 
 the soul's victory over death. The grim 
 visitor of the skeleton hand and icy touch 
 has become a fair angel whose lips are 
 melodious with the music of heaven, and 
 whose hands are full of the fragrance of 
 its flowers. Let pessimistic Hamlet moan, 
 "The rest is silence"; Christian faith looks 
 in the face of the Risen Lord and cries, 
 "Mine eyes have seen thy salvation!" 
 
 How dreary are the worldling's thoughts 
 of death! The reckless humor of Rabelais 
 clouds with seriousness as he faces "the 
 great Perhaps"; Hobbes, the deist, shrinks 
 
 129 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 as he gasps, "I am taking a leap in the 
 dark"; Gambetta, struck by the assassin's 
 bullet, cries, Je suis perdu, "I am lost!" 
 But John Wesley writes, "Our people die 
 well," and himseK bravely faces the future, 
 saying, "The best of all is God is with 
 us." Paul puts this triumphant truth in 
 a perfect phrase: "To live is Christ, to 
 die is gain." Death the despot has be- 
 come the dehverer. Is it any wonder 
 that the great Christian hymn, Te Deum 
 Laudamus, brings close together the mes- 
 sages of the two great Christian festivals, 
 Christmas and Easter Day.^^ 
 
 "When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man 
 Thou didst humble thyself to be born of a Virgin; 
 When thou didst overcome the sharpness of death, 
 Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all 
 believers." 
 
 In nearly all hturgies, the Nunc Dimittis 
 is used as an evening hymn. It is very 
 fitting for the vesper hour of fading light. 
 But it is also a matin hymn, for it sees 
 in the evening star of memory the morn- 
 ing star of hope. 
 
 *'So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head 
 130 
 
NUNC DIMITTIS 
 
 And tricks his beams and with new spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."^ 
 
 Thus the first Christmas day not only 
 surrounded with song the cradle of the 
 Christ but has filled with holy harmony 
 the dying hours of his followers. Thomas 
 Guthrie on his deathbed called for music, 
 and when asked what they should sing, 
 replied, "Just give me a baimie's hymn!" 
 For death is birth to the saved soul. 
 There is a music of the borderland such 
 as Tennyson's May Queen heard "in the 
 wild March morning": 
 
 "So now I think my time is near. I trust it is. I 
 know 
 The blessed music went that way my soul will 
 have to go." 
 
 In her passing hours, Susanna Wesley, 
 the mother of Methodism, said to her 
 family and friends, "Children, when I am 
 gone sing a psalm of praise to God!" 
 And, a little later, they broke the strange 
 stillness left by the departure of a saintly 
 soul with a song of sacred joy and went 
 forth to preach and sing the gospel mes- 
 sage and music around the world. Even 
 
 ^John Milton. 
 
 131 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 John Keats felt that death has been 
 transformed into triumph : 
 
 "Let me have music dying, 
 I seek no more delight." 
 
 And that hour of departure and dehv- 
 erance hears not only the parting paeans 
 of human friends who answer its invitation, 
 
 "Come sing to me of heaven 
 When I am called to die. 
 Sing songs of holy ecstasy 
 To waft my soul on high," 
 
 but their spiritual senses are often strength- 
 ened to hear singing that earthly ears 
 cannot hear. All about this dying world, 
 whose songs at last sink into silence, is 
 sung by spirit voices the unending sym- 
 phony of Life Eternal. 
 
 The Nunc Dimiitis is the swan song of 
 a saint, but it is also the overture of the 
 New Song of the Redeemed. Christmas, 
 the birthday of the Saviour of men, has 
 turned all death-days of his disciples into 
 the birthday of immortality. The Even- 
 Song of Simeon is a Matin Hymn of the 
 New Day. 
 
 132 
 
XV 
 
 THE BLESSED BOYHOOD OF 
 JESUS 
 
 THE Gospel according to Saint Luke 
 touches the Hfe of our Lord at 
 every point — the Babe in the man- 
 ger, the Child in Simeon's arms, the Boy 
 in the Temple, and the Man of Galilee. 
 It is preeminently the gospel of the Son 
 of Man, using his perfect humanity as an 
 organ on which to play the music of his 
 divinity. For the Christ was not less, 
 but more man than the rest of us. His 
 complete humanity serves to reveal his 
 divine nature, just as a flawless crystal 
 transmits the sunlight unstained. 
 
 There is a wise reticence in the gospel 
 accoimts of the youth of Jesus. There 
 are in them none of the repelling marvels 
 of the apocryphal stories, which, utterly 
 ignoring all natural boyishness, picture 
 him as working absurd and sometimes 
 spiteful miracles. There is no unearthly 
 halo around his brow. He is a truly hu- 
 man child, with a normal physical, men- 
 133 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 tal, and spiritual development. There is 
 no hint of any hot-bed precocity; happy 
 is the child who is not born grown-up. 
 The first duty of any child is to be young, 
 and the second is to grow. 
 
 If the Saviour of men had appeared full 
 grown, he would have been fatally sep- 
 arated from us; he revealed the worth of 
 childhood to a world that had hitherto 
 disregarded it. Henceforth every babe is 
 "that holy thing," a new memory of Eden 
 bringing back the Golden Age. May we 
 not believe that still, in the depths of his 
 divine consciousness, every fact of his 
 human career abides as a present posses- 
 sion. He is still mighty with the strong 
 and weak with the weak. For the babe, 
 he still lies on his mother bosom; for the 
 boy, he still plays in the carpenter shop; 
 for the workman, he still toils at his 
 trade. 
 
 At the age of adolescence, like every 
 other Jewish boy, he is confirmed as a 
 "son of the law," and goes with his parents 
 to Jerusalem for the great Paschal sacra- 
 ment. With what delight any child makes 
 the first visit to a great city! We can 
 
 134 
 
BLESSED BOYHOOD OF JESITS 
 
 hear his boyish voice joining in the Pil- 
 grim psalms: "I will lift up mine eyes 
 unto the hills, whence cometh my help"; 
 "I was glad when they said unto me, Let 
 us go up to the house of Jehovah"; "My 
 soul waiteth for the Lord"; up to that 
 final chorus when, standing in the Temple 
 courts, they chanted, "Behold, bless ye 
 Jehovah, all ye servants of Jehovah," 
 and the white-robed priests intoned the 
 answering benediction, "Jehovah, that 
 made heaven and earth, bless thee out of 
 Zion." As he listened to the antiphonal 
 chanting of the temple choirs, did he not 
 recall the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the 
 Gloria in Excelsis, and the Nunc Dimittis, 
 of which his mother had doubtless told 
 him, and find in them a transition from 
 the psalmody of the Old Testament to 
 the newborn minstrelsy of his New Testa- 
 ment church. How his heart throbbed 
 with an awful gladness at this vision of 
 the city of David, the throne of Solomon, 
 the fortress of the Maccabees, soon to 
 become the scene of his own suffering and 
 the site of his sepulcher! He must have 
 
 recalled this experience when, twenty 
 135 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 years later, he heard other children sing- 
 ing their "Hosannas!" in the Temple. 
 
 Hofmann's lovely picture of "The Boy 
 Jesus in the Temple," can add little or 
 nothing to the exquisite narrative of 
 Luke. The story is a single flower from 
 the secluded garden of his life, plucked 
 just as it was swelling toward full blossom. 
 The lost boy is found, not among the 
 sights and scenes of the strange city, but 
 in his "Father's house." Where else 
 should his sorrowing parents have looked 
 for him.P Not they alone, but every father 
 and mother some time must learn and 
 bear this hard lesson — that their child is 
 no longer wholly theirs, but must live an 
 independent life. It is an awful and lonely 
 moment when the spontaneous life of the 
 child passes into the reflective hfe of the 
 budding man, when he cries, as Richter 
 put it, "I am a Jfe/" The old routine and 
 formulas will not longer serve; the indi- 
 vidual stands out from the tribe, "wrapped 
 in the solitude of his own originality." 
 Every child has two educations, man's 
 and God's, and it is indeed fortunate when 
 
 these blend in perfect unison. 
 136 
 
BLESSED BOYHOOD OF JESUS 
 
 Then follow eighteen years of waiting 
 whose only record is, "Jesus increased in 
 wisdom and stature and in favor with 
 God and man." They were not idle 
 years, but filled with a silent growth. It 
 was not a development from the im- 
 perfect to the perfect, but rather the 
 constant unfolding of a native perfect 
 at every stage of its growth. As from the 
 flawless block of marble little by little 
 is disengaged the artist's ideal, so God's 
 pleasiu-e grows with his growth until its 
 full disclosure in his gracious public min- 
 istry. Secretly in his spirit is shaping the 
 vision of the Kingdom. His knowledge of 
 his own nature seems to have been a truly 
 human knowledge; from the germ of a 
 unique filial relation to the Father, now 
 realized in the temple courts, it unfolds 
 until fully ready to hear the voice from 
 heaven, "This is my beloved Son!" 
 
 Obedience to his earthly parents was a 
 part of his training for divine Sonship. 
 There is never any real conflict between a 
 divine mission and a human duty. 
 
 "O thou whose infant feet were found 
 Within thy Father's shrine, 
 137 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 Whose years with changeless glory crowned. 
 Were all alike divine; 
 
 "Dependent on thy bounteous breath. 
 
 We seek thy grace alone. 
 In childhood, manhood, age, and death, 
 To keep us still thine own."* 
 
 1 Reginald Heber. 
 
 138 
 
A POSTLUDE 
 
 The Canticles of the Incarnation dis- 
 close the spiritual significance of song. 
 Music is the most mystic of all arts — 
 the one best fitted to express the heavenly 
 life. It is the speech of emotion and can 
 express grief or joy as no other medium 
 can. No wonder that the Bible is as full 
 of music as the forest of birdsong. For 
 it is a sort of universal speech — the one 
 most expressive of the subtler states of 
 the soul. 
 
 Music is a witness of the unseen world. 
 Its material, the vibrations of air, is the 
 least tangible of all earthly elements. Its 
 origin is divine. As Confucius said, 
 "Heaven is the house of hymns." The 
 redeemed are described in the Apocalypse 
 as "having the harps of God." It is the 
 language of the angels, the dialect of the 
 New Jerusalem. 
 
 As the rehgious arts are the greatest 
 of all arts, rehgious songs are the highest 
 of all songs. There are secular songs, sweet 
 
 139 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 and inspiring, such as boat-songs when the 
 "oars keep time to the music's chime," 
 harvest-songs accompanied by the rhyth- 
 mic rustle of falhng grain, and national 
 songs measured by the marching of mighty 
 hosts. But sweetest of all, and the 
 source of all, are the high praises of God, 
 the songs of the sanctuary, the songs of 
 heaven. As we praise God here below by 
 service, we shall serve him in the high 
 countries by praise. 
 
 Bethlehem and Calvary have given birth 
 to a New Song. Heaven had great music 
 before — the chant of creation choired by 
 the morning stars, the hymn of seraphs 
 heard by prophetic ears, and the Christ- 
 mas Canticles to which we have been 
 listening. But after the cross, the per- 
 fumed air of paradise is stirred with a new 
 and divine melody, unheard in heaven 
 before. It is the hymn of the new creation, 
 the song of the firstborn of earth. 
 
 For the incarnation and the atonement 
 have introduced a new theme into life. 
 Even the angels cannot sing it. It is of 
 a love never seen or felt before. None 
 sing like redeemed souls. Redemption is 
 
 140 
 
A POSTLUDE 
 
 greater than creation; it starts the song 
 of the new heavens and the new earth. 
 The New Song is the Te Deum of the 
 rescued after the greatest of all con- 
 flicts — the battle of the cross with sin 
 and death. 
 
 It is a new song, one that misses all 
 the monotony of earthly music. Even the 
 loveliest airs sometimes tire us. John 
 Stuart Mill lamented the limitations of 
 music — only five tones and two semitones 
 in the scale — how soon it would be ex- 
 hausted! But the new life will never 
 know weariness or satiety. Forever fresh 
 scenery, new thoughts, joys, and expe- 
 riences, new hearts, Hves, hopes, and 
 graces, new disclosures of God, and new 
 triumphs of his love. Forever new souls 
 come home to glory and new worlds are 
 conquered by his love. The new life 
 has no stale praises; its songs keep pace 
 with an unfailing Providence, as the 
 enthroned Lamb continually opens the 
 seals of his book of mystery. 
 
 It is a new choir that sings. It is a 
 mighty chorus — they believe in congre- 
 gational singing up there! It is made up 
 
 141 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 of the attuned chords of many types of 
 consecrated character. There is a una- 
 nimity in their chorus — the "sound as of 
 many waters and mighty thunderings." 
 And they are trained singers. Only such 
 can sing a new tune well. 
 
 Earth trained them. They bring the 
 human note into heaven as the Christmas 
 angels brought the celestial music down 
 to earth. In the organ of eternity, the 
 vox humana is a necessary stop, the sweet- 
 est that sends forth all elemental voices. 
 It is made out of earth's experience of 
 troubles and disasters. It began on 
 earth. These new choristers of glory 
 came 
 
 "Out of the mire 
 Into the choir.'* 
 
 Across the sea that once tossed with 
 storm and tempest, floats this heavenly 
 hymn and the tossing waves become a 
 glassy sea shining with celestial fire. 
 Trial is the training for the new song. 
 "These are they that came out of great 
 tribulation." Some naturalists claim that 
 the songs of birds had their origin in cries 
 
 142 
 
A POSTLUDE 
 
 of pain. Shelley says, "Our sweetest 
 songs are filled with saddest thought," and 
 thus describes the education of the poets, 
 "They learn in suffering what they teach 
 in song." Music is not a cold art that a 
 cold heart can learn. Even the blessed 
 angels in their loving ministries can never 
 sing as we shall some day. They have 
 never known the moaning of that dismal 
 sea we call death. In our mimdane 
 misery, God is tuning his human harps 
 for the eternal symphony. 
 
 That new choir is a vested choir; they 
 are clothed in white robes. They follow 
 the Lamb in his sacrifice and in his sin- 
 lessness. "Therefore are they near the 
 throne." Theirs is the faith that falters 
 not, the purity that palters not, and the 
 love that alters not. 
 
 Have we not caught in the Canticles 
 of the first Christmas the keynote of that 
 new song? Surely, that new chord was 
 sounded when the angelic army cried 
 "Glory!" as the seraph preacher gave to 
 the shepherds the sign of the swaddling 
 bands and the manger bed. Now we can 
 understand why the early church fol- 
 
 143 
 
THE CHRISTMAS CANTICLES 
 
 lowed the Gloria in Excelsis with the 
 words : 
 
 "O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, 
 O Lotd God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, 
 That takest away the sins of the world. 
 Have mercy upon us." 
 
 Song has always been joined to sacrifice. 
 Even in the ancient chronicles we read: 
 "When the burnt-offering began, the song 
 of the Lord began also." The slain Lamb, 
 the supreme sacrifice, whose birth came in 
 a tide of heavenly and earthly music, by 
 his death has started a new song. The 
 Christmas Canticles have grown into an 
 everlasting oratorio sung by the heirs of 
 salvation. 
 
 "O that, with yonder sacred throng, 
 We at his feet may fall! 
 We'll join the everlasting song. 
 And crown him Lord of all!" 
 
 144 
 
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