human nature from His mother Mary, there was, even in respect to this, a divine action which distinguished our blessed Lord most signally and strongly from all others from His birth. What Rome has lyingly, and as a thing of but yesterday, decreed of Mary, is most true of Jesus: He, not she, was immaculate in His human nature; and this through the energy of the Holy Ghost (as even the most rudimentary symbols of Christendom confess, I thank God), the result of the overshadowing power of the Highest. Hence therefore "That Holy Thing" could be its description from the first. He alone of all men was born "holy;" not made innocent and upright only, like Adam, still less-like Adam's sons-conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. He is designated "That Holy Thing," it will be observed, when the question was not of what was simply divine (which indeed it would be wicked folly to doubt and needless to affirm here), but of what was human. "That holy thing which shall be born [of thee]* shall be called the Son of God."

Matthew had already presented the birth of the Lord suitably to the design of his gospel. "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the

I bracket these words, not because they do not affirm a precious and essential truth (expressly taught in Matt. i. 16), but because the testimony of the best MSS. (Alex. Vat. Sinait. Bezae Cant., and in fact all of the first class, save the Rescript of Paris) excludes their title to a place in this text.

Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a

just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." He was thus MessiahJehovah, called Jesus consequently (for He should save His people from their sins), the virgin's Son, Emmanuel, according to prophecy. His humiliation, His rejection by His own people, follows; but, first of all, there is the clearest statement that what was begotten in Mary, what was born of His mother, was of the Holy Ghost. It is wretchedly low and even dangerous ground to say, with divines of repute, that Jesus was born holy because born of a virgin. was indeed so born of the virgin; but the holiness of His humanity, though of the very substance of His mother, turned upon the miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost.

He

Jesus then was not only Son of God from all

eternity in virtue of His divine nature, but He was so called also because of the divine energy manifest in His generation as man, and therefore the unparalleled blessedness of His conception and His birth, immeasurable though the humiliation was for Him to take manhood at all. The Babe of Bethlehem, the virgin's Son, was not born, we may surely say, of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God in the highest sense. It was not merely as we are said to be born again, to see God's kingdom, which Christ is never-could never be said to be: in His case it would be altogether derogatory, and a denial of His holy humanity,* to say nothing of His Deity. If we may so express it, He, the man Christ Jesus, was generated holy. "The word was made flesh." "God was

* The root and character of this error will appear from the words of Mr. Irving's treatise on the Human Nature of Christ. "The only difference, therefore, between Christ's human nature and the human nature of a regenerated man standeth in these two things: first, that Christ was in the condition of a regenerated man from the very first of His existence as a man; and secondly, He had the Spirit without measure, and therefore His regeneration was always effectual unto the perfecting of His faith and holiness, and the complete subjection of the natural inclinations of the fallen manhood" (p. 31). "I have the Holy Ghost manifested in subduing, restraining, conquering the evil propensities of the fallen manhood, and making it an apt organ for expressing the will of the Father," &c. (p. 64.) "We maintain the clean contrary, that every part of Christ was, in all its actings, Most Holy, yea, and in all its thoughts, yea, and in all its inclinations; and this not through any operation of its own, but through the operation of the Holy Ghost, which the Father gave to Him without measure," &c. (p. 78.) Their favourite phrase about Christ was, holiness not of but in humanity by the Holy Spirit.

manifest in the flesh." But even the process by which He came into the world, though "by the woman," was the fruit of God's power; it was a miracle of the highest rank, differing not in degree merely but in kind from the birth of Isaac, wondrous as it was; or from that of John the Baptist, filled though he were with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.

There is another most serious consideration which ought not to be forgotten. Fallen humanity calls not for amelioration but redemption, and needed it whereever it might be. Were the notion true that the Word was united to fallen human nature here below, He must have died to redeem it, that is, to redeem Himself!-overthrowing not only His work of atonement for others, but His own person. In every point of view, the idea is as false as it is destructive-an intellectual trifling with the great mystery of godliness.

There was therefore no admixture of the minutest trace of that sad heirloom of inward evil which Adam had handed down to his posterity. Human nature there now was in His person, as surely as He was and is God; but, by God's will and power, it was unsullied and holy. There was secured the absolute exclusion of the poison which sin had instilled into man's nature in every other instance. Hence the Lord Jesus was born of the woman, not of the man, being in quite a peculiar sense the woman's Seed. For thus it was the Holy Ghost was pleased to set aside for the humanity of Jesus every taint of sin inherent in fallen human

nature (of course, in His mother herself, as in all others of the race). Being so born, even the humanity of our Lord was "holy," as we have seen. Accordingly, in His person there was the most perfect suitability for the work on account of which He came, sent of the Father. On the divine side He could not but be perfect, for He was the true God and eternal life; on the human side there was miraculously effected the complete disappearance of all evil from the body which God prepared Him. The power of the Highest overshadowed His mother from the outset, and thus only was "that holy thing" born of her in due time, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? (xiv.) This, and far more than this, was thing" which was born of the virgin. nothing is impossible. Thus, long afterwards, the angel disclosed what baffled Job of old and satisfied Mary on the spot. Christ alone is, in every sense, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Not one," says Job.

"that holy

With God

With this agree the types of the Old Testament. Take that most conspicuous one in Leviticus ii. In Leviticus i. Christ is represented as the burnt-offering; in chapter ii. it is Christ as the meat- or cake-offering. This (the minchah, a gift or oblation) had nothing to do with what we call "meat ;" it was essentially bloodless. In the burnt-offering there was the giving up of life; but in this there was no question of sacrificing animals, or of anything that involved the shedding of blood. It