because He was arbitrary or ungenerous, but in loving care for His creatures. The welfare of man regulates progressive illumination. If in the morning of time those who possessed a crude knowledge of the arts and sciences, with colossal pride built Babel, what frightful outrages would they have perpetrated possessed of modern wealth and knowledge! The tyranny and slavery of Egypt and Assyria were terrible enough with horses and chariots; what would they have been with steam and electricity! The Jews were in constant peril because the navy of Solomon every three years brought gold, ivory, and peacocks; what would have been their state had the fleets of the world anchored in their ports, as they do in ours! The Romans were destructive enough with bows and arrows, slings and stones, swords and spears; think what they would have been with gunpowder and dynamite! The Greeks were voluptuous enough with the modest resources of their age; imagine their carnivals of ruinous pleasure had they commanded the diamondmines of Kimberley, the gold-fields of Johannesburg, the luxuries of all climates! God denied the treasures which would have rendered progress impossible; He withheld them until the race had attained those higher qualities without which excessive material power is a curse. The material progress of the world is conditioned by its moral fitness. We do not allow a child to play with matches, poisons, razors, and live wires; and God did not trust the childhood of the race with the awful resources of knowledge, wealth, and power involved in modern civilization. "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest be in health and pros per, even as thy soul prospereth." This is the law. of the world's enrichment and illumination, and it is a law of love. Another illustration of our theme is found in the impartation of spiritual knowledge. The Bible we know as revelation, yet it has immensely widened the range of mystery. How much there is in it that we do not understand! and we are often impatient with the mystery of godliness. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing." Christ came only "in the fullness of time"; before then the Advent would have been worse than useless. Even when He came He observed a striking reticence in addressing the multitude. "And with many such parables spake He the word unto them, as they were able to hear it: and without a parable spake He not unto them; but privately to His own disciples. He expounded all things." Nay, even to the disciples He could not tell all. "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth." The physician cannot always tell his patient all the truth concerning his position-it would retard the sick man's recovery, perhaps cost him his life; so he is told only as he is able to bear it, only as it will be good for him to know. So Heaven deals with us in loving discretion. Little do we know what we ask when we ask for the fullness of the light! The holiness of God, the wrath of God, the love of God! To see all our sin, all our peril! To see the universe of glory, to penetrate the secret of the prison-house! Were it flashed upon us, it would blind, paralyze, destroy. We are saved by the gen tleness which filters out the light a ray at a time. Infinite mercy grants no more. A veil 'twixt us and Thee, dread Lord, A veil 'twixt us and Thee; Lest we should hear too clear, too clear, We understand high and holy truths only as we treat them seriously and apply them practically. God explains them to us through experience. Just as the scientist learns the truths of nature through experiment, so we learn the highest truths through experience. We know the heavenly doctrine through its action on our conscience, heart, and will. God illuminates us through character. Would Would you know more? Get higher qualities and graces. We are illuminated through obedience. Revelation is granted through duty. We learn divinest secrets in prayer. A very little fellow, whose mother failed to explain his difficulties, answered, "Mother, you have not told me much; I wish that I could have five minutes with God." Our five minutes with God go a long way. So light is not given to theorists, for knowledge that puffeth up is no gain; light steals upon us through personal sanctification, practical obedience, hallowed devotion, and every truth thus apprehended is the light of life, filling us with strength, purity, and joy. LII THE HOUR, AND THE DIVINE But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.-GAL. iv. 4, 5. T HE period of Christ's manifestation. It has often been pointed out that when certain characters are wanted they inevitably appear. When the hour strikes the man arrives, the man exactly suited to the hour. "The tools of history are never inappropriate. A Dante is not produced when history requires a Luther. Philosophical and contemplative natures are not produced when history requires practical and heroic natures. Providence makes no mistake, there is always harmony between the special gifts of individuals and the requirements of history." This harmony was never more strikingly illustrated than in the age of the Advent. Christ is the centre of the history of the world, and there could be no error in the date of His appearance. The race had proved its inability to restore itself to lost truth, purity, and happiness. Through the discipline of the Mosaic law, and of natural law, Jew and Gentile were pre pared for a spiritual, redeeming religion. And the state of the political world corresponded with the exigencies of a universal faith. "When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son." Nothing in nature is more wonderful than the way in which complementary things and creatures arrive together; and in history the same phenomenon is repeated. "God's trains never keep one another waiting." Events synchronize and harmonize. The Incarnation is the crowning example of the dramatic unities of history. The nature of this manifestation. "God sent forth His Son." "Born of a woman." Christ was the revelation of God in the sphere of time and sense. The splendour of Jehovah was veiled by the seamless robe; under the mechanism of frail flesh throbbed the energy which built the world; the gentle tones of the voice unheard in the streets disguised the accents of the thunder; and beneath the weakness which slept, fainted, and expired was hidden the might of Omnipotence. That Christ was God; that He became man, possessing a true human body and a true human soul, is the distinct teaching of the evangelic narrative. God manifests Himself in nature, history, and conscience; but here is a supreme, personal, and unique revelation of Himself the divine clothing Himself with the human that He might redeem the human. There is nothing in this manifestation contrary to the divine greatness. The grandeur of God is not founded on those visible splendours with which we surround Him. Without a throne of awful brightness, without crowns either on His head or at His feet, |