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There Is Born a Saviour.

Christmas Sermon, by E, L, Powell. « 11

Introduction

Jesus unique in tlie manner of His coming. Cliristianity supernatural, or must take its place -with other pliilosopMes.

I. It is good tidings to have been told that the long-lookedf or Messiah had actually come.

II. Another note of joy is the announcement that the Christ who actually came is contemporaneous.

III. The whole gamut is swept, however, in the climacteric word ** Saviour.**

Christmas Sermon by E. L. Powell

Now when Jesus was bom in Bethlehem of Judaea. — Matt. 2: 1.

CHRISTMAS! It is the one unique birthday of recorded time. Unique as respects the babe who was born on that first Christmas Day in the long ago. *'Now when Jesus was bom in Bethlehem of Judaea'' there was brought into the world of humanity a child of flesh and blood — ^born of woman — crying, smiling, hungry, human, and yet unlike and different from any baby in the manner of His coming, who has for the first time opened His wondering eyes on this strange earth of ours.

Unique was this wonderful babe in the manner of His coming, but yet completely human, *^for both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are of one [one nature], for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. ' ' Mystery of mysteries ! Having a unique mission, a mission of redemption, related to the ages before His birth, and to all subsequent races of mankind, a mission which was held within the eternal purposes of God from the beginning, antedating the song of the morning stars or the breaking of the first morning of time, why should it be thought a thing incredible that without intermediary human agency this babe should have come into our human environment by the immediate touch and power of

God? Such a child with such a mission, ''the desire of all nations," the theme of prophet and poet who interpreted the world's need of just such a child coming with just such marks of uniqueness at just such a time in the history of the world — such a child, I say, could not have come otherwise, and at the same time have met the requirements of faith or imagination. God's miracles delight us. They do not stagger or distress our faith.

We can not explain the mystery of dawn as it brightens into day. We simply rejoice in the glory. ''Unto us is born a child ... his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Prince of Peace." Why argue about the dawn?

^'Here hatli been dawning another blue day. Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away? Out of eternity this new day was born; Into eternity it soon will return.''

What human agency is back of the dawn? Whence does it come? In what laboratory is light manufactured? With what pencil does the breaking day transform and transfigure the darkened earth, which but a moment ago was chill and cold under the mantle of dewy night? The virgin birth! It is the birth of the dawn. Explain it? Certainly not. Demonstrate it in intellectual terms and syllogisms? Impossible. Believe it and rejoice in it as you accept and rejoice in the dawn. ^'Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us." How simple, almost naive, is the narrative! Wonderful, however, in the same way as in the older narrative, when ' ' God said, Let there be light, and light was.'' So I am trying to say that the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was unique, wonderful and yet human, friendly, intimate and familiar as the birth of all babies who have made the living, sorrowing, rejoicing, sinning, hoping generations of mankind. Could this Bethlehem baby have called Himself the Son of man, the child of the race, if His birth had been marked by the limited and provincial characteristics of the ordinary, the usual, the local, the purely natural course of human arrivals? Born of a virgin, immediately g&erated by God, miraculous, if you please, and not less miraculously than matter. He becomes the child of humanity, and, like the sun and stars, belongs to mankind.

Our Christianity is supernatural, or it must take its place in the intellectual systems and philosophies of mankind. But while the supernatural can not be explained and understood by reason, it is none the less reasonable, and must be the subject-matter of reason. Science itself is nothing more than human reason dealing with the supernatural in objective nature. The first and last word of science, whatever its theories, hypotheses and reasoned systems, is God. ''In the beginning — God.'' Science is but the effort of human reason to tell us how God is working, and has uniformly worked, in the continuous creation of the universe, and natural law is nothing more than God's way of doing things. Jesus is the great exception, a break in the uniformity of the working of the natural law of generation and birth. There is here no contravention or contradiction of law. It is an exception, a departure from God's usual way, but no violation or contradiction of the usual, unless we shall say that there is no room in God's universe for the exceptional, and that God is imprisoned by the methods and processes of His own creation.

But pardon this brief excursion into the domain of science and theology. This is a Christmas sermon. "We want to hear the celestial choir chanting the ^^ Gloria in Excelsis'^; we want to hear the angelic trumpets startling the simple Bethlehem shepherds with such music as had never rolled over earth's hills, nor brought human hearts to such a glow of vibrant happiness. '^Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy/' said the tall angel, as prelude and introduction to the message of the whole heavenly host: ^'Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord." Heaven's full and complete message and music, the real Christmas music, is that uttered by the full chorus, the completion, complement and fulfillment of the tall angel's prelude. The one angel announces the text: *^ Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy." The full chorus preaches the sermon: ''Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord."

I. It is good tidings indeed to Jiave been told tJiat this long-looked-for Messiah had actually come. Hope long deferred attains its fruition. ''Unto you is born." We are not so much concerned as to the circumstances or manner of His coming. Has He been born? It is the historic Christ whose arrival the angels proclaim. He is actual. You can touch His baby hands. He is objective flesh and blood. "Art thou he that should come?" asks the doubting prophet. Jesus says: "Go show John the things you have seen." The actual Christ doing the very things which long ago the prophets had said the Messiah would do. The dream has come true. See the Christ stand! No fancy, no disembodied or discarnate ideal, no depersonalized system of philosophy, no cold metaphysical abstraction.

On the contrary, warm flesh and blood — concrete, objective, personal — ^who will presently begin ^'to do and to teach,'' and to so wondrously influence the select company of His apostles that one of them shall say, speaking for the others and for those who subsequently should believe in Him through their teaching: ^'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Christianity is based on solid, substantial fact — a divinely human personality, who lived, taught, wrought, suffered, died, was buried and rose again, and thenceforth governing, guiding, redeeming human life, as the ascended spiritual Christ ^^whom not having seen we love.'' Christmas gets us away from the speculative in our religion, and brings us down to earth where we live and sin and suffer — the only place where a real Saviour can find His task, and where an abstract Christ is wholly without a mission.

II. AnotJier note of joy in fhis full Christmas music is tJie announcement tTiat tJiis Christ who has actually come is contemporaneous, ''Unto us is bom this day in the city of David." This Christ of ours is of even date. It is always in the ministry of Jesus this day, this city, this generation. He has been the contemporary of all ages and generations, else redemption could not have continued longer or further than His personal ministry in the flesh. ''Before Abraham was I am." His historic birth in terms of time was the monumental and historic expression of His continuous redemptive presence through the ages. "He loved me and gave himself for me," this day, this man, this Saul of Tarsus, this house of Zaccheus in which he must abide, unto you and me, unto our age and day with its peculiar problems of peace and war, with its confused democracy and yet near attainment, how contemporaneons the announcement : ^ ' Unto yon is bom this day in the city of David a Savionr, who is Christ the Lord/'

III. TTie whole gamut is swept, Jiowever, in tlie climacteric word ^^ Saviour/' It matters not, save for academic and intellectnal considerations, that the Christ-child has come, that He is the Messiah long looked for and passionately desired, that He has been recognized by His own conntrymen as none other than the one of whom *' Moses in the law and the prophets did write''; so mnch as that the Christ identified by all the marks of type and prophecy has come to a continuous ministry of redemption, "We must hear the sustaining and undergirding word in this mighty anthem: ''Unto yon is born this day in the city of David a Saviour.'^ That last word describes the circumference and embraces the diameter of God's purpose for humanity. ''Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save the people from their sins."

Here is one at last who is doing, and has been doing all through the centuries, that which none other has attempted; namely, saving the soul of man from Bin. Prior to His coming the best which could be done for sin-stricken humanity resulted in little more than an ameliorated and improved moral and mental environment. Philosophy had been tried in her noblest representatives — a Plato, an Aristotle, a. Socrates — ^but philosophy could not touch the heart, conscience, motives, the inner springs from which proceed the issues of life and destiny. Not "the glory that was Greece, or the grandeur that was Rome," could bring to man the consciousness of sins forgiven, and of recovered moral self-respect. Neither Judaism with its law, nor the mighty prophets of righteousness, could do more than discover and reveal sin, leaving man impotent and helpless in the consciousness of its grip. ''What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." He does not deal with symptoms, but strikes at the disease itself. He does not announce some little program of readjustment, rehabilitation and artificial reconstruction or reformation. ''I have come that ye might have life, and might have it more abundantly." He does not save by rules and props and regulations or statutory enactments, but by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. ''He hath made me free from the law of sin and of death."

A personal Saviour for all who would be saved from sin — "good tidings of great joy for all people" — this is the glorious announcement which came ringing from the sky on that first Christmas Day two thousand years ago. "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ came into the world to save sinners." I have read somewhere a parable which represents a man in a pit waiting and praying for delivery. Buddhism comes that way, and, looking down upon the poor fellow in his misery, says: "You did not walk into the pit; you did not run into the pit; in some previous state of incarnation you came into this pit." "Very true," says the man, "but of what avail if you can do nothing to get me out?" Likewise, Mohammedanism passes and says: "It is the will of Allah." "I do not dispute your statement," replies the man in the pit, "but how does that help me out?" And so the philosophies, theologies and cults pass by, impotent and powerless to get the man out of the pit. Finally, Jesus comes that way and asks, "Wilt thou be made whole?" and without philosophy or theory, but with the grip of a mighty love, he lifts the man out of his prison into the sunlight of happiness. The question is not as to the truth or falsity of the creeds and philosophies and theologies. They may all be perfectly true, only they can not save a soul. ^'Weakness'' is Paul's word in this connection. ''What the law could not do in that it was weak."

Christmas brings to us the glorious evangel of Christ's redeeming love. Pre-eminently it brings a message to little children. It does more, however; it brings a universal message. It offers hope — a sure hope of salvation and moral recovery to the worst of sinners. Glorious Christ! Glorious gospel! Glorious hope! ''And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory, unto the only wise Grod our Saviour, be glory and majesty and power and dominion, both now and forever."

'^When Christmas comes, In field and street, in mart and farm, The world takes on a lovelier charm; ;Sweet-scented boughs of pine and fir Are brought like frankincense and myrrh, To make our hallowed places meet For hands thait clasp and tones that greet. While hearts worth more than gold or gem Go forth to find this Bethlehem, When Christmas coanes,'*

GEBALD CULBEBSON was hom Dec. 1, 1879, at Waynesville, N, C, and was educated at Johnson Bible College, Tenn.y and Bethany College, W, Va., graduating in the latter institution in 1905.

Mr, Culberson organized the co<ngregation of the church of Christ and built the chAirch at Chester, W. Va, Under his ministry the church at Clifton Forge, Va,, was built. For nine years he held a pastorate in Bichmond, Va., and for three years he did a successful worJc with the church at Bedford, Ind,

At this writing he is in charge of the church at BecJcley, W, Va., where he is also president of the Ministers* Assoduiion, and a member of the Board of Directors of the BecMey Chamber of Commerce,

New Year's Sermon

I. New Year's Day Is a Day of Retrospective Witness.

1. Tlie witness of opportunities gone.

2. Tlie witness of shortcomings.

II. New Year's Day Is a Day of Persuasions Ahead.

1. The persuasion of better living.

2. The persuasion of an honorable death.

3. The persuasion of a glorious life beyond.

* THE PERSUASION OF BETTER THINGS

New Year's Sermon by Gerald Culberson

But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation. — Heb. 6: 9.

THIS is a text for the present day. It gives ns the backward look and the forward focus at New Year. Human desire to retrieve and improve is uppermost at this season. There is pull in the words, ''We are persuaded better things of you.'' They call to us from the heights ; they are so warm and personal. Like a mother's love notes to a truant son; like a father's melting accents to a boy inclining to waywardness; like the tones of a friend whose confidence we had almost betrayed — ^they strike deep. As a blow upon the body brings the blood rushing to the spot, this barbless shaft, ''better things of you," calls in the vagrant powers to soul-center, and impels us to inquire, "Soul of mine, I call you to witness this day, is it true?'^

New Year's Day is witness day. The old saints and servants of God in their journey ings, when they reached a milestone or turning-point, stood by to erect an altar, and thereupon, thanking God and taking courage, they vowed vows of new meaning and went forward. Bethel, Peniel and Ebenezer were very real to them, and therefore stood as witnesses through all subsequent endeavors. They were points by the way of new and more noble departure: life was different afterward, altered in direction or in quality, or in both.

Theirs was an association of events with place. So is ours, only we have in addition another association, one which is coming more and more to be an altar of common witness with humanity — the association of time with events.

Thus days, many days, are memorial days with us, and days of convocation. Among these is New Year's Day, the milestone of the year's flight; long marked and observed, to be sure, by generations before, but now come to be with us the day for an invoice of life, for individual stocktaking of character. It is the time when we review the past, hopefully scan the future, and seriously, sometimes mercilessly, scrutinize the present with the view to forsaking the baser levels of life, lifting our ideals and improving our conduct and character.

Thus may the day become hallowed to an honest inventory of self-qualities and to vows for self-ennoblement, particularly if its witness be in the fear of Grod, in the light of His truth, and in the power of His conscious presence. New Year resolutions, under such circumstances, will become a sacred altar, the secret persuasions of which will devoutly carry us forward. Shall we be bold enough, earnest enough, this day to submit ourselves to the test, and be the richer for this altar's wise and prudent oracles? Let us listen to the more temporal ones first.

There is the inner witness that speaks of the year that is gone, together with many others never to be recalled in this life. Whatever may have been the indifference or levity with which we paid off the year's

PEESUASION OF BETTER THINGS 23

golden ream of days, we would hardly be so careless again. The days seem more valuable now that they are gone. Had we once more their wealth of time and opportunity at our disposal, we are sure we could turn it to better account. Their mute but mighty appeal is ''unto better things.'^

Again that inner voice speaks the still more blanching fact of shortcomings and failures. It appears to us now that the sum total of our living up to this point has been of no account. Yes, we know that it was spoken by One supremely wise, ''That when ye have done all, ye should say we are unprofitable servants.'' But we did want to feel that we were accomplishing things worth while. We tried hard to do good and not evil. "We were sure we could win out completely over some foes particularly harassing. We would overcome sloth on the one hand, and impatience on the other. We would curb our too great temper here, and unloose it yonder where it was justifiable. No, the many broken vows and the whole or partial reverses did not steal our hope, and we persevered; and as we look back we are reassured. There was some progress made. It was "the persuasion of better things" then, and so shall it be now as the New Year beckons.

And just as we are resolving, the brightest note of the season peals forth, "Ring out the old, ring in the new." Another lease on life is proffered, time is lengthening our course, the glad thought comes: "I can, I really can, redeem the residue of my days unto greater wisdom and happiness." Happy New Year, blessed gift of God, who giveth bountifully, even more than is deserved! Truly our times are in His hand; He doeth all things well — ^but hold, not so fast — if our time is in His hand, it is not ours after all, but His, His time He has put in our hand. Oh, solemn thought ! The years, the days, the hours. A great preacher once called them ''God's angels." He was visiting a metropolitan club one Sunday afternoon, and, seeing so many young men lounging about, and being told by them that they were ''just killing a little time," he exclaimed, "Killing time, gracious, mercy, men, I'd as soon think of cutting the throats of God's angels."

The final witness gotten from our New Year altar in this connection is quite the most solemn: "What will you do with the future? It is even now lifting its enchanted curtain for your entry. Friend, if there ever was a point in your earthly pilgrimage when the heart should be mellow and the spirit vibrant to the full chord of life's challenge, it is when this yearly corner is turned for the look ahead.

Good old King Hezekiah's words — as in truth his solemn plight — rise to mind with singular force: "It is a light thing for the shadow to decline ten steps" — time is so swift and easy in its approach and speeding. "Nay, but let the shadow return backward ten steps!" ' — time is so hard and heavy in its retrieving.

Particularly, when life itself is put in the balance the shadows on the dial are measurable to a degree hitherto unnoted. Could we be told after the fashion of Hezekiah that this was our last day and last year, and then retold that it was the new day and year released unto us, time would be as the blood of our strength and its conservation as the law of life. "Self-preservation, life's first law?" Then, time conservation is its twin.

I wonder if, after all, the note of New Tear is not the elemental one of preserving health and strength

PERSUASION OF BETTER THINGS 25

so that one can function better and last longer in the service of God and His fellows upon earth.

Thoughts of to-day must center upon principles of clean conduct developing a wholesome and hardy physique, as a foundation for spiritual achievement, and a preparation for the joy of right living. It is an aphorism that age and wisdom are most in companionship. "What a loss, then, is entailed upon those learners and seekers after wisdom who must needs go too often on frail limb and with halting step.

^^ Please urge the youth in your charge," wrote a great man once to a prominent educator, ^^to take better care of their health. Here I am in the fullness and ripeness of mental ability and efficiency, and this honor is tendered me, this preferment at the hands of my brethren, which has been a dream of. my life; and now, as you know, I can not accept because of bodily infirmity and shattered nerve. I know now how Tantalus felt when the water eluded his thirsty lips."

The power of an army depends upon the physical fitness of its men. Is it different with those who would make spiritual conquests? Nay, it is more imperative that the warrior whose banner is righteousness, whose warfare is, confessedly, not carnal, whose ideal is a body subjected, be cleanest and soundest.

The report is both common and credible that ministers of the gospel stand at the top as the best risks in mortuary tables. Whether all Christians other than the ^'preaching brethren" will be able to disentangle themselves from the lower general average, should be an interesting and profitable matter to investigate and resolve upon at New Year.

But this season is not without meanings more definitely spiritual. Only the thoughtless can miss its powerful persuasions for the soul. To many it must represent the Great Divide — death on the one side, life on the other — the narrow defile between.

These, while beholding the glow of dawn just across, and thrilling with eagerness for the brimming light of a shadowless eternity, still feel the depression of mortality. Such souls are not morbid; they are prophetic. They would mark the somber fact that the pass, at best, is not far ahead. Did not the Old Year die, as all years must die, and with it millions like ourselves? Their requiem was chanted at stroke of twelve. Ours was not, but our tide will move out with the same quick ebb. ''When folks about here make their last lonely voyage," said Old Pegotty to David Copperfield, as they stood by the death-bed of Barkis, ''they mostly go out with the tide.''

Our thoughts should go out, if our spirits do not, with the tide of the Old Year as it bears upon its bosom the necrology of its multitudes. We are not overcome at sight of this moribund recession. We are not cast down by a sense of futility and despair. On the contrary, we scan our margin of time prayerfully and gird us about for the departure. Through faith and the divine alchemy of the love that endureth all things we are bowed Samson-like unto greater strength. Just as the choicest flowers spring from the muck of disintegration and decay, just as the finest fragrances of human sympathy arise from the depths of privation and disappointment, so does the master spirit in man arise from disaster. "Man is a curious animal. He seems to give forth his finest fruit only when crushed. When we expect him 'to curse God and die,' suddenly his face lights up with the heavenly vision, ' ' and he dares to go on, though he grope his way.

PERSUASION OF BETTER THINGS 27

It was the persuasion of death that in God's Son kindled the noble passion of vicarious love. Is death called the Great Leveler? Why not the Great Lifter? Does not every serious thought of death inspire us to lift the wretched from the mire of their wretchedness? New Year's Day should give us this persuasion certainly, lest living too far removed from thoughts of our dissolution we live too selfishly and miss its ministry of transfiguration.

Alexander Hamilton's son writes that on the night before the fatal duel with Burr his father said to him, ''My son, you will sleep with me to-night." ''When we • had retired my father caught me to his arms, and, pressing me to his heart, he kissed me again and again. Then he said, 'Now let us pray the Lord's Prayer together.' After that, with many tears, he would say, ' Oh, my boy, I love you so ; I could not leave you were there no hope of reunion'." Such transfiguration of hope nerved the elder Hamilton, no doubt, to fire his pistol in the air the next day, and not at his antagonist.

But another shadow is pierced by the light from the farther side of our altar of witness — ^the shadow of sin. It is not native to that land of our earthly future any more than to the Land Aglow beyond, for both are still with God. The twain are His, and their persuasion is of a state "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." The persuasion of one is the persuasion of the other; heaven and the exalted Christian life.

How near are these in one sense! Just a step, a second's fiight of time, the measure between the old and the new. How far in another — in realization ! So immense is the distance, so impassable the gulf — once crossed — that many faint at the thought even of ever reaching it. Yet from of old is the surety for men: ''Why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? And if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door."

"Waiving the theology of this our human faintness — whether it be because of love for sin, or whether it be from over-confidence in the Father heart of God this fact stands out unimpeached : the spirit of man ever suffers the attacks of conscience and therefore must be under the ''persuasion of better things, the things that accompany salvation. ' '

The consistency of man's nature, as well as of all nature, cries out for renovation. The gospel scheme of salvation is the only full and final answer to the interrogations of man's conscience. Eclectic schools of religion may blast away at spurious consciences; conscience ever remains. Even a casual observer must note that the "Divine Sonship Cultists" are all the time "groaning along with the rest of creation," waiting for a manifestation of sonship that is more real than any that a Christless individual or society knows.

No man can demolish sin with a mere gesture of contempt. Sin is real and deadly. He who is imprisoned in its tomb is in captivity to corruption, and seekers at this tragic sepulchre still ask, "Who shall roll away the stone?" and "Who will proclaim our year of release?"

There is no deliverance possible apart from the Christ of God and the blood of His cross. Release is signed, sealed and delivered in the New Testament Scriptures. He who is attested by many infallible proofs to be Lord of all is our Saviour from sin. He

PERSUASION OF BETTER THINGS 29

gave Himself in token sufficient to heal the world's hurt, change its unhappy disorders and give newness and soundness to wholly obedient members of the human family.