The Advent
Augustus was Emperor.
From the Atlantic to the Euphrates — from where the legions were arrested by the snows of Sarmatia northward, and the sands of Libya southward, the world was a Roman farm; and with all its lovely islands and fruitful shores, the Mediterranean was a Roman lake. Mauritania and Numidia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria — the countries now known as Turkey, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, Britain — all received their laws from the Italian capital, and all sent it their tribute. With its hundred and twenty millions of subjects, this region included the whole of the old world’s intelligence, and nearly all its wealth; and though many of the conquered nations were fierce and strong, they had been effectually subdued, and were now overawed by an army of 300,000 men. With its beak of brass and its talons of steel the great eagle had grappled and overcome the human race, and the whole earth trembled when from his seven-hilled eyrie he flapped his wings of thunder.
There was nearly universal peace. By the courage and consummate generalship of Julius Caesar, the most formidable nations had already been vanquished; and since the death of Pompey, and the conclusion of the civil war, the Empire, undivided and undisputed, was swayed by a single autocrat.
The pagan culture had culminated. The exquisite temples of Greece had begun to go to ruin, and in that land of sages there arose no new Pythagoras — no second Socrates. But the genius of Rome had scarcely passed the zenith. Seneca was born in the same year with John Baptist. Thousands still lived in whose ears the musical wisdom of Cicero lingered, and who had read, when newly published, the sublime speculations of Lucretius. It was but the other day that the sweet voice of Virgil had fallen mute, and only eight years since the tomb of Maecenas had opened to admit the urn of Horace. Under its sumptuous ruler Rome was rapidly becoming a mountain-pile of marble palaces — baths, temples, theatres — the proudest on which sunbeams ever sparkled; and, with his enormous wealth and all-commanding absolutism, the Roman citizen was the lordliest mortal whom luxury ever pampered — the most supercilious demi-god who ever exacted the adulation of his fellows.*
* It is worthy of remark, that the victory of Arminius, which gave the first ominous check to the world’s conqueror, did not take place till a.». 0. (8ee Creasy’s “Decisive Battles. “) Of Roman wealth, some idea
Yet, amidst all this civilisation, it was a time of fearful depravity. In regions so remote as Britain and Germany it was scarcely surprising that dark superstitions should prevail, and that hecatombs of little children should be immolated by the fiends of the forest. But in Rome itself, under all the outward refinement, coarse tastes and fierce passions reigned; and the same patrician who at a false note in music would writhe with graceful agony, could preside imperturbable over the tortures of a slave or a prisoner; and to see him overnight shedding tears at one of Ovid’s Epistles, you would not guess that he had all the morning been gloating on the convulsions of dying gladiators. Busts of Cato adorned the vestibule, but brutality and excess ran riot through the halls; and it was hard to say which was the most abandoned — the multitude who still adored divinities the patrons of every crime, or the scholars who laughed at superstition and perpetrated crimes worthy of a Mars or Jupiter.
This was the time which the Most High selected for the greatest event of human history. On” the one hand, it was a time of tranquillity. The wars of long centuries had ceased. Men’s minds were not abmay be formed from the fact that in one triumph. Julius Caesar brought home to the public treasury twelve and a-half millions sterling, and in four years the private fortune of Seneca the philosopher was augmented by more than two millions of our money. The reader of Horace and Juvenal will not need to be reminded of the vanity of the imperial Roman, nor of that gross flattery on which it subsisted.
sorbed in the contests of dynasties, nor agitated by the burning of their capitals and the desolation of their homes. And a lull like this was favourable for the commencement of a moral movement which concerned the whole of Adam’s family. On the other hand, the world was old enough. For four thousand years the great experiment had been going on, and man had been permitted to do his best to retrieve the ruin of the Fall. It seemed, however, as if every struggle were only a deeper plunge; and betwixt the exploded nostrums of philosophy, and the corruption of the times, the world was grown weaiy of itself. A dry rot had got into the ancient faith, and idolatry and hero-worship tottered on their crumbling pillars. Satiety or disgust was the prevailing mood of the wealthy; revenge and despair gnawed the heart of the down-trampled millions. For tribes which had lost their nationality, and for citizens who had sold their hereditary freedom, there was no spell in the past; and amongst a people who had lost faith in one another, there remained nothing which could inspire the fervour of patriotism. It was felt that if extrication ever came, it must come from above; and even in heathen lands, hints gathered from the Hebrewtures, or prophetic particles floated down on the muddy tide of pagan mythology, began to be carefully collected and exhibited in settings of the richest poetry, till the bard of Mantua sang of a virgin, and an unprecedented offspring descended from high Heaven, who should efface the traces of our crimes, and free from its perpetual fears the world — in whose days the lion would be no terror to the ox, and the deadly serpent should die. Betwixt the general peace which prevailed, the hopeless wickedness, and the general wearying for a change, u the road was ready, and the path made straight.” “The fulness of time was come, and God sent forth His Son.”
As the time was fulfilled, so the place was prepared. Two thousand years before, the Most High had marked off the land of Canaan, and had separated from the rest of mankind the family of Abraham, and, by a series of remarkable interpositions, had provided and preserved a cradle for the coming Incarnation. For the first two thousand years, the promise was public and promiscuous. The world’s Redeemer might be born anywhere, and might spring from any family. There was nothing to prevent His advent at Ararat or Olympus — nothing to preclude His descent from Japheth or from Ham. The only thing certain was, that He was coming, and that He was to descend from Eve the mother of us all. But five centuries after the flood a restricting process began, and by a series of limitations the promise was rendered more and more precise. First of all, God chose a certain Chaldee family, and Abraham was pronounced the chosen progenitor of Messiah. Then a further restriction was made, and of Abraham’s two sons the younger was taken. By and by the choice was still more narrowed, and of Isaac’s twelve grandsons the dying Jacob predicted that in Judah’s line must Shiloh come. And in this latitude the promise continued for many centuries, till to one of Judah’s descendants it was revealed that amongst his posterity should be that mighty Prince, “whose name shall endure for ever, and whom all nations shall call blessed.” The same exhaustive process which at last left David’s family the favoured and eventful line, made Palestine, then Judah, and finally the little town of Bethlehem, the predestined and distinguished locality. 80 that when Malachi laid down the pen, and for the four centuries following, during which heaven opened no more, and the voice of inspiration was hushed, the decree was gone forth, and both the place and the pedigree were conclusively fixed. Not of Greek or Trojan ancestry, not in the hoary line of the Seleucidae nor in the haughty house of ir, but beyond all dispute, and all rivalry aside, in the lineage of David would Messiah appear; and neither Memphis nor Babylon, neither Athens nor Rome, no, nor even the holy city, no, not even Jerusalem, but of all places in the world, though so little among the thousands of Judah, should Bethlehem-Ephratah be the spot for ever eminent, “out of which should that Ruler appear, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
Over the family and the region thus selected a special Providence watched, and the world’s historysupplies no parallel to the fortunes of the peculiar people who were to be Messiah’s progenitors. All along and divinely predestined as the receptacle of incarnate Deity, the land was in the occupancy of gigantic idolaters when Jehovah presented it to Abraham; but if the Canaanites could have entertained any fear of the old and childless pilgrim, their fears must have vanished when they saw his greatgrandsons saddle their asses and creep away down into Egypt, a hungry and poverty-stricken company. Ages passed on, and in all the promised land there were no tidings of its preposterous claimants, except that they were now the thralls of Pharaoh, and never likely to quit the brick-fields and burning kilns of On. But at last a rumour ran that the slaves h “” escaped; and if they ever got disentangled from the Arabian desert, they might possibly revisit their ancient seats, and renew their ancestral claim. But to the tall Anakim, to the Jebusites perched aloft on their rocky fortresses, and to the Canaanites scouring the plain in their chariots of iron, there was only a theme of derision in the approach of the motley multitude. At last, however, with its mysterious precursor — with its cloudy ensign moving before — that multitude began to darken the eastern bank of the Jordan, and the men of Jericho could see them, phalanx by phalanx, condensing just over against their city. But deep and wild the river ran between, and the wanderers had neither boat nor pontoon: and high and strong the ramparts rose, and the wanderers had neither scaling-ladder nor battering-ram. Yet on, still on, the strangers pressed; and oh, wonderful! the river started back, and curbed its waters till the whole had passed. On, still on, the strangers strode, and round and round the rocky citadel they stalked in mystic marches, till a harsh and horrid blare had seven times sounded, and, like a mud-hovel in the jaws of an earthquake, the castle walls crashed in and poured their dusty ruin far and near. On, still on, that invading billow spread and poured — a charmed host unused to soldiership, and with scarce a sword among them; and from the frown of their guiding Pillar, and from the flash of their oracular Urim, the embattled squadrons of Philistia melted and disappeared, till from Judah’s milky pastures, all across Jezrecl’s golden granary, on to the wine-purpled skirts of Lebanon and the honey-dropping cliffs of Carmel, the land swarmed with the chosen race, and fulfilled yen’s oath to faithful Abraham.
less surprising was that Providence which hermetically sealed the favoured region, and which, segregating from all the peoples of the earth the people of Israel, and infusing its distinctive element into the national mind, kept Hebrew nature from ever again mingling and getting merged in the common human nature. How wonderful the wisdom which, like naphtha in a fountain or like amber in the sea, ever floating, never melting, amidst every dispersion, in Egypt and in Babylon, kept the race distinct! How determinate the counsel and foreknowledge of God which fixed on the all-important portion of the Hebrew family, and, letting go as of no account ten tribes, protected and preserved the wonder-freighted Judah! How evident the mind of God in that home-instinct which, when other deported tribes settled down in inglorious quiescence — like those sea-creatures which, riven from the rock, still cling to it with their long tentacula, gave Judah feelers long enough to stretch across seventy years of exile, and which, beside the waters of Babylon, still kept him clasped to Jerusalem, and painfully quivering till once he returned; and how all-seeing that Eye, which, amidst the few thousands of rescued captives, made sure of Zerubbabel, and amidst the ransomed who returned to Zion saw safely on his way David’s descendant and Mary’s grandsire! And oh, how wonderful that counsel and excellent that working which brought about the fulness of the time — which deferred the advent till the world was at its worst, and the race to be redeemed was in its sorest need — and which yet, in a general peace, secured an audience and an entrance for the forthcoming Gospel, and which in universal empire, in the great arterial roads and ubiquitous presence of the Koman conqueror, prepared for its glad tidings the swiftest transmission; which, planting Messiah’s cradle on the summit of the hollowed mine, took care that He should be born before that mighty explosion burst which was to tear in shreds each Hebrew pedigree, and leave not a Jew within fifty miles of Bethlehem; and as soon as that advent was over came the blaze of the great catastrophe, dispersing the Jewish people over all the world, confusing all their families, consuming all their genealogies, and making it utterly impossible that another Son of David should be born in David’s town!
The prophetic and providential preparation being thus complete, “The Word was made flesh.”
“It was in the time of great Augustus’ tax,
And then He comes
That pays all sums,
Even the whole price of lost humanity,
And sets us free
From the ungodly empery
Of sin, and Satan, aLd of death.” *
“With God there is no forgetfulness. With Him there is nothing formidable. With Him a thousand years arc as one day.
* Jeremy Taylor.
It was exactly a thousand years since a promise had been made to David, that a son of his should possess universal sovereignty. “He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. All kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him, and shall call him blessed. In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.” And it looked almost possible that this promise might be fulfilled in the sumptuous Solomon. His dominions were vast, his reign was pacific; and whilst with the omnipotence of wealth he had piled up on the heights of Zion whole quarries of marble and forests of cedar, he had filled the world with the fame of his wisdom.
But neither Solomon nor Solomon’s son fulfilled the prophecy; and ever since that day the Hebrew monarchy had been dwindling more and more, till now the sceptre of Judah had grown a truncheon, short and shabby, and was wielded by a usurper’s foul and servile hand.
Meanwhile, the descendants of David — where were they? You see this grassy dingle, rimmed round with its fifteen hills, and a village on the slope of one of them — a beautiful spot, abounding in birds and flowers, corn-fields and gardens, and with a fine fresh air often stirring the oaks and the mulberries, and sweeping a powdery cloud up the dusty streets
That village is Nazareth — a charming seclusion, but its inhabitants are not a gainly people. They are coarse, lawless, uncivil, and with their broad patois and sulky independence, they are no favourites with their neighbours. But among them is at least one good man, a widower of the name of Joseph. All through the week he labours diligently in that shed of his, with James and his other sons around him, making ploughs for the farmers, bowls and kneading-troughs for the matrons, spears and arrows for the hunters. But on the afternoon of the sixth day the finished implements are sent home, and the scene of industry is swept and garnished. The saw and the hammer are hung from the rafters, and, fragrant with cedar-dust and chips of pine, the shop is left to silence and solitude, whilst, released from his toils, the weary artizan enters his cottage to light the Sabbath-lamp, and then ascends the brow of the hill where stands the synagogue. To that same synagogue repairs the carpenter’s youthful kinswoman and affianced bride. Meek, single-hearted, devout, she listens reverently whilst the Law and the Prophets are read, and as the songs of Zion are chanted to David’s own tunes, her soul ascends on the wings of psalmody. That lily among thorns, that maid of Nazareth, and that toil-worn craftsman, Joseph the carpenter, are the descendants of the imperial Solomon, the representatives of the old Hebrew royalty.
4A EARLY INCIDENTS.
Five hundred years before this, a Hebrew prophet lay on the banks of a Babylonian river in an agony of patriotism and prayer, and the burden of each petition was the return of the captivity and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. At the close of the intercession a celestial courier appeared, and told him more than he had asked to know. Not only did he foretell the building of Jerusalem, but he announced matters far more momentous. He told the time of Christ’s coming, and how, “after seventy weeks,” reconciliation should be made for iniquity, and an everlasting righteousness should be brought in. causing sacrifice and oblation to cease.
And now that the period had arrived, and this great promise was about to be fulfilled, the same heavenly envoy was despatched to the scene of the evolving mystery. Desirous to look into these things, angels watched his flight. But it was on no lordly mansion that Gabriel descended. Not even in that Holy Land did Tiberias, with its shadowy bowers and rosy terraces, attract his feet; nor Cesarea, with its princely villas, laved by luxurious seas; nor Jerusalem, with its ancient palaces; and what seemed stranger still, not even David’s city, the favoured and predicted Bethlehem. But speeding straight towards this outlandish upland village, out of which no good thing had ever come, and which had never once been named in the whole Old Testament stor, he discharged his great commission, and announced to the meek and lowly virgin that of all Abraham’s daughters it was herself who was destined to be the mother of Messiah. She should have a son, Jesus by name, and “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
Tidings of great joy, when shut up in our feeble minds, grow terrible. The distinction which had come to Mary was one that had for ages lent a dignity and sacredness to the entire Hebrew sisterhood; and now that Mary found it concentered in herself, the realisation was overwhelming, and the promise which faith did not stagger to receive, it seemed as if reason must stumble to carry. There was no one in that Nazareth to whom she could impart the amazing announcement, and therefore it was a relief to remember that the angel had mentioned her own cousin Elizabeth as the subject of a like interposition; and far away as was the hill country of Judah, Mary made up her mind to the journey, and resolved to seek out her venerable relatives in their highland home.
A certain parity of years is usually essential to frank communion, and to the sympathy which springs from a thorough mutual understanding. But when the heart is sore troubled, we are apt to look a little upward. We want something superior to ourselves to which to cling — something older, wiser, or better. Had it been any ordinary news or any worldly project, it would have been natural to talk it over to some village companion. But an event so sacred and solemn — an event which had suddenly linked Mary’s humble history to the whole of human destiny, and which, if “highly favoured,” had also made her feel herself fearfully distinguished — such an event she had no heart to confide to any Nazarene neighbour. But in that distant parsonage there dwelt a godly pair — kind, considerate, strong in the sagacity of the single eye, and bright with the benevolence of an alluring piety. Perhaps Elizabeth might be able to throw some light on the angel’s message; at all events, Mary would find soothing and support in that calm and prayerful dwelling.
. How she journeyed we do not know; but as she neared the house of Zach arias, many thoughts would arise in her mind. Now would be decided whether what the angel had told about her cousin Elizabeth were true, or whether the whole were not a strange delusion — a wild waking vision. But how astonished they would be to see her! and how was she to explain her errand? As she neared the spot difficulties started up which she had not thought of in her impetuous outset, and the house of the Levite looked more formidable at the journey’s end than when viewed from the cottage in Nazareth. There was no one stirring out of doors, and no one noticed her approach. She ventured in, and so softly did she steal into the quiet chamber that its only occupant, a matron advanced in years, did not observe her entrance. “Cousin Elizabeth, all hail!” trembled from a gentle child-like voice, and instantly springing up and turning round, with a look such a 3 Mary had never seen in her kinswoman before — such a look of awe and ecstasy — the older exclaimed to the younger, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the Son thou shalt bear! And how is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Reassured by a salutation so akin to the antecedent miracle, the soul of Mary rushed forth in the rapid and tuneful inspiration of that “Magnificat” which is repeated in the audience of millions day by day: —
My soul doth mngnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour,
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:
For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things;
And holy is his name;
And his mercy is on them that fear him,
From generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm;
II- hath Mjuttcn/d the ipr<md in the imagination of their hearts.
: it put down the mighty from their seats,
And exalted them of low degree.
He hath 611cd the hungry with good things,
And the rich he hath Bent empty away.
He hath holpen his servant Israel,
In remembrance of his mercy;
As he spake to our fathers,
To Abraham,
And to his seed for evermore.”