This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ... 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 mansion but a village barn, not in a silklined cradle but a straw-lined crib. He shall not be known by any earthly badge of glittering gems, shall bear no ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ... 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 mansion but a village barn, not in a silklined cradle but a straw-lined crib. He shall not be known by any earthly badge 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 a child is born"; and the celestial choir make majestic melody over the astounding revelation of God's good will to man. Perplexed mortals find intellectual difficulties in the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, but wondering angels stand in rapturous adoration before the astounding fact of his humanity. Paganism is full of apotheoses, of mortals exalted to deified positions. Christianity alone reveals the One Eternal God humbling himself to take the ...
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