is startled at the whisper of this word, and the sceptic And, to the Christian, "how sweet the name of Jesus Now for the spiritual truth behind the fact of the circumcision. Before it occurred for the infant Christ, before the outward conformity to law and the official act, there was an angel that foresaw the rite, and even pronounced the name that was to be given. "His name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before He was conceived in the womb." Back of this fact, then, stands an angel or a spirit. Behind every religious rite and every sacrament there is a spiritual truth. Indeed, it is only by some objective form that any truth can be really known, just as any force in nature is unknown until centered in some object. Those who see nothing spiritual in Baptism, or in the Holy Communion, miss the whole method, even in a scientific way, of communicating truth. There must be a real spiritual presence in the Communion, for ex 1 ample, unless one is content with the mere bread and wine apart from the Spiritual life immanent in all nature, and immanent in a local, special way in the bread and wine, because Christ so ordained it. Those who deny any spiritual meaning to Baptism make the same mistake. They fail to appreciate the necessity of a spirit behind every accepted form, as well as a form to clothe and make manifest every spirit. Behind many an outward name of things there is an "angel," discerned only by those who see something besides the material in matter. There is a spiritual side, then, to the rite of circumcision, and no one has more aptly illustrated this than St. Paul. He had much to say in several ways about circumcision. He contended against the compulsory retention of the form as a part of the Christian institutions, believing rightly that Baptism had taken its place. Yet in the spirit of Christian accommodation he urged Timothy to be circumcised in order to win the Jews, but forbade, in the spirit of Christian liberty, the forcing of this rite upon Titus, declaring that "in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love." This was the angel or spirit that St. Paul saw back of the rite itself declared in the words, "Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit." This is the meaning of to-day's epistle, showing how, as in the life of Abraham, it is faith behind the work or the act, or the rite, that justifies a man and makes him worthy. The spiritual meaning of the fact is the cutting off that which is bad, bad for the body and bad for the soul, as it is put in this day's Collect, "that our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts." Circumcision, however, means something quicker than mortification. Drummond would apply here the word, "suicide." It may be necessary to lose a part of the body to save the remainder. Some sins must be dealt with summarily, cut off, circumcised, killed. This is what Jesus meant when He said, in reference to the scrt of sin mentioned in the Collect, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." This is the spiritual surgery necessary to save the life itself. The lessons of the circumcision come appropriately at the opening of the new year. Now is the time to cut away from the life all that is bad; every sin of the flesh and every sin of the heart, every bad habit, every wrong motive. Cut them off. Each new year is the time for casting off old evils, and letting go former sins. As Baptism supersedes Circumcision, so all baptized into the name of Jesus, following the argument of the apostle Paul, will say to-day: "We are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." THE EPIPHANY. THE MANIFEST GOD. TEXT: And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, His Mother, and fell down and wor.. shipped Him.-St. Matt. II, 11. By the REV. D. S. PHILLIPS, S. T. D., Rector of St. Paul's Church, Kankakee, Ill. T is plain that these wise men, ignorant though they were of the real nature of this young child, saw in Him something divine. They worshipped Him. How much was implied in that act of adoration we cannot say; but it was evidently an expression-and the first expression of a reverential feeling which millions of souls in the ages since have experienced towards Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh. The Ephiphany signifies, as all well-taught Churchmen know, a "shining forth," a manifestation. The season which it begins reiterates in many a form the great central truth of the incarnation. It shows us how this divine Being, trammeled and limited by a human body, manifested so far as possible the infinite God to finite man. The Epiphany continues the teaching of Christmas, detailing methods of the divine disclosing. A little reflection will tell us how necessary was some form of disclosure; and how far above all others was this of the incarnation which God was pleased to adopt. In the essence of His being the Godhead is a Spirit, in visible, inaccessible to human senses, incomprehensible to human reason. Therefore if God is to be known to man He must in some way reveal Himself. He must come to our apprehensions by a method sufficiently effective to give us right and clear ideas of Him. How shall He do this? An angel might have been sent, or a Prophet inspired. These might have described God, as your friend tells you of some stranger, but how inadequate such a revelation! How poor and weak compared with that of God manifesting Himself in human form, actually dwelling here upon earth in tangible shape and living out before the eyes of men the sublime life of God. What is the poor revelation of language to such an object-lesson as this? There are those who tell us that nature reveals to us all we can know of God. A house tells us something of the builder; a painting of the artist; but how little after all! The works of God reveal power and wisdom, law and order, majesty and infinity. But what does nature tell us of a Father's love and forgiveness? The profoundest need of man is to know whether God pardons sin, and takes back to His heart the erring child that has strayed into the far country of the wretched prodigal. There is nothing in nature to give hope to the transgressor of law. Study nature as you will and it speaks only of force and law. Obey its laws and its force will serve you; disobey its laws and its force will crush you. The man who walks obeys the law of gravitation and it sustains him; the innocently mistaken child steps over the edge of a precipice and gravity dashes him to death on the rocks below. No appeal from law to love! No mercy to annul or counteract! Transgression is destruction! So nature sternly teaches through all her vast ag |