death, instead of life; corruption, instead of innocence; and already a confused clamour arose from this rebellious world. Then a voice was heard in the heavens; it was the voice of Him who leaves the ninety and nine sheep, to go after the poor lost one,-of Him who does not forsake the prodigal son but waits for him. It was an august and merciful voice, the same which had spoken to the void, and the void had answered; and this voice said, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." We would say with the prophet, "Hear, O ye heavens, and give silence, O earth"; and ye happy spirits who live with God, and have never left Him, be ye confounded. Ye have never seen a manifestation of love equal to this! Ye have witnessed the wonders of creative love; and in your radiant beauty and pure splendour ye are yourselves its most perfect work. Well, ye have seen nothing, nothing comparable with what ye are about to witness! This language, addressed to these poor and contemptible beings, is more than all that the universe has heard; it is more than the word which called forth the light and bade the first dawn arise; for it is the language of pardon. Here is not only a God who raises beings up towards Himself, but also one who humbles Himself towards fallen beings, and who does this simply because He wills to do so, and without in any wise affecting His perfect right to punish. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people."

If we are to accept a certain theology, the whole of redemption was effected on the day when the word of pardon was uttered. According to it, there is no necessity for anything serious and painful to be transacted between God and man. Pardon brings salvation to every man who accepts it, and revelation has no other end than to assure us of this pardon. The flowers at our feet, and the azure sky above our heads, proclaim it gloriously, and the cross can only repeat it with greater energy. Thus, reconciliation is merely a declaration of Divine love. Christianity does not present the consolation which it offers, under such smiling aspects; for the

human conscience could not believe in such a redemption. God's rights are inscribed in the conscience; it knows that there has been a frightful disturbance of the relations between the Creator and the creature. Sin rises up between it and God; and as long as sin remains, the way of access is not open. Of what use is it therefore to be pardoned, says the guilty man, if I cannot lay hold of the pardon? Rebellion has hollowed out an abyss between God and myself, and you cannot help me to cross it by flinging a few flowers into it; it must be filled up, and how can this be done except by an act of reparation? It is well if God is willing to return to man; but His merciful design cannot be realized if man himself does not return to Him, if he does not yield his heart to Him. Love implies reciprocation. God gives me His heart; but this will be useless if I do not give Him mine. You see then that consolation is freely, but not unconditionally, offered. It cannot be efficacious until the world which desires to be comforted has replied to the heaven which seeks to comfort, and until the formidable obstacle of sin has been removed; and this is the reason why God calls for a comforter.

Who then shall comfort this afflicted people? It cannot be one of their own children; for then we should say to him, "Comforter, comfort thyself. Physician, heal thyself. How canst thou remove the burden beneath which thou art bowed down?" The Divine call has resounded on earth in vain: no one, either sage or prophet, has come forward to answer it. It has resounded in heaven; but no happy spirit has accepted it. An angel could not understand us in our misfortune; a son of light knows nothing but the purest happiness; he could not represent our lost race; there would be no close and natural bond between us and him. God still cries, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." At length a voice answers, a voice issuing from the throne of glory, and this voice says, "I am ready to comfort Thy people." Do you object that He who speaks thus needs Himself to be comforted? But

He is the only and well-beloved Son, and before Him the heavens bow and worship. You cannot say that He is a stranger to the race He wishes to save; for it is made in His image, it enjoys a ray of His brightness in its soul; in Him it finds its perfection, for its ideal is not below but above; its destiny is not to descend, but to ascend. It was originally made to be closely united to Him. According to John's profound teaching, when He came amongst men, "he came unto his own." He alone could descend from so lofty to so low a station, and thus truly become the Son of man.

We ask you to observe that He had not to represent a race still pure and crowned with glory and honour like the angels: no, He had to represent a proscribed and unhappy race. He beheld it just as it was, without any illusion; from the height of His glory, He looked compassionately upon it in its distress and poverty. He had a burning desire to save it, precisely because it was degraded and unhappy. In His eyes this immense misfortune was an immense attraction. He wished to descend to the level of man, that He might raise him up to Himself, and thus renew the broken bond between man and God. When He said, "Here am I to comfort," it was as if He had said, "Here am I to serve, here am I to suffer, here am I to die!" He came, and He has borne our sorrows.

How feeble are all these illustrations, if we compare them with the bold expression of St. Paul, "he made himself of no reputation." We are more and more convinced that we must accept these words in their literal sense. The Son of God really stripped Himself of His glory in order to save us; though rich, He became poor. His poverty was not in appearance, He really gave up all that constitutes the splendour of Divinity. Do not let us believe that the God in Him remains the impassive

*The French rendering of the Greek words, éavròv ékévwoev, is il s'est anéanti, which means literally "he made himself nothing."

spectator of the humiliation of the man, and that the Divine nature hovers in regions eternally bright, while the human nature is given up to all kinds of reproaches. No such distinctions destroy the unity of the person; and the self-despoilment of Jesus Christ, thus understood, is nothing but a fiction. Of what did He strip Himself, if He thus retained all the glory of His Divinity? His humanity would in that case be nothing but an outer garment; and whether you cover it with mud or tear it, His real person is not touched. He lost nothing; but then what did He retain ? For our part, we firmly believe that by becoming man He, in so doing, limited His Divinity, He stripped Himself for a time of the infinity which had belonged to Him from all eternity, and also of His absolute self-existence, for otherwise He could neither have been born nor have died. Here is the whole mystery of the incarnation—a mystery than which there is not a greater, nor one so incapable of being explained. On the other hand, there is not one whose necessity is more clearly demonstrated to the reason of the Christian; for if the sorrows of man must be borne in order to his being saved, then the Eternal Word can only do this by quitting (sortir) the honours of the Divine life; in other words, by making Himself of no reputation. This despoiling of Himself does not in reality detract from His glory, seeing that it is a result of His will, and that to restrain one's power is still to use it. On the contrary, the more He despoils Himself, the more His glory increases, the more His love shines forth, the more resplendent is His moral royalty. But we must not deal in subtilties where the language of Scripture is clear and precise. In this Man who has "no form nor comeliness," in this Man who appeared on our condemned earth in the guise of a servant, let us recognise with St. Paul a God who hath humbled Himself, even the same who, according to the words of our text, hath borne our sorrows!

This is surely the Comforter we need! For

1. He is an afflicted Man, the most afflicted of all the human race, a Man of sorrows. If He wishes to sympathise, He has only to recall the past. We cannot take a single step in our gloomy path, without finding some traces of Him. We cannot light upon an affliction through which He has not passed before us. He knows what suffering is, from that which affects our bodies to that which withers our souls. O ye who lie on beds of sickness, tortured with cruel pain, He knows the nature of the physical suffering which reacts on your inner life through the delicate bonds connecting soul and body! O ye who eat the bread of charity, and are distressed by all the cares of penury, He knows what poverty is! The most indigent have at least had a cradle in which to be born, and a place where to lay their heads; the Son of man was reduced to envy the birds of heaven their nests, and the foxes their holes. O ye who have been overwhelmed with reproach, calumny, insult, and mockery, He knows what ignominy is; He knows it as you can never know it! O ye who bend and shudder over the open tomb, He knows what sorrow is, and His hot tears fell into the tomb where His friend was laid! O ye who mourn not only for a friend, but also for a friendship, ye from whom life, and not death, has taken a heart on which you leaned, ye who have been forsaken, ye who have seen your brother's hand raised against you, He knows what abandonment and betrayal are, He knows these things as you can never know them, -He who was sacrificed by a people whom He had loaded with His benefits, forsaken by His disciples, denied by one apostle, and sold by another! I defy you to point out a suffering which He has not known and traversed before you. He was made like unto you in all things, except sin. He knows what sorrow is, and this is why He can comfort. This is why those who weep of their own accord turn to Him of whom it is said, "Jesus wept." This is why He only can heal the bleeding wounds of the human heart. This is why His words are so gentle, so tender, so gracious; for the wounded spirit,