r word in our text that may well be here taken into
consideration. 'For your sakes,' says the Apostle to that Corinthian
church, made up of people, not one of whom had ever seen or been seen by
Jesus. And yet the regard to them was part of the motive that moved the
Lord to His life, and His death. That is to say, to generalise the
thought, this grace, thus stooping and forgiving and self-imparting, is
a love that gathers into its embrace and to its heart all mankind; and
is universal because it is individualising. Just as each planet in the
heavens, and each tiny plant upon the earth, are embraced by, and
separately receive, the benediction of that all-encompassing arch of the
heaven, so that grace enfolds all, because it takes account of each.
Whilst it is love for a sinful world, every soul of us may say: 'He
loved me, and'--therefore--'gave Himself for me.' Unless we see beneath
the sweet story of the earthly life this deep-lying source of it all, we
fail to understand that life itself. We may bring criticism to bear upon
it; we may apprehend it in diverse affecting, elevating, educating
aspects; but, oh! brethren, we miss the blazing centre of the light, the
warm heart of the fire, unless we see pulsating through all the
individual facts of the life this one, all-shaping, all-vitalising
motive; the grace--the stooping, the pardoning, the self-communicating,
the individualising, and the universal love of Jesus Christ.

So then, we have here set before us the work of Christ in its--

II. Most mysterious and unique self-impoverishment.

'He was . . . He became,' there is one strange contrast. 'He was _rich_
. . . He became _poor_,' there is another. 'He was . . . He became.' What
does that say? Well, it says that if you want to understand Bethlehem,
you must go back to a time before Bethlehem. The meaning of Christ's
birth is only understood when we turn to that Evangelist who does not
narrate it. For the meaning of it is here; 'the Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us.' The surface of the fact is the smallest part of the
fact. They say that there is seven times as much of an iceberg under
water as there is above the surface. And the deepest and most important
fact about the nativity of our Lord is that it was not only the birth of
an Infant, but the Incarnation of the Word. 'He was . . . He became.' We
have to travel back and recognise that that life did not begin in the
manger. We have to travel back and recognise