Who can ever lose out of his memory the roll and march of those magnificent words of prophecy, which, ever since we can remember, we have heard read in church on Christmas-day, and have been taught to regard as the grand and wonderful prediction of “the miracle of the Incarnation?” “The Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, until he shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.” We all know the orthodox interpretation. Immanuel is Jesus Christ, to be born of the Virgin Mary; the meaning of the name Immanuel, _God with us_, signifies the union of the divine nature and ours in Christ, God and man in one Person. “Butter and honey shall he eat”—the Christ shall be very man, he shall have a true human body, he shall be sustained, while he is growing up, with that ordinary nourishment wherewith human children are wont to be fed. And the sign that the promised birth of Immanuel, God and man in one Person, from the womb of a virgin, shall really happen, is this: the two kings of Syria and Israel who are now, in the eighth century before Christ, threatening the kingdom of Judah, shall be overthrown, and their country devastated. “_For_ before the child shall know”—before this promised coming of Jesus Christ, and as a sign to guarantee it, the kings of Syria and Israel shall be conquered and overthrown. And conquered and overthrown they presently were.