For His salvation is nigh them that fear Him: That glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth are met together: Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall flourish out of the earth: And righteousness hath looked down from heaven. In such prophetic visions as these, as well as in the Psalms that speak of the glories of the Messianic King, the Christian conscience has {51} rightly recognised definite predictions of the coming of Christ, of Him Who was both "the effulgence of God's glory" (Heb. i. 3) and also, by His human birth, the Son of David and King of Israel, and Who manifested the holiness of God in human flesh and blood. He Himself, when He came, selected from the Psalms one striking phrase, in which both ideas, the Divine glory and the human calling, are combined. For He quotes, as a witness to Himself and as a corrective of imperfect views, the 110th Psalm (again a proper Psalm for Christmas Day), where the Messianic King is spoken of both as Ruler and Victor and Priest of humanity, and as standing also in a unique relationship to God, which exalts Him far above any mere earthly connection with David: The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit thou on My right hand-- If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son? (Matt. xxii. 45.) But besides all these prophecies, which look onward to the great outcome of Israel's history, there is another and wider sense, as the Christian Fathers apprehended, in which the whole Psalter is the book of the {52} Incarnation and speaks of Christ. "David," says S. Jerome, "on his harp and ten-stringed lute, sings throughout of Christ, and brings Him up from the dead." However fanciful and over-subtle the early Christian commentators may seem to us in their working out of this idea, they had grasped a profound truth. When we once recognise that Christ, knowing Who He was and why He came into the world (_cf._ John xiii. 1), must in the Jewish services or in private prayers have recited the Psalms with a perfect intention, and found in them the true expression of Himself, with regard both to the eternal Father and to His brethren, we are compelled to admit the possibility of each verse of the Psalms having some bearing on the Incarnation. It is a conclusion which might at first sight seem extravagant; but it forces itself upon us as we realise the true humanity of the Saviour. He is "the Son of Man"; He took of the substance of His Virgin-mother the fulness of human nature; He has a human body, a human soul, a human spirit; He is "the second Adam," the great Head of our race, Who, in the striking phrase of S. Irenaeus, has "summed up" (_recapitulavit_) all humanity and all the long history of man. "For verily, not of angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the {53} seed of Abraham" (Heb. ii. 16). He has gathered into Himself all truly human experience, the hopes of humanity, and its sufferings; its infinite