The age of that child made obedient unto the law, and in the shedding of blood first given his human name, is not more disproportionate to the age of the Law than is the age of the Kingdom of Heaven to the age of the earth. Millions and millions of years ago life first appeared—a small helpless thing, scarcely distinguishable from the inorganic mass, in constant danger of being stamped out by the mighty forces around it. Throughout long ages it developed so slowly that its growth would be almost imperceptible to the watchman of a thousand years ... and as it grew, it submitted itself to the Law. Terrific forces bound it, moulded it, complicated it, regulated it, evolved it. We see the domain of the Law stretching back from the circumcised Christ, far beyond the Priestly Code, far beyond the days of Moses on the Mount, back to the prehistoric ages of the world, when in some dim secret place of the sea there was a change, a miraculous birth. In the same way we see the dominion of Grace stretching forward from the child of that winter’s day, beyond his helpless infancy and suffering manhood, beyond his Cross, beyond his empty grave, beyond the Mount of his Ascension, on into the far future of the world, when having grown to manhood and shared his Cross, it is raised at last to share his throne. On the Feast of the Circumcision the old and the new kingdoms meet—the kingdom of Nature and the kingdom of Supernature, the kingdom of the Law and the kingdom of Grace. We do not understand why the greater submits to the less, why Grace is content to suffer under the Law, why the New King weeps and the Old King carries the sword. “I am not come to destroy but to fulfil.” ... Not only the Law of Moses, but the whole Old Testament of the world’s history—that which we call, understanding but in part, the Law of Nature. The supernatural life does not come to destroy the natural, but to fulfil it, not to supplant but to complete it. Grace fulfils the Law, and Spirit raises Matter to the right hand of God. On the Feast of the Circumcision the sacramental wonder has begun.