December _Month of the Incarnation_ The earth has gone back to the beginning. Her secrets are locked up. The year’s tale is told. She lies at the end of the months as she lay at the beginning—still and frozen, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of frost and snow. The beginning and the ending are the same. There seems to be neither growth nor change nor life in the iron-hard soil, powdered here and there with snow, in the bare hedges and the barren woods, in the ponds that are black under their bondage of ice. Even the sun in the heavens stands still at his winter solstice. The glory and bravery of summer are almost unimaginable—it is hard to remember the changes of the months—the kindling gleam of February, the brightness of the April garden, the whiteness of the May-day hedgerow, the calm, star-lit seas of August, the fruitful golden trees of September. All have ended as they began in this darkness and stillness. The year’s tale is told, and the beginning and the ending are the same. * * * * * The months end as they began—with the Child. In December we meet the Child again, the Child of January, the Child who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord. In this Child the Christian faith begins and ends. All the doctrines of Councils, all the learning of doctors, all the disputations of scholars, all the splendour of creeds, have their beginning and ending in the Child born of the Virgin Mary. The Christian Gospel is simply the Gospel of the Incarnation—of the New Life born of a Virgin into the world, redeeming man from his bondage to the Law which was added because of transgressions—making him a citizen of a new and heavenly kingdom and a partaker of a new and heavenly nature—redeeming through him the rest of creation, of which he was first appointed a mediator, so that there shall be in eternity not only a new heaven but a new earth—an earth set free from the bondage of sin that held her in time, her processes redeemed for mercy, her creatures redeemed for joy. It is this and nothing less than this that the New Life comes to accomplish—the first life having been corrupted by the enemy, and mankind having failed to fulfil his appointed purpose of restorer and healer. By virtue of the Incarnation of the Son of God, there is now a new power working in the world towards its at-onement with its maker. The Divine Humanity of our Lord, both superseding and containing ours, has already fulfilled the purposes of God for us, and through it we have union with God and are accounted his obedient sons, with power to co-operate in his eternal work.