THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

II-HIS CIRCUMCISION AND NAME.

LUKE ii. 21.

"And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of "the child, His name was called JESUS, which was so named of the Angel before He was conceived in the womb."

HAVING recently commemorated the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Church this Day* commemorates the next event in order of His Life, namely, His CIRCUMCISION, observed on this day because the eighth inclusive from His Birth; which event should therefore form the subject of our present meditation, and not that commonly substituted for it—the accidental circumstance of the commencement on the same day of another year. I say accidental-because had the eighth day from the Nativity fallen on the last of the year just closed, or on the second or any other day of this month, that

* January 1st.

would have been the day prescribed to be observed: the Church taking no notice of 'New-Year's-day' as such, because it is the Civil year which it begins; while the Ecclesiastical or Christian Year (marked by the Church's Holy Seasons and Festivals) has begun some time before-dating from the commencement of the Season of Advent and ending with the commemoration of 'All-Saints;' as you will see by referring to 'The Order of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels throughout the year' in the PrayerBook, at the head of which is "The First Sunday in Advent.'

Not that I would be understood to say that the national and joyful celebration of a Day of so universal interest as the First of a New Year should be deemed unsuitable, still less objectionable: but it becomes so when made to supersede the appointment of the church and the observance of a sacred Festival commemorative of an event so much more important to all, being (as we shall see) the commencement of that work on which are built our hopes of eternal life when time with all its distinctions shall have passed away. And much it were to be wished that these Festivals and Holy Seasons were universally observed according to the truly Catholic appointment of our Church; not only as affording an additional means of cherishing a spirit of piety among our people, but

in the most effectual way instructing them in the great facts of the history of our Redemption, which in their revolution they embrace.

To proceed, then, to the subject of the Day-the event recorded in the Text, we shall inquire, first, into the import of the Ordinance here submitted to by the Saviour Christ; Secondly, into the end for which He submitted to it; after which we shall see the importance of this fact to ourselves.

I. First, The rite of circumcision was the outward act by which, in the Jewish Dispensation, a person was brought under the Law, and obtained an interest in those promises and blessings which, according to the covenant made with Israel, depended on obedience to it.

This is evident from the circumcision of children being made the stipulation of their being numbered among the people (Gen. xvii. 14 &c.); and also from its being the form of admitting "strangers" to communion with them, as we learn from Exod. xii. 48, 49:-" And when a stranger shall sojourn with

thee, and will keep the passover to the Lord, let al? "his males be circumcised, and then let him come 66 near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is "born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall 66 eat thereof. One law shall be to him that is home

"born, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among "you." Whence also it implied the obligation to obey the whole Law; as stated by the Apostle, Gal. v. 3, For I testify again to every man that is "circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole "law;" and again Rom. ii. 25,-"For circumcision "verily profiteth if thou keep the law: but if thou "be a breaker of the law thy circumcision is made "uncircumcision."

2. But while it thus declared the obligation to obedience perfect and uncompromised, it is very remarkable that it taught equally clearly that man after the flesh, man natural, is utterly incapable of this righteousness: and more-that, in consequence of its innate depravity, by reason of that 'Original or Birth-Sin which is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam,'-the mortification of the flesh, or, (in the words of the Apostle, Col. ii. 11, referring to this ordinance) "the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh," or "the sinful body of the flesh," is indispensable in order to man's entering into covenant with God, or being conformed to His Will.

Here then was the state of man under the Law, as signified by this initiatory rite:-under an obligation to keep the whole, and yet carrying about with him

the witness to his incapacity to perform it-the sign and token of the corruption of his nature, and so the sentence of its death and of the curse which it deserves according to the declaration "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written "in the book of the Law to do them."

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II. We pass now, in the second place, to the end for which the Ordinance was submitted to by Christ.

1. By His circumcision Christ was, as Son of Man, in common with every other circumcised person, "made under the law;" as it is written in Gal. iv. 4

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"when the fulness of the time was come, God sent "forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the "Law:" that is, "made of a woman at His birth, and “made under the Law" by His circumcision :and, consequently, bound by the obligation to entire obedience, which, we have seen, this rite implied. In which act also, in a very principal part, consisted His humiliation; as we read again in Phil. ii. 7— "He made himself of no reputation, taking upon Him "the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of "men" (Gr.):-His Birth, "being found in fashion as a man," one step (and a deep one) in condescension; His circumcision another, by which He completely identified Himself with man in his position of

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