logs for house-building; and presently the axe-head flies from the handle and sinks in the stream. Moved by his son's lamentations, Eliseus seizes a log and casts it in and lo! down it sinks to the bottom, while the metal rises to the surface and is restored. Brethren, such metal is human nature, prone of itself, as the sixty-eighth Psalm says, to stick fast in the mire of the deep, unable to do anything of itself, and able to construct a mansion for itself in heaven only when wielded by the Son of God. And in the words of the same Psalm, it cried: " Father, draw me out of the mire that I may not stick fast." And into the muddy stream of this world the Father cast the Saviour — the Wood of the root of Jesse — and lo! the original condition of human nature was restored. Thus it was and for this reason that the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. What thoughts arise as we kneel before the humble little crib! What questions! First is wonder; here is that new thing which Jeremias promised God would effect upon the earth, in that a woman should compass a man. With every faculty of his soul fully developed, a man is born, the most venerable of men; and born for the second time. When Christ spoke to him of Baptism, Nicodemus exclaimed: "Born again! How am I, an old man, to return to the womb of my mother and be born again? " But here is impossibility become a fact. And not a new thing only, but a new man, such as the world hitherto has never known; a mere man apparently, but evidently possessing a divine nature; a divine person and still
