‘That Babe has placed His royal will upon a thousand million hearts – His hands have waved a world into a new and a more tender way of life.’ Photo: Detail from Adoration of the Magi, by Hieronymus Bosch (c1510)
‘Gold, frankincense, and myrrh’: AD Belden, from the 23 December issue, 1921
‘The incarnation of God is perfected in the Atonement.’
Gold for Kingliness! It was a king the wise men sought and it was a King they found. That Babe has placed His royal will upon a thousand million hearts – His hands have waved a world into a new and a more tender way of life – He has brought new hope to Motherhood, and a new nobility to Fatherhood, whilst He has opened the Gate of Mercy to Childhood. It was, indeed, the King of Humanity they found, destined to hold His throne not by the fear of men, but by their love; not by their bondage, but by their freedom; not by the brittle power of the sword, but by the magnetic might of the Cross; not by the accidental claim of heredity, but by the inherent worth of peerless character. Moreover they found the King whose ‘kingdom hath no frontiers’. Because it is not of this world it is for all the world and for every world. Jesus is the great ‘point of rest’ in human history. Other kings come and go, are crowned and deposed; but this King is ‘the stone which the builders rejected,’ but Who ‘is become the head of the corner,’ never more to be moved, ‘the same yesterday, today and for ever’. He holds His court in every human heart for homage or for judgment, and no living soul can now escape the challenge of His sceptre, the inevitable question, ‘Wilt thou have this man to reign over you?’ Gold was indeed a fitting gift! In Richter’s famous words we may say, ‘He is the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy; with His pierced hands He has lifted empires off their hinges, turned the course of the centuries, and still governs the ages.’
