SECTION III.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. — THE PARENTS OF HIS FORERUNNER. THE ANNUNCIATIONS. THE UNBELIEVING PRIEST IN THE TEMPLE, AND THE HEROIC FAITH OF THE VIRGIN AT NAZARETH. THE HYMNS OF PRAISE.

(Luke. i. 5-80.)

The beginning of the history of the personal life of Jesus conducts us to the temple at Jerusalem. It was in the temple that the first word of the near approach of Christ was spoken. The announcement was given by the angel Gabriel to a priest. Thereafter the same angel brings tidings of the approaching birth to a virgin in Nazareth, whom God had destined to be His mother.

The priest is Zacharias, who lives with his wife Elisabeth, of the daughters of Aaron, in the hill country of Judea. They have grown old, without having enjoyed the coveted blessing of children. Zacharias belongs to the priestly order of Abia, which, according to the appointed course, at this time executes the priest's office in the temple. By lot he has been selected to burn incense, which leads him into the temple. Here the angel appears to him, and imparts the heavenly message.

The virgin who receives the second message is Mary, the betrothed of Joseph, of the house of David, in Nazareth.

It is remarkable, however, how strongly the history of the first message contrasts with the second.

Zacharias is an aged priest, who, with his wife Elisabeth, has walked in all the commandments and ordinances (means of justification, δικαιώμασι) of the Lord, blameless. He is occupied in the sanctuary, in the holiest function — the offering of the incense, praying, and fulfilling the symbol of the prayers of Israel. Here the angel appears to him. As a propitious sign, he places himself on the right side of the altar, and announces the tidings, that his prayer for a son has been at length heard, and that this son should be the forerunner of the Messiah. But Zacharias is struck with fear and troubled at the appearance. At first he cannot believe the message, because he and his wife are advanced in years; and he asks for a sign, by which he may know its truth. As a chastisement for his unbelief, the angel informs him that he should be dumb until the day that these things were accomplished. Thus the priest returns from the temple under a penalty of dumbness. He is unable to declare to the people the glad tidings of the nearness of the Messiah, but must carry them in silence back with him to his mountains. These are already indications that the temple-service approaches its end.

How entirely different is it with the history of the second message! It is imparted, not to a priest, but to a young Jewess — not in the temple, but at Nazareth in Galilee — not during the burning of incense on the altar, but in the simple dwelling of the virgin. But Mary receives the heavenly message with an heroic faith. She sees the angelic appearance with a more defined distinctness than Zacharias: it is as if a traveller by the way had turned in to visit her.¹ And yet she is not afraid, like the priest.

The one received the smaller promise, that his wife, the aged Elisabeth, should bear him a son, the forerunner of the Messiah, and doubted: Mary listened to the most unheard-of announcement, that she should bear the Messiah — bear Him as virgin, and was prompt to believe. The priest has to return with the heavenly message dumb to his home; and only after the son is born, or rather only at his circumcision, does he recover speech again, to sing the hymn of praise: Mary is at once moved with heavenly joy, and proclaims her blessedness in a song of thanksgiving.

This is the contrast between the Old and New Covenants. It also belongs to the contrast, that Elisabeth, after her conception, hid herself five months, according to Old Testament custom; whilst Mary, in the freedom of the New Testament spirit, hastens away over the mountains to visit her friend, after she has received the heavenly message, and its fulfilment is already in progress. In the opposite demeanour of the two mothers, there appears a reflection of the future mode of life which distinguishes the sons: John, who withdraws into the desert; and the Lord, who goes about doing good unto all.

Notwithstanding this inequality, in which the high dignity of the New Covenant in comparison with the Old, the decisive advance by which Christianity transcends Judaism significantly announces itself, we still find the closest connection, relationship, and harmony between the two. The same angel brings the first message and also the second, and in the second makes reference to the first. It is one grand operation of divine sovereignty which calls into being the two great messengers of the coming kingdom almost at the same time. They have both, according to the announcement of the angel, a close affinity to each other: the one born in the old age of the priestly couple, and filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb; the other the miraculous offspring of the Virgin, conceived and born through the overshadowing power and operation of the Holy Ghost: the one a prophet, great in the sight of the Lord — a Nazarite, who drinks neither wine nor strong drink — the forerunner of the Messiah, who goes before Him in the power of Elias, and turns many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just2 to make ready a people prepared for the Lord: the other the Son of the Highest — the King, to whom the Lord God giveth the throne of His father David, who shall rule over the house of Jacob for ever, and of whose kingdom there shall be no end. The two mothers salute each other, as sister-companions in the same faith, and in the same destinies. The one is aged and unfruitful, but she shall still bear the greatest hero of the old theocracy; the other is a virgin, who has never known man, and as such is appointed to be the mother of the Mediator of the New Covenant and Saviour of the world. The one is already far advanced in pregnancy, and the babe leaps in her womb whilst she salutes the future mother of the Lord; the other has scarcely received the promise, and yet she has attained to a blessed assurance that she shall bring forth — bring forth a Son — the Saviour of the world.

Mary's hymn of praise was occasioned by the salutation of Elisabeth: 'Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.' Mary's answer is in a song of thanksgiving: 'My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on them that fear Him, from generation to generation. He hath showed strength with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath holpen His servant Israel — in remembrance of His mercy — as He spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to His seed for ever.'

Thus sang Mary the virgin, who with the promise of the Lord in her heart had sped to the hill country to visit Elisabeth, when she heard the salutation of her friend, and in it a confirmation of her own faith. Her heroic faith, her pilgrimage to the hill country, and her song of praise, in which she is presented to us as the queen of the poor, the lowly, and the wretched, a monument of divine condescension and grace, proclaim her as the courageous heroine of faith, who shall give birth to the Founder of the New Covenant. She is filled with a lofty assurance of the glorious future, and speaks in spiritual vision as if it were already come and accomplished; for the incarnation of the Son of God, the decisive event on which that future depends, has already taken its commencement. Mary was at this time always filled with the Holy Ghost; Zacharias, on the contrary, only first when he wrote the name of his son John on a tablet, and regained the use of speech. On that occasion he burst forth in the words:

'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us — an altar of refuge for the oppressed, whose corners, or horns, they have to lay hold of in order to be delivered — in the house of His servant David; as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began — from the beginning of the æon — namely, deliverance from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to show mercy on our fathers, and (so) to remember His holy convenant, the oath which He sware to our father Abraham, that He would grant unto us — his children — that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life. And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto His people, by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us — a morning sun from heaven hath saluted us — to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the night-shadow³ of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.'

In the song of Mary there breathes the anticipation of those future times, in their living germ, already within her womb, when all generations shall call her blessed, when God shall scatter the proud, and put down the mighty from their seats, and send the rich empty away, whilst showing mercy on them that fear Him, raising on high the lowly, and filling the hungry with good things. No doubt, she thinks, in the first instance, of spiritual relations when she proclaims the humiliation of the proud and the exaltation of the humble; but these relationships appear to her nevertheless as the foundation of a new world in correspondence with them. Yet Mary does not confound the new announcements of salvation with novelties. She sees in them only the fulfilment of the ancient promises made to Abraham and to his seed. The key-note of her song, however, belongs to the New Testament in its divine and human elements, and only turns backwards to the Old Testament in its Christian promises. On the other hand, the song of Zacharias is, in the best sense of the term, priestly, and has its starting point in Old Testament conceptions. Salvation appears to him as salvation for the people of Israel. _ It presents itself to his mind under the figure of an altar of salvation, which, however, does not stand in the temple, but in the house and city of David. It reflects the old prophetic promises, and is based on the covenant oath made to Abraham. Its result, in a negative point of view, is the salvation and deliverance of Israel; and positively, the establishment of a people to serve God in holiness and righteousness as a holy priesthood. The last-mentioned features show clearly how much all these Israelitish hopes of Zacharias are to be considered as the symbolic expression of anticipations which possess a spiritual character. Hence it is, that towards the close of his song of praise, he passes over from the Old Testament to the New Testament point of view, whilst, on the contrary, Mary returns from the New Testament hopes back to the Old Testament promises.

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