At every advancing footstep, Truth is still opposed with sword and spear.—Science and Health, p.134
IT would be well if in the sweet Christmas time we might hear no tones that clash with the song of peace on earth, but they who have read on beyond the Bethlehem story will remember that when the little child was nestled in the arms of the aged Simeon, he blessed him and said unto Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against." Blended with the echoes of that first Christmas chorus was this prophetic forenote of the turmoil and strife which has obtained in human history and human hearts during all the succeeding centuries. Christ Jesus came, indeed, to bring peace, but not the peace of contentment or compromise with unideality. His is the peace of spiritual sovereignty and of that alone, and until this is attained, his way. though "a blessed and brightening path," is a way of struggle and of warfare.
Jewish thought was saturated with the expectation of a Messianic dominion. They had looked forward to their entrance into all the satisfactions of national supremacy, the glory of a ruling power, and nothing could have been more foreign to their hopes than the declaration of Jesus that he came not to bring them peace, but a sword, a declaration which was first interpreted when the scribes and Pharisees "were filled with madness," as Luke declares, because Jesus had ignored their traditions in healing the sick on the Sabbath day, — a madness which increased until that hour when they cried, "Away with him," "Let him be crucified." Then in a wild tumult of cruelty and hatred the beetling surges of malice "hurled the bleeding body of Mary's Son upon the rocky ledge of Calvary," and Isaiah's prophetic words were fulfilled: "Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth."
