And, then, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under a law, to redeem those who were under a law—­that is, all mankind.  The Jews were keeping, or pretending to keep, Moses’ law, and trying to please God by that.  The heathens were keeping all manner of old superstitious laws and customs about religion which their forefathers had handed down to them.  But heathens, and indeed Jews too, at that time, all agreed in one thing.  These laws and customs of theirs about religion all went upon the notion of their being God’s slaves, and not his children.  They thought that God did not love them; that they must buy His favours.  They thought religion meant a plan for making God love them.

Then appeared the love of God in Jesus Christ.  As at this very Christmas time, the Son of God, Jesus Christ the Lord, in whose likeness man was made at the beginning, was born into the world, to redeem us and all mankind.  He told them of their Heavenly Father; He preached to them the good news of the kingdom of God; that God had not forgotten them, did not hate them, would freely forgive them all that was past; and why?  Because He was their Father, and loved them, and loved them so that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for them.  And now God looks at us human beings, not as we are in ourselves, sinful and corrupt, but he looks at us in the light of Jesus Christ, who has taken our nature upon Him, and redeemed it, and raised it up again, so that God can look on it now without disgust, and henceforth no one need be ashamed of being a man; for to be a man is to be in the likeness of God.  Man was created in the image and likeness of God, and who is the image and likeness of God but Jesus Christ?  Therefore man was created at first in Jesus Christ, and now, as St. Paul says, he is created anew in Jesus Christ; and now to be a man is to partake of the same flesh and blood which the Lord Jesus Christ wore for us, when He was made very man of the substance of his mother, and that without spot of sin, to show that man need not be sinful, that man was meant by God to be holy and pure from sin, and that by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ we, every one of us, can become pure from sin.  This is the blessedness of Christmas-day.  That one man, at least, has been born into the world spotless and free from sin, that He might be the firstborn of many brethren.  This is the good news of Christmas-day.  That now, in Christ’s light, and for Christ’s sake, our Father looks on us as His sons, and not His slaves.

Therefore is every child who comes into the world baptized freely into the name of God.  Baptism is a sign and warrant that God loves that child; that God looks on it as His child, not for itself or its own sake, but because it belongs to Jesus Christ, who, by becoming a man, redeemed all mankind, and made them His property and His brothers.  Therefore every child, when it is brought to be baptized, promises,