King of nations He has always been, for He created them; in Him they
live and move and are. (Acts XVII. 2). He has been in His earth ever
since He created it, governing it, sustaining and preserving the life
which He gave, co-operating always with His creatures. We must not think
of Him as creating the world and then leaving it to do the best it could
till the time came for Him to be incarnate. That is a false idea. His
delights were _always_ to be with the children of men and though the
Orient did not begin to dawn till the time of the Incarnation, the Light
had been in the world all along; the Sun of Justice had existed from all
eternity. "He was in the world and the world was made by Him and the
world knew Him not." (St. John I. 10). But though it knew Him not, the
world had enough light to desire Him. Ever since God at the time of
man's fall had made His great promise concerning the Woman and her Seed,
He that was to come had been to the nations "their desired One." That
promise had been carefully cherished, handed on from father to son till
Moses came and recorded it in the book of Genesis; and though of
necessity one nation had to be selected to which the Woman and her Seed
were to belong, yet the promise was given to all nations and all claimed
their share in it. The chosen _nation_ through whom all the others were
to be blessed was Abraham's. Through him and his seed the great promise
was to be fulfilled (Gen. XII. 3). The _time_ was hinted at in the
patriarch Jacob's blessing to Juda: "The sceptre shall not be taken away
from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till He come that is to be sent
and He shall be the expectation of nations" (Gen. XLIX. 10). The house
or _family_ which was to have the joy of realizing the promise was
David's; the _place_ where the Woman was to bring forth her Seed was
Bethlehem. Here "she that travaileth shall bring forth" and here "shall
He come ... that is to be the Ruler in Israel" (Mich. V. 2-3). Each
subsequent prophecy or promise developed and enlarged the original one
given in Eden, but in that one the nations had all that they needed upon
which to build up their hopes and nourish their desires--the Woman and
her Seed, the "Child with His Mother"--and though the promise _belonged_
to the chosen nation (Rom. IX. 4), the first great promise had been
handed down through the other nations and they knew enough to make them
_desire_, enough to find the Light if they sought it as did the Wise
Kings of the East.
O King of nations, as I look back through the ages and see the Child and
His Mother so clearly set forth in promise and prophecy, in type and
example, when I think of Thy plans for the redemption of the world, made
from all eternity and gradually unfolding as the fulness of time
approached, when I think of the nations all desiring Thy coming, when I
think of the intense desire of Thy loving Heart, there is one thing that
seems to jar and to be out of harmony with the rest, and that is the
lamentable want of desire in my own heart! The time is very short now,
the Child with His Mother are already on the way to Bethlehem. Oh! Let
me multiply my Acts of Desire that my little King when He comes may be
indeed _my_ "desired One" too. "I sat down under His shadow, Whom I
desired." (Cant. II. 3).