Verse 4
Let us consider wherein consisted the preparation of the fulness of the time preceding the birth of Christ for a new turn in the history of the world and wherein consisted the special peculiarity of the coming of Christ which made it the germ of what there was to be in the ages following, and further see how this is really true of ourselves and of our own age.
I. There was a general sickness, so to speak, in the condition of the civilised world at that time. Look at the Roman empire. The most tremendous civil wars that ever were fought had just ended, leaving all their scars and sores behind. "If ever we were to judge of God's moral judgment," says a great Roman historian, "exclusively from the varying fortunes of good and bad men, there are few instances of successful wickedness which would more disturb our faith than that of the long and peaceful reign of Augustus Caesar, whose word rules the earth." Look, again, at the dying and worn-out condition of the old pagan religion. Or look at the Jewish nation, with its sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, the religion of Moses and Isaiah falling away into a discussion of the most minute ceremonial of dress and food and posture, a fierce fanaticism taking possession of the whole people. It was in some respects the darkest period of the Gentile-Jewish world, the dullness before the dawn. "God sent forth His Son." He was a Teacher unlike the generation from which He sprang, yet specially suited to the needs of the generation. "I dreamt a dream," says one of the most gifted writers of the last century, the famous Rousseau. "I saw the temples and altars of the ancient world in all their splendour. I looked, and they had vanished, and in their place I saw standing a young Teacher, full of grace and truth. He had not attacked them; He had not destroyed them; but by His own intrinsic excellence and majesty He had superseded them, and there was no one to dispute His right." This is the true description of the aspect of Jesus Christ towards the darker side of the old world. And what was His aspect towards the brighter side? Almost everything there was of good in it took courage, was revived and assimilated and strengthened by Him. The long-unexampled peace under Augustus Caesar, the organic unity of the civilised world under his sceptre, gave a framework into which the Gospel could fit and spread without hindrance or violence.
II. Such a fulness of time, such a craving of the empty human heart, such a providential preparation, as occurred on the first birthday of Christianity cannot be re-enacted, but in each successive age and in each individual there is in a certain sense a return of the fulness and a reproduction of the coming. In each successive age, even in this age of our own, there is something like it. In every age the glad tidings of great joy is but the moral element of human nature as the true representative and vehicle of Divinity. Where this is to be found in any degree, there in some degree is the manifestation of the Godhead and a child of God. Where it is not found, whatever else there may be, there the supreme Divinity is not. Where it is found in the highest degree, there is God incarnate; there is the true Son of the universal Father.
A. P. Stanley, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 851.
Reference: Galatians 4:4-6 . G. Hester, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 11.
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