We are still in the midst of Christmas. The taking of our human nature by the Son of God, and the birth at Bethlehem through which His earthly life began, are the great facts which should still be ruling our hearts when we come before God to worship Him. But in the services of to-day another name is added to Christ's. We are bidden to give God thanks for St. John the Evangelist, the Apostle who wrote the last Gospel. He, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who leaned on Jesus's breast as they sat at that strange Passover feast the night before the Crucifixion—he is brought within the blaze of the divine glory. We are encouraged to strengthen and enlarge our thoughts of Christmas by mixing them with thoughts of that chosen disciple.

St. John has a double claim to be remembered at this season; for what he was to Christ, and for what he is to us. What he was to Christ I have already reminded you: what he is to us in the writings from his hand which we are blest in being able to read, we shall know better and better every year of our lives if we cherish any love for his Lord and ours. His book of Revelation, his Epistles, and most of all his Gospel, speak to us as though he were bodily present among us, and set before us in ever-growing and uprising light the Lord of glory whom we are perpetually forgetting.