The Dual Aspect of Christ's Advent
Canon Liddon. Luke 2:34-35 And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel… St. Paul experienced, in his own person, the double effect of the advent of Christ into the world set forth in Simeon's language — first, the repulsion which made him so bitter a persecutor, and next the attraction which made him so glorious an apostle. And of this double experience was a second great example. There are many in our modern world who are thinking and speaking and living in opposition to the eternal Christ. It may be, as in the case of Paul, in the case of Augustine, in their earlier days they have, from whatever cause, taken a fright at religion; they have been repelled by some caricature of it, or some inconsistency on the part of its professors, or by taking only one aspect of its doctrines and claims into consideration; or by a sense of their present inability to comply with its demand upon the conscience and upon the heart; but it is a happiness to think that Christ is still there in the firmament of the heavens, in the midst of the Church, among the golden candlesticks, set not merely for the fall, but for the rising again of many a soul in Israel. It is to be hoped that brighter days await those wanderers, many of whom are most assuredly children of the kingdom who have lost their way, but will not lose it for ever. A nearer sight, a constraining sense of the Divine Redeemer's claims, will come when men see that He can, and does, give by His Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, to those who ask Him. When they take into account the works which He did of old, the words which He spake, the impression which He made when He was upon the earth; when they see the society which He founded, the creed which radiates from and centres in His person, and which is more widely accepted now, eighteen centuries after His death, than ever before, they may reconsider their prejudices: they may say less than they mean when they admit that there is something to be said for Christianity after all; they may rise from the tomb into which they had fallen-the tomb of doubt, the tomb of care, the tomb of evil living — into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Simeon blessed them, 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; WEB: and Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary, his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which is spoken against.