SERMON VI.

INFANCY OF JESUS.

AND THE CHILD GREW, AND WAXED STRONG IN SPIRIT, FILLED WITH WISDOM; AND THE GRACE OF GOD WAS UPON HIM.

You will find those words, my children, in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the fortieth verse. They tell you how wise and how good Jesus Christ was when he was young, and how much he was beloved. They inform you that, as he grew older, he grew wiser, that is, that his soul grew as well as his body.

There is but little said in those histories of our Saviour, which we call the Gospels, of his infancy and early life. Only two of the Gospels say anything of that period. This is because the after part of his life was more important. But still the short accounts which we have of his birth and his tender years are quite interesting. I do not doubt that you have found them interesting, when you have

read them, or have heard them read; and very profitable too, when they have been explained to you by your parents or teachers.

You remember that Jesus was born in a town called Bethlehem. It is also the town where his forefather, King David, was born, and where he lived when he was a boy, and tended his father's flocks of sheep. Bethlehem is situated a few miles to the south of Jerusalem, and on the ridge or top of a hill, looking down on a deep and beautiful valley. In this valley, where young David used to watch the sheep of his father Jesse, there were shepherds "keeping watch over their flocks by night," when suddenly a glorious light shone round about them, and angels of heaven appeared to them, and sang an anthem of sweet music, and told them that the Saviour was born in Bethlehem.

Now I wish you to observe, my children, that the first persons who were told of the birth of the Saviour were not kings, or generals, or what are called great people, but shepherds, poor shepherds, who never thought or dreamed that angels would ever speak to them in this world, or that they would ever be

chosen to be the first visitors of the infant Redeemer. But God saw fit to choose them, and they were the most proper persons to be chosen for this purpose. They were humble; and God always loves the humble, and does not love the proud. They were peaceful. They were peacefully tending their peaceful flocks; and he whom they were chosen to visit was peaceful, and came to make the world peaceful, and was called the Prince of Peace. And the song which the angels sung in the sky that night was a song of peace, - peace on earth and good will toward men. How proper it was, then, that humble and peaceful shepherds should be first told of the birth of the infant Jesus, and should be the first to see him. You may be sure that now, also, God always prefers those who are humble and peaceful and good; and that he will tell them the best things; and that they will be the first to see Jesus Christ in heaven, just as the shepherds were the first to see him on earth.

When the angel told the shepherds to go and see the child Jesus, he gave them a sign by which they might know him. He told them that they would find the babe lying in a

manger, which is the place in a stable from which cattle eat their food. The shepherds might have supposed that Jesus was to be found in some rich chamber, lying in a soft bed; but the angel told them that he was in a very different place, in a manger. This was so strange, that the sign could not be mistaken. So they went in haste to the inn at Bethlehem ; and when they came to the part of the inn which was used as a stable, they found the child, just as the angels had said. his mother Mary, and Joseph, and manger, was the blessed child Jesus. So the shepherds were certain that this child was the Saviour; and though it must have seemed a poor place in which he was lying, yet they were so glad to have found him, that they "returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen."

There was there, in a

Now this is something else which I want you to think of, the place, I mean, where the infant Saviour was lying. It was a manger. When Joseph and Mary came to lodge at Bethlehem, there was no room for them in the best part of the inn; and therefore, as they were poor, and could not pay for any

better lodging, they were obliged to go to that part where the beasts of burden were kept; and there Jesus was born, and there his mother put him in a manger, which was the only cradle she could find for him. Not one of you was ever laid in so poor a cradle as this. But do you suppose that God loved Jesus the less, because he was lying on straw? No. Well, then, do you suppose that God loves any child. the less, whose parents may be poor, and who may be obliged to sleep in a mean cradle or bed, and wear coarse clothes instead of fine ones? It is not possible, is it, that God should think riches of any consequence, when he suffered his well-beloved Son, Jesus, to be born in poverty, and to be laid in a manger? The glory of the Lord shone as brightly round about the shepherds, and the angels of heaven sung as gladly and sweetly, as if Jesus had been lying on down and silk and gold, instead of on straw. Let the manger of the infant Jesus, then, as it was a sign to the shepherds, be a sign to you also. Let it be a sign to you that God loves poor children just as well as those who are not poor; and that God's angels watch over the mean cradles of poor children,