Many in humble, as well as in more coveted circumstances, are discontented with their position. They repine at their lot, and murmur against the Providence which has assigned it. This is not only wicked but absurd, since true happiness lies much less in changing our condition than in making the best of it, whatever it be. Besides, God says, “I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir;” and the estimate which He forms of us turns in no respect whatever on the place we fill. One artist paints a grand, another a common, or even a mean, subject; but we settle their comparative merits, praising this one and condemning that, not by the subjects they paint, but by the way they paint them. To borrow an illustration from the stage, (as Paul did from heathen games,) one player, tricked out in regal state, with robes, and crown, and sceptre, performs the part of a king, and another that only of a common soldier or country boor; yet the applause of the audience is not given to the parts the actors play, but to the way they play them. Even so, it is not the place that man fills, whether high or humble, but the way he fills it to which God has, and we should have, most regard.

Not that we would reduce the inequalities of society any more than those of the earth, with its varied features of swelling hill and lovely dale, to one dull, long, common level. Death, the great grim leveller, does that office both for cottagers and kings. Let it be left to the sexton’s spade. The mountains which give shelter to the valleys, and gather the rains that fill their rivers and fertilise their pastures, have important uses in nature, and so have the corresponding heights of rank and wealth and power in society. Setting our affections on things above, let us be content to wait for the honours and rest of heaven; let us seek to be good rather than great; to be rich in faith rather than in wealth; to stand high in God’s esteem rather than in man’s; saying, with Paul, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content;”—or singing with the boy in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” who, meanly clad, but with “a fresh and well-favoured countenance,” fed his father’s sheep,—

“Do you hear him?” said the guide. “I will dare to say that this boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of that herb called heart’s-ease in his bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet.”

Why should a man blush for his humble origin? The Saviour’s mother was a poor woman; and no head ever lay in a meaner cradle than the manger where Mary laid her first-born—the Son of the Most High God. Why should any be ashamed of honest poverty? Men of immortal names, the apostles, were called from the lowest ranks, and went forth to conquer and convert the world without a penny in their purse. Was not our Lord himself poor? He earned His bread, and ate it, with the sweat of His brow, while others lay luxuriously on down; He had often no other roof than the open sky, or warmer bed than the dewy ground; and never had else to entertain His guests than the coarsest and most common fare—barley-loaves and a few small fishes. Though rich in the wealth of Godhead, with the resources of heaven and of earth at His sovereign command, poverty attended His steps like His shadow, along the way from a humble cradle to a bloody grave. He made Himself poor that He might make us rich; and it seemed meet that to poor rather than to rich men God should reveal the advent of Him who came to enrich the poor, whether kings or beggars, peers or peasants. As if to censure the respect paid to rank apart from merit, or to wealth apart from worth, He who has no respect for persons honoured in these shepherds honest poverty and humble virtue. They received ambassadors not accredited to sovereigns; as cottages, not palaces, housed Him whom the heavens have received, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain.