to pour contempt on whatever seems great and glorious to us, He has never chosen the great things, or the great ones of this world to do his work with, even when they seem the fittest for his purpose. What an effect, as we should think, would have been produced, had Jesus made the throne of the Roman empire the stepping-stone to the cross, and exhibited his passion and humiliation before the delegates of the universe assembled there, through whom the report would have gone forth to every nation under heaven! But this was not what He intended: He chose his birth-place in a tributary province, distinguished indeed above every other, but with a distinction nothing thought of in the world; and He chose it not in the capital of that province, but in an inferior city; and not among the great ones there, but with its meanest and most unknown. All that was striking, all that was remarkable in the Redeemer's birth was supernatural. He deigned not to make any use of temporal signs to distinguish it from others, as if He were determined to derive no

evidence of his greatness from the world, and to give it none but of a miraculous kind. Nor was it for Himself alone, that Jesus chose poverty and meanness of condition. He chose the same for the companions and instruments of his work. He took his disciples from among the unknown; not that he preferred the poor because they were poor-we must beware of erecting poverty into a merit, as has been done ere now-but He preferred poverty, because He knew it to be the state in which his followers could best subserve his Father's purposes. Doubtless, He who fore-knew and fore-arranged the whole, had placed in that station those He intended to select from it-a choice as little consonant with our ideas of what would have been best, as that which He made for himself; because the sudden conversion of twelve persons of elevated station and distinguished talent, would have produced a great sensation, tending much more directly, as seems to us, to the evangelizing of the world. But God never meant

to evangelize the world: He meant to call for

himself a people out of it, by the workings of his grace, and to this little flock to give his kingdom. He meant to send the whispers of his still small voice throughout the earth, that whosoever would hear it might be saved; but He would commend it to them by no factitious attractions, borrowed of this world's wisdom or its greatness. Our judgment in the first instance is not unnatural, nor perhaps unreasonable, but it is matter of surprise that after so long experience that God judges otherwise, we should persist in attaching so much importance to great names and great means for the advancement of religion-still more that they who acknowledge Christ as an example, should so frequently insinuate that evangelical principles are professed only by the weak and disesteemed of men, while persons of most name and influence in the church are following in the broad way of charitable indifference. They will not remember, or will not believe, that as under the Jewish dispensation God chose for himself a people that were the "fewest of all people," so, under

the Christian dispensation, the Scripture emblems of his church are "a fold," "a little flock." It will be a glorious kingdom sometime, in characters of greatness becoming its eternal King. But that will be only at the restitution of all things, when the "kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord." Till then, learning, and wealth, and greatness, will never be on the Lord's side-meanness, ignorance, poverty, and simplicity, never will be evidences against the value of a religious profession. This, by the way.

It is as individuals, each one for ourselves, that we are to be conformed to the image of our Lord. He chose poverty, he chose meanness of condition, he chose to be the least of all men. Who besides him does so? It may be said, He chose it not of preference, but because it exposed him to the suffering which was the purpose of his coming. This is not true; an exalted station is an exposure to more danger than an obscure one, and wealth has never succeeded to buy off calamity. We know very

well it is not true with us.

The toils we go

through to obtain an eminence-the difficulties we contend with to maintain ourselves upon it, are ample proofs that it is not for ease or safety that we desire to rise. But who is of the mind of Christ? When we look upon the condition of our country at this moment, we may well repeat the question; for what has brought us to it, but inordinate, proud, extravagant desires?

-no matter whether for money, for rank, for influence, or under the more plausible, but misused names of refinement and respectability -to be foremost, to be uppermost, to be most, to be more than our fathers were, and push our children still above ourselves. God, in displeasure surely, has gratified the proud desire to the utmost; the upward progress for a time was very rapid; all between the quite highest and the quite lowest class, may contrast their father's ménage with their own, and the former of these may convict themselves of no less excess in what admitted of advance, though their position did not. But the reproof of Heaven