Let us bend the head, and, in company of the shepherds, enter the stable. Heard above the champing of bits, the stroke of hoofs, the rattling of chains, and the lowing of oxen, the feeble wail of an infant turns our steps to a particular stall: here a woman lies stretched on a bed of straw, and her new-born child, hastily wrapped in some part of her dress, finds a cradle in the manger. A pitiful sight!--such a fortune as occasionally befalls the Arabs of society--such an incident as may occur in the history of one of those vagrant, vagabond, outcast families who, their country's shame, tent in woods and sleep under hedges, when no barn or stable offers a covering to their houseless heads. Yet princes on their way to the crown, brides on their way to the marriage, bannered armies on their way to the battle, and highest angels in their flight from star to star, might stop to say of this sight, as Moses of the burning bush, "Let me turn aside, and see this great sight!"
The prophet foretells a time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and, bound in the same stall, and fed at the same manger, the lion shall eat straw with the ox. Here is a greater wonder! This stable is the house of God, the very gate of heaven: under this dusty roof, inside those narrow walls, He lodges whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain: the tenant of this manger is the Son, who, leaving the bosom of His Father to save us, here pillows His head on straw; of this feeble babe the hands are to hurl Satan from his throne, and wrench asunder the strong bars of death; this one tender life, this single corn-seed is to become the prolific parent of a thousand harvests, and fill the garners of glory with the fruits of salvation. Mean as it looks, yet more splendid than marble palaces,--more sacred than the most venerable and hallowed temples, here the Son of God was born, and with Him were born Faith, Hope, and Charity--our Peace, our Liberty, and our Eternal Life. Had He not been born, we had never been born again; had He not lain in a manger, we had never lain in Abraham's bosom; had He not been wrapped in swaddling-clothes, we had been wrapped in everlasting flames; had His head in infancy not been pillowed on straw, and in death on thorns, ours had never been crowned in glory. But that He was born, better we had never been; life had been a misfortune to which time had brought no change, and death no relief, and the grave no rest. "Glory to God in the highest" that He was born: we had otherwise been lifting up our eyes in torment with this unavailing, endless cry, "O that my mother had been my grave! Cursed be the day wherein I was born?"
If language cannot express the love and gratitude we owe to the Saviour, let our lives do so. Shallow streams run brawling over their pebbly beds, but the broad, deep river pursues its course in silence to the sea; and so is it with our strongest, deepest feelings. Great joy like great sorrow, great gladness like great grief, great admiration like great detestation, take breath and speech away. On first seeing Mont Blanc as the sun rose to light up his summit and irradiate another and another snow-clad pinnacle, I remember the silent group who had left their couches to witness and watch the glorious scene: before its majesty and magnificence all were for awhile dumb, opening not the mouth. I have read, when travellers reached the crest of the hill, and first looked down on Jerusalem,--the scene of our Saviour's sorrow, the garden that heard His groans, the city that led Him out to die, the soil that was bedewed with His tears and crimsoned with His blood,--how their hearts were too full for utterance. If a sight of the city where He died so affects Christians, as the scenes of His last hours rush on their memory and rise vividly to their imagination, how will they look on that scene where, surrounded by ten times ten thousand saints and thousands of angels, He reigns in glory! I can fancy the saint who has shut his eyes on earth to open them in heaven, standing speechless; and as the flood of music fills his ear, and the blaze of glory his eye, and the thought of what he owes to Jesus his heart,--I can fancy him laying the crown, which he has received from his Saviour's hands, in silent gratitude at His feet; and as he recovers speech, and sees hell and its torments beneath him, earth and its sorrows behind him, an eternity of unchequered, unchanging bliss, before him,--I can fancy the first words that break from his grateful lips will be, "Glory to God, glory to God in the highest!" Never till then, nowhere but there, will our praise be worthy of Jesus and His redemption. Meanwhile, let Him who demonstrates God's highest glory and fills heaven's highest throne, hold the highest place in our hearts. Let us surround His name with the highest honours; and, laying our time and talents, our faculties and our affections, our wealth, and fame, and fortunes at His feet, crown Him Lord of all.