BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 253

not exactly in a stable as we understand that phrase, but in
one of the little caves or recesses that abound in the inns_
of these Syrian villages. The lowing kine were probably
amongst the first companions of Jesus, and a manger was his
first rude cradle. As we are told by Luke, his mother
“wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a man-
ger.”

It is very true that the surroundings of the birth of
Jesus were for the most part rude and lowly. He did not
come to a palace, to a home of luxury, to a life of ease.
It would have been altogether out of harmony with the sacred
mission that, was before him, to have entered life amid such
surroundings. But Jesus did not come to abject poverty
and wretchedness. There was no luxury in Palestine so
rich as the luxury of America to-day; there was no poverty
so poor. We are apt to make a little too much of the low-
liness of Christ’s birth and life. It was lowly, it was hum-
ble, but it was not wretched or poverty-stricken. The men
and women and children who settled in New England nearly
three hundred years ago, and the later pioneers of these vast
Western regions, had in all probability a much harder lot,
and a much rougher life than Jesus of Nazareth ever knew.
We need not exaggerate the lowliness of Christ’s earthly lot
for the sake of awakening pity. However lowly the lot was,
Jesus accepted it joyfully. If he “‘had not where to lay his
head,” he asked no man’s tears because of that. Do not let
us offer our pity to Christ. He passed by the nature of
angels and stooped to the human lot with a royal grace,
with divine gladness. Jesus never asks for pity, but ever-
more pleads for love, and for love alone!

How strangely mingle the lowliness and grandeur of
that wondrous birth! There are songs of angels, lowing of -