in the trouble of the creatures’ troubles, sprang to life in his heart the hope, that all that could groan should yet rejoice, that on the lowest servant in the house should yet descend the fringe of the robe that was cast about the redeemed body of the Son. He was no pettifogging priest standing up for the rights of the superior!  An exclusive is a self-excluded Christian.  They that shut the door will find themselves on the wrong side of the door they have shut.  They that push with the horn and stamp with the hoof, can not be admitted to the fold.  St. Paul would acknowledge no distinctions.  He saw every wall—­of seclusion, of exclusion, of partition, broken down.  Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free—­all must come in to his heart.  Mankind was not enough to fill that divine space, enlarged to infinitude by the presence of the Christ:  angels, principalities, and powers, must share in its conscious splendor.  Not yet filled, yet unsatisfied with beings to love, Paul spread forth his arms to the whole groaning and troubled race of animals.  Whatever could send forth a sigh of discomfort, or heave a helpless limb in pain, he took to the bosom of his hope and affection—­yea, of his love and faith:  on them, too, he saw the cup of Christ’s heart overflow.  For Paul had heard, if not from His own, yet from the lips of them that heard Him speak, the words, Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? What if the little half-farthing things bear their share, and always have borne, in that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ?  In any case, not one of them, not one so young that it topples from the edge of its nest, unable to fly, is forgotten by the Father of men.  It shall not have a lonely deathbed, for the Father of Jesus will be with it.  It must be true.  It is indeed a daring word, but less would not be enough for the hearts of men, for the glory of God, for the need of the sparrow.  I do not close my eyes to one of a thousand seemingly contradictory facts.  I misdoubt my reading of the small-print notes, and appeal to the text, yea, beyond the text, even to the God of the sparrows Himself.

“I count it as belonging to the smallness of our faith, to the poorness of our religion, to the rudimentary condition of our nature, that our sympathy with God’s creatures is so small.  Whatever the narrowness of our poverty-stricken, threadbare theories concerning them, whatever the inhospitality and exclusiveness of our mean pride toward them, we can not escape admitting that to them pain is pain, and comfort is comfort; that they hunger and thirst; that sleep restores and death delivers them:  surely these are ground enough to the true heart wherefore it should love and cherish them—­the heart at least that believes with St. Paul, that they need and have the salvation of Christ as well as we.  Right grievously, though blindly, do they groan after it.