“They all were looking for a king
     To slay their foes and lift them high;
     Thou cam’st, a little baby thing
     That made a woman cry.”

The battle presents itself to us as a demand that we choose, that we take sides.  The demand of Christ is that we associate ourselves with Him, or that we define our position as on the other side.  “The friendship of the world is enmity with God” is a saying that is true when reversed:  The friendship of God is enmity with the world.  An open disclosure of the friendship of God sets all the powers of the world against us.  This may be uncomfortable; but there does not appear to be any way of avoiding the opposition.

Our Lord, in His Incarnation, not only stripped Himself of His glory, took the servant form, and in doing so deliberately deprived Himself of certain means which would have been vastly influential in dealing with men, but He also declined, in assuming human nature, to assume it under conditions which would have conferred upon Him any adventitious advantage in the prosecution of His work.  He would display to men neither divine nor human glory:  He would have no aid from power or position, from wealth or learning.  He undertook His work in the strength of a pure humanity united with God.  He declined all else.  And He found that almost the first event of His life was to be driven into exile.

And they who are associated with Him necessarily share His fortunes.  Unless they will abandon the Child, Mary and Joseph must set out on the desert way.  They had no doubt much to learn; but what is important is not the size or amount of what we learn, but the learning of it.  When we are called, as they were, to leave all for Christ, it often turns out as hard, oftentimes harder, to leave property as riches; and the reason is that what we ultimately are leaving is neither poverty nor riches, but self:  and self to us is always a “great possession.”

Therein, I suppose, lies the solution of the problem of the relation of property and Christianity in the common life.  Idleness is sin; every one is bound to some useful labour, no matter what his material resources may be.  And if we work for our living, if our labour is to be such as will support us, then there at once arises the problem of possessions.  Useful, steady labour will ordinarily produce more than “food and raiment.”  Under present social arrangments accumulated property is handed on to heirs.  A man naturally wants to make some provision for his family.  Or he finds himself in possession of considerable wealth and the impulse is to spend in luxuries of one sort or another,—­modern invention has put endless means of ministering to physical or aesthetic comfort within his reach.  He can have a motor car, a country house, an expensive library; he can have beautiful works of art.  And then he is confronted with the picture of the Holy Family which can never have lived much beyond the poverty line.  He realises the nature of our Lord’s life of poverty and ministry.  And though the plain man may not feel that he can go very far in imitating this life, he does feel that there is a splendour of achievement in those who take our Lord at His word and sell all to follow Him.