to earth.  Where shall he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the glad tidings?  Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.  Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons?  Has not God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace and administers his kingdom?

Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God’s way more than ecclesiastics.  They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:  God must usually tell it to some one else first.  One of the most startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where there were more sheep than men to hear.

What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride!  God can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler soul.  The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace, and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place.  The gospel is no respecter of places and persons.  It may be preached in a costly church or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture.  In simplicity and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life.  It has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.

XII.  The Concert in a Sheep Pasture

In the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven.  The night did not seem different from other nights.  The skies were as serene and the stars burned as calm as in all the past.  The shepherds were as unconscious of any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on the ridges.  Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and were on the point of being shattered into song.  Flocks of angels were flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth’s atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir.  Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it.  The encircling hills were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price.  Musical artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but angels will sing for anybody.