Let us forget the Angel Chorus and the blazing star and go now even unto Bethlehem and look into the manger at that Child, while the uncomprehending cattle stare resentful perhaps at their displacement.  The King comes as a Child, as weak, as helpless, as vocal of its pains as any other child.  Not a Child of luxury, not a Child of consequence, not a Child of comfort, but a Child of poverty; and in the eyes of the blind world, if they had been privy to it, without the glorious vision of the good man, Joseph, a Child of shame!  If the world had known that the Babe was not the Child of Joseph and Mary how it would have mocked.  What laughter, what jeers, what contempt, what obloquy, what scorn would have been heaped upon the woman’s head!  Why the world would heap them there now were it not that that portion of it which disbelieves in the Incarnation, says that Joseph was after all the father of the Child.

Nor shall we go down to Bethlehem alone.  The poor, ignorant shepherds came to the cradle that night.  They could understand.  It did not seem strange to them that their God was poor, for they themselves were poor.  I wonder how much the shepherds reflected.  Theirs is a profession which gives rise to thought; they are much alone in the waste places with the gentlest of God’s creatures.  Their paths lead by green pastures and still waters; they enjoy long, lonely hours for meditation.  Did they say: 

“Ah!  God has come to us as a poor man, not because there is anything particularly noble or desirable in poverty, but because so many of us are so very poor, and because the most of us have been poor all the time, and because it is probable that most of us will be poor in the future!”

Many a poor man has looked up into the silent heavens and wondered sometimes whether God understood or cared about his wretched lot.  Of course God always knew and cared, we cannot gainsay that, but in order to make men know that He knew and to make them believe that He cared, He let them see that He did not disdain to be a poor man and humble; that He sought His followers and supporters in the great majority. My God was a Carpenter!  That is why He came to the stable; that is why He came to the manger.  And that is why the poor come to Him.

And there came to that same cradle, a little while after, the Wise Men.  They were professional wise men; they belonged to the learned, the cultured, the thoughtful class; but they were wise men as well in the sense in which we use wisdom to-day.  That is, they looked beyond earthly conditions and saw Divinity where the casual glance does not see it.  How many a seamed, rugged face, how many a burden-bent back, how many a faltering footstep, how many a knotted, calloused hand is perhaps more nearly in the image of God than the fairer face, the straighter figure, the softer palm!