ds not followed up the message their
knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We
hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we
let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message
does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever
swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of
worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. "Let us now go and
see this thing." We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour.
Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see
Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and
obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.

"And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe
lying in the manger." Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife
of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the
desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the
passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple
robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and
make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the
Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered
with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and
shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes
treated with more cruel irony? But God's ways are not as our ways.
Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get
the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward
from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very
poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of
humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a
pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart
of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into
humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and
toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the
common people heard him gladly.

Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. "Ye shall find a babe," was
the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, "And they found the
babe." When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint
us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this
need he has created bubbling spring