“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 springs and sparkling streams.  He gave us hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and orchards of rosy fruit.  He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart.  He set eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the Infinite, hearts that cry, “Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us.”  Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of the soul be disappointed and mocked?  “And they found the babe,” is the answer to this need and promise.  God sends us with all our deep needs and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be exactly and fully matched and satisfied.  He that hath seen this Child hath seen the Father.

The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child.  The gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the individual heart.  We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it.  And the more we give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea.  Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God hath highly exalted him.