been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing, somewhere else? Ah! if
the disciples, who were being born about the same time of fisher-fathers
and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call and teach by the time he
should be thirty years of age--if they had only been old enough, and had
known that he was coming--would they not have got everything ready for him?
They would have clubbed their little savings together, and worked day and
night, and some rich women would have helped them, and they would have
dressed the baby in fine linen, and got him the richest room their money
would get, and they would have made the gold that the wise men brought into
a crown for his little head, and would have burnt the frankincense before
him. And so our little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No
more the stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all,
as strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that if he
does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or that he
is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own
son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little
village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not suppose
because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it next day,
that God does not care for him."

"But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?"

"That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
mother's love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie not
in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born in the
meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God's own and God's care
as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all about him. Had