THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS
begin with the manger, and follow him up through the thirty-three years he was here upon earth. I should ask you what you think of his coming into this world and being born in a manger when it might have been a palace; why he left the grandeur and the glory of heaven, and the royal retinue of angels; why he passed by palaces and crowns and dominion and came down here alone?
I should like to ask you what you think of him as a teacher. He spake as never man spake. I should like to take him up as a preacher. I should like to bring you to that mountainside, that we might listen to the words as they fall from his gentle lips. Talk about the preachers of the present day! I would rather a thousand times be five minutes at the feet of Christ than listen a lifetime to all the wise men in the world. He used just to hang truth upon anything. Yonder is a sower, a fox, a bird, and he just gathers the truth round them, so that you can not see a sower, a fox, or a bird without thinking what Jesus said. Yonder is a lily of the valley; you can not see it without thinking of his words, "They toil not, neither do they spin."
He makes the little sparrow chirping in the air preach to us. How fresh those wonderful sermons are ; how they live to-day ! How we love to tell them to our children; how the children love to hear! "Tell me a story about Jesus," — how often we hear it; how the little ones love his sermons! No story-book in the world will 86
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