St0 THE HUMILITY OP CHRIST. [SECT. Art; Let us follow and observe him in the progress of life, when he appeared as a young carpenter, when he sweat and laboured in the trade of his Father Joseph, when he assisted him, as ancient history informs us, to make yokes for oxen, and lived in a lowly cottage, suited to those circumstances. No rooms of state, no rich hangings, no carpets or furniture of silk and gold, no costly and glit- tering things about him. And when he began his mi- nistry, he travelled through the country on foot to preach his divine gospel, when he might have been borne on the wings of angels. He was content with mean lodging in the tents of fishermen, and sometimes the Lord of glory had not where to lay his head. He never accepted but of one gaudy day in the period of his life, and then his highest triumph was to ride upon the colt of an ass into Jerusalem : his way was strewed with branches of trees, and the garments of the poor, and he was attended with a shouting train of the lower ranks of the people But his more constant dwelling was in cottages, and his accoutrements betrayed universal poverty and meanness : An obscure life on earth veiled the majesty of the King of heaven: Contempt and scorn, infamy and reproach, were his daily companions in the streets of Jerusalem; and his table and his lodging were with poor fishermen in Galilee, the most contemptible part of all the country of the Jews. And let it he observed here, that every instance of meanness and poverty in the life and circumstances of the blessed Jesus was a distinct token of the humility of his soul, for it was chosen poverty, it was assumed meanness: When he was rich in the glories and splen- dors of his Father's court in heaven, he laid them all aside for our sakes, and became poor on earth, that through his poverty we might be made rich ; 2 Cor. viii. 9. What a shameful dimness and disgrace, what divine con- tempt has the Son of God cast on all the lustre and glory of this world, by his choice of so mean accommodations and so poor an equipage? What a holy disdain of all earthly grandeur and magnificence should we learn from the incarnation and the life of the holy Jesus ? Even meanness and poverty should lose their disgraceful ap- pearances, and seem almost an amiable sort of apparel
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