ted circumstances, are
discontented with their position. They repine at their lot, and murmur
against the Providence which has assigned it. This is not only wicked
but absurd, since true happiness lies much less in changing our
condition than in making the best of it, whatever it be. Besides, God
says, "I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than
the golden wedge of Ophir;" and the estimate which He forms of us
turns in no respect whatever on the place we fill. One artist paints a
grand, another a common, or even a mean, subject; but we settle their
comparative merits, praising this one and condemning that, not by the
subjects they paint, but by the way they paint them. To borrow an
illustration from the stage, (as Paul did from heathen games,) one
player, tricked out in regal state, with robes, and crown, and
sceptre, performs the part of a king, and another that only of a
common soldier or country boor; yet the applause of the audience is
not given to the parts the actors play, but to the way they play them.
Even so, it is not the place that man fills, whether high or humble,
but the way he fills it to which God has, and we should have, most
regard.

Not that we would reduce the inequalities of society any more than
those of the earth, with its varied features of swelling hill and
lovely dale, to one dull, long, common level. Death, the great grim
leveller, does that office both for cottagers and kings. Let it be
left to the sexton's spade. The mountains which give shelter to the
valleys, and gather the rains that fill their rivers and fertilise
their pastures, have important uses in nature, and so have the
corresponding heights of rank and wealth and power in society.
Setting our affections on things above, let us be content to wait for
the honours and rest of heaven; let us seek to be good rather than
great; to be rich in faith rather than in wealth; to stand high in
God's esteem rather than in man's; saying, with Paul, "I have learned
in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content;"--or singing with
the boy in the "Pilgrim's Progress," who, meanly clad, but with "a
fresh and well-favoured countenance," fed his father's sheep,--

"He that is down needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.

"I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because th