He has brought us to worship Him in sacred places where His
saints have worshipped for many hundred years. He has given us the aid
of His ministers, and His Sacraments, and His Holy Scriptures, and the
Ancient Creed. To others, Scripture is a sealed book, though they hold
it in their hands; but to us it is in good measure an open book,
through God's mercy, if we but use our advantages, if we have but
spiritual eyes and ears, to read and hear it faithfully. To others,
the Sacraments and other rites are but dead ordinances, carnal
ceremonies, which profit not, like those of the Jewish Law, outward
forms, beggarly elements, as they themselves often confess; but to us,
if we have faith, they are full of grace and power. Thus all we have
been chosen by God's grace unto salvation, in a special way, in which
many others around us have not been chosen, as God passed over David's
seven brethren, and chose him.

2. Observe, too. God chose him, whose occupation was that of a
shepherd; for He chooses not the great men of the world. He passes by
the rich and noble; He chooses "the poor, rich in faith, and heirs of
the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him[3]," as St.
James says. David was a shepherd. The Angel appeared to the shepherds
as they kept watch over their sheep at night. The most solitary, the
most unlearned, God hears, God looks upon, God visits, God blesses, God
brings to glory, if he is but "rich in faith." Many of you are not
great in this world, my brethren, many of you are poor; but the
greatest king upon earth, even Solomon in all his glory, might well
exchange places with you, if you are God's children; for then you are
greater than the greatest of kings. Our Saviour said, that even the
lilies of the field were more gloriously arrayed than Solomon; for the
lily is a living thing, the work of God; and all the glories of a king,
his purple robe, and his jewelled crown, all this is but the dead work
of man; and the lowest and humblest work of God is far better and more
glorious than the highest work of man. But if this be true, even of
God's lower works, what shall be said of His higher? If even the
lilies of the field, which are cut down and cast into the oven, are
more glorious than this world's greatest glory, what shall be said of
God's nobler works in the soul of man? what shall be said of the
dispensation of the Spirit which "exceeds in glory?" of that new
creation of the soul, whereb