---

It is significant that Christ marked with so much interest the more lowly and homely of the creatures around us. He does not say, "Consider the eagle" — the monarch of the air, the symbol of empire and of victory; or, "Consider the nightingale," the sweet Eastern bulbul, that floods the Jordan banks and the shores of Gennesaret with its passionate music; but, "Consider the raven" — a fowl of ill-omen and unattractive to the eye, or draws attention to the sparrow, a very Pariah among the feathered tribes. It is like His preference for publicans and sinners over the lordly Pharisee and learned scribe. Who but Jesus would have dreamed of getting poetry and theology out of ravens and sparrows! Who but He would have compared Himself, as He did in the most pathetic utterance of His life, to a hen vainly calling her heedless brood to the shelter of her wings! But this fashion of speech became Him who was "meek and lowly in heart"; and who, moreover, being one with the Author of Nature, interprets best her deepest and simplest lessons. And what a revelation Christ's saying respecting the sparrows gives us of the working of God's providence! What an omniscience and omnipresence it implies! He declares that God actually notices and cares for every little feathered thing that flits twittering through the air, or hops from bough to bough in innocent and happy freedom, or pipes its solitary note "alone upon the housetop." And when the tiny creature falls, struck by stick or shot or stone, "it does not fall on the ground," He says, "without your Father." Nay, even as it hangs in the poulterer's stall, strung up with fifty others, waiting for the purchaser, poor almost as itself, who can find the farthing needed to buy two of them, still it is not "forgotten before God." The pitiful little tragedy, from beginning to end, is watched and recorded by the Supreme Mind! If He observes all that, what is there which He overlooks? If He "caters providently for the sparrow," and interests Himself in its fate, how solicitous His care for all His living creatures I How minute and delicate and sympathetic, as well as far-reaching and omnipotent, the oversight of His providence, which is not less special than general, not less particular than it is universal. Even a large-minded and noble-hearted man is distinguished above others by his freedom from contempt, by his insight into the meaning of little things, and his sense of the sacredness and the value of common life. His mind is superior to the mere bulk and splendour of outward things. And with God this must be so in the most absolute sense, to the most perfect degree. "He hath respect unto the lowly." And this "respect" extends in due measure to all His creatures. It is only when we believe that His care is thus universal that we can absolutely rely upon it for ourselves.

(G. G. Findlay, B. A.)

---

---

KJV: Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?

WEB: "Aren't five sparrows sold for two assaria coins? Not one of them is forgotten by God.