THIS GREAT MAN DESCENDED FROM IGNOBLE PARENTS—BORN INPOVERTY—HIS EDUCATION AND EVIL HABITS—FOLLOWS HIS FATHER’SBUSINESS AS A BRAZIER—ENLISTS FOR A SOLDIER—RETURNS FROM THE WARSAND OBTAINS AN AMIABLE, RELIGIOUS WIFE—HER DOWER.
‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of thepower may be of God, and not of us.’—2 Cor 4:7
‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,saith the Lord.’—Isaiah 55:8.
‘Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of adove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.’—Psalm68:13.
When the Philistine giant, Goliath, mocked the host of Israel, and challengedany of their stern warriors to single combat, what human being could haveimagined that the gigantic heathen would be successfully met in the mortalstruggle by a youth ’ruddy and of a fair countenance?’ who unarmed,except with a sling and a stone, gave the carcases of the hosts of thePhilistines to the fouls of the air, and to the wild beasts of theearth.’
Who, upon seeing an infant born in a stable, and laid in a manger, or beholdinghim when a youth working with his father as a carpenter, could have conceivedthat he was the manifestation of the Deity in human form, before whom everyknee should bow, and every tongue confess Him to be THE ETERNAL?
Father Michael, a Franciscan friar, on a journey to Ancona, having lost hisway, sought direction from a wretched lad