Has this any voice for us? does it convey any great spiritual lesson to our understanding? Assuredly it does. In the first place, it suggests this important question to the reader: Can I declare my pedigree? It is greatly to be feared there are hundreds, if not thousands, of professing Christians who are wholly incompetent to do so. They cannot say, with clearness and decision, “_Now are_ we the sons of God.” (1 John iii. 2.)—“Ye _are_ all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.... And if ye are Christ’s, then _are_ ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. iii. 26, 29.)—“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they _are_ the sons of God.... The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we _are_ the sons of God.” (Rom. viii. 14, 16.) This is the Christian’s “pedigree,” and it is his privilege to be able to “declare” it. He is born from above—born again—born of water and the Spirit, _i. e._, by the Word and by the Holy Ghost. (Compare diligently, John iii. 5; Jas. i. 18; 1 Pet. i. 23; Eph. v. 26.) The believer traces his pedigree directly up to a risen Christ in glory. This is Christian genealogy. So far as our natural pedigree is concerned, if we trace it up to its _source_, and then declare it honestly, we must see and admit that we are sprung from a ruined stock. Ours is a fallen family. Our fortunes are gone; our very blood attainted; we are irrecoverably ruined; we can never regain our original position; our former _status_ and the inheritance which belonged to it are irretrievably lost. A man may be able to trace his genealogical line through a race of nobles, of princes, or of kings; but if he is fully to “declare his pedigree,” he cannot stop short of a fallen, ruined, outcast head. We must get to the _source_ of a thing to know what it really is. It is thus God looks at and judges of things, and we must think with Him if we would think aright. His judgment of men and things must be dominant forever. Man’s judgment is only ephemeral, it lasts but for a day; and hence, according to faith’s estimate, the estimate of sound sense, “it is a _small_ thing to be judged of man’s day.” (1 Cor. iv. 3.) Oh, how small! Would that we felt more deeply how small a thing it is to be judged of man’s judgment, or, as the margin reads it, of man’s day! Would that we walked habitually in the real sense of the smallness thereof! It would impart a calm elevation and a holy dignity which would lift us above the influence of the scene through which we are passing. What is rank in this life? What importance can attach to a pedigree which, if honestly traced and faithfully declared, is derived from a ruined stock? A man can only be proud of his birth when he stops short of his real origin—“born in sin and shapen in iniquity.” Such is man’s origin—such his birth. Who can think of being proud of such a birth—of such an origin? who but one whose mind the god of this world hath blinded?