In the conversion of Lydia we see the Kingdom of Christ in its incipient state strikingly illustrated. In the parable of the grain of mustard-seed, Jesus told his disciples that the gospel in its beginning would be just like that smallest of seeds, but would grow and spread, and finally succeed. Lydia is only one convert, a lone woman in a great military camp of a heathen city, and women, socially, in those days, did not count for much. Humanly speaking, this first European convert appeared about as insignificant as a grain of mustard-seed. And yet this apparently insignificant seed produced a rich and precious harvest in the flourishing congregation of Philippi, in the spread of the gospel over all Europe, and it will soon cover the whole world. From Lydia’s candid reception of the gospel, her urgent hospitality, her unfaltering and continued friendship to the Apostles, her modest bearing in being accounted worthy of the confidence of her benefactors, we are led to form a high estimate of her character. Though possessed of considerable wealth, and, possibly, of social rank, she had the grace of humility. Her deep humility in the presence of God’s messengers was a clear and sufficient proof of her humility before God, and that it was real; that humility, if not already a resident in her heart, had, with the incoming of divine grace, taken up its abode in her, and become her very nature; that she actually, like Christ, made herself of no reputation, especially when persecution came to Paul and Silas. When, in the presence of God, lowliness of heart has become, not a posture we assume for a time, but the very spirit of our life, it will manifest itself, as it did in Lydia, in all our bearing towards others. The lesson is one of deep import. The only humility really ours is not that which we assume in our devotions to God, but that which we carry with us in our ordinary conduct. The insignificances of the daily life are the importances of eternity, because they prove what spirit really possesses us. It is in our most unguarded moments we really show what we are. To know the humble woman, to know how the humble woman behaves, you must accept her hospitality as the Apostles accepted the hospitality of Lydia, and follow her to her home, and into the common course of daily life.