Luther: The True Gain

I know none, neither men nor angels, who can help me except this child whom you, O Mary, hold in your arms. If a man could put out of his mind all that he is and has except this child, and if for him everything--money, goods, power, or honor--fades into darkness and he despises everything on earth compared with this child, so that heaven with its stars and earth with all its power and all its treasures becomes as nothing to him, that man would have the true gain.

--Martin Luther, preaching on Luke 2:1-14 on Christmas Day 1530, in Luther's Works, 51:214