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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14629 ***
+
+A Wonderful Night
+
+By JAMES H. SNOWDEN
+
+
+Decorations by
+Maud and Miska Petersham
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nights differ as much as days. Some nights have witnessed great events
+and been charged with ethical significance in the history of the world.
+One such night stands forth crowned with supreme distinction, the night
+that heard angels sing, and was starred with the Birth of Bethlehem.
+This book treats the various events and steps that led to the central
+wonder and interprets the story in terms of its significance today and
+invests it with poetic light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
+
+[Transcriber's note: The above text is taken from the front flap of the
+dust jacket.]
+
+
+
+
+A Wonderful Night
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICHAGO · DALLAS
+ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+TORONTO
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A Wonderful
+Night
+
+An Interpretation of
+Christmas
+
+By James H. Snowden
+
+Decorations by Maud and
+Miska Petersham
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Macmillan Company
+Publishers MCMXIX
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+    I. An Age of Wonders
+
+   II. Preparation for the Event
+
+  III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy
+
+   IV. An Historical Event
+
+    V. Simplicity of the Narrative
+
+   VI. The Town of Bethlehem
+
+  VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near
+
+ VIII. The Birth
+
+   IX. No Room in the Inn
+
+    X. Angel Ministry
+
+   XI. Angels and Shepherds
+
+  XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture
+
+ XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem
+
+  XIV. The Star and the Wise Men
+
+   XV. A Frightened King
+
+  XVI. An Impotent Destroyer
+
+ XVII. Splendid Gifts
+
+XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?
+
+  XIX. A World Without Christmas
+
+   XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?
+
+  XXI. The Light of the World
+
+
+
+
+O Little town of Bethleham,
+  How still we see thee lie!
+Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
+  The silent stars go by:
+Yet in thy dark streets shineth
+  The everlasting Light;
+The hopes and fears of all the years
+  Are met in thee to-night.
+
+                  --Phillips Brooks.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]
+
+
+
+
+I. An Age of Wonders
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: The first letter of each chapter is in the form of
+an illustrated dropped capital.]
+
+We live in an age of wonders. Great discoveries and startling events
+crowd upon us so fast that we have scarcely recovered from the
+bewildering effects of one before another comes, and we are thus kept in
+a constant whirl of excitement. The heavens are full of shooting stars,
+and while watching one we are distracted by another. So frequent is this
+experience that our nerves almost refuse to respond to the shock of a
+new sensation. We are no longer surprised at surprises. The marvelous
+has become the commonplace, and the unexpected is what we now expect.
+
+Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its
+wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have
+become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they
+were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any
+wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic
+eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more
+revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French
+Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the
+sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century
+created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and
+startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.
+
+The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in
+their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.
+The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human
+brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing,
+which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and
+every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and
+in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists
+of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more
+useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the
+hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest
+fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our
+modern magic machines than to part with these.
+
+The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer
+and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow
+the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in
+eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new
+wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and
+the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in
+the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages,
+but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not
+die.
+
+Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist's
+discoveries and the inventor's cunning devices: the greatest marvel is
+not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the
+present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning. On that
+morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that
+heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the
+world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time.
+Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world.
+Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as
+mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such
+a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely
+greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out
+of a new star in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+II. Preparation for the Event
+
+
+Near events may have remote causes. The river that sweeps by us cannot
+be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills.
+The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin
+in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.
+
+A wide circle of causes converged towards this birth; all the spokes of
+the ancient world ran into this hub. When Abraham started west as an
+emigrant out of Babylonia, "not knowing whither he went," he was
+unconsciously traveling towards Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries
+headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that
+bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest
+and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar,
+sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all
+so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of
+the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could
+spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and
+righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an
+atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people
+and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these
+ideas were rooted in the world.
+
+Pagan achievements, also, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
+that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the
+coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories
+of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by
+its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally
+impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain
+nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made
+positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a
+marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible
+and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed
+it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the
+gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw
+light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.
+
+God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the
+world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in
+no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The
+harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months
+before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through
+millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The
+centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from
+Abraham to Mary, "but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
+his Son."
+
+
+
+
+III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy
+
+
+This birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had
+cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years.
+Through all their national vicissitudes, enslavement in Egypt,
+wanderings in, the wilderness, establishment and growth in the promised
+land, internal division and external captivity in Babylon, restoration,
+and final subjection to the Romans, this hope burned on the horizon of
+their future as a fixed star. It was this that ever led them on and held
+them together and made it impossible to break or subdue their spirit.
+This was the dawn that filled all their dark and bitter days with the
+rosy glow of hope.
+
+Yet the Messiah came not, and as the centuries slowly rolled along they
+must have grown weary and at times have doubted. Sceptics scoffed,
+"Where is the sign of his coming?" But the great heart of the nation
+remained true to its trust, while prophets caught glimpses of the coming
+glory and white-headed, trembling old saints prayed that they might live
+a little longer and not die before he came. Perhaps this hope was never
+at a lower ebb than when the Roman power was ruthlessly grinding the
+nation down into the dust. But suddenly at this darkest hour a blinding
+light burnt through the floor of heaven and shepherds ran about
+announcing that the Messiah was born! Who can imagine the surprise, the
+wonder, the overwhelming amazement this news created? How many were
+eager to go to Bethlehem and see this thing which had come to pass! And
+when it was found to be true, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and
+old men blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servants
+depart in peace."
+
+Yet why should they have wondered at God's faithfulness in keeping his
+promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it
+to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless
+in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with
+God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to
+doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so
+far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our
+thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they have been repeated
+to us until we are familiar with them, when they are fulfilled we wonder
+at the faithfulness that will bring so great things to pass.
+
+
+
+
+IV. An Historical Event
+
+
+The story starts with the place and time of the Saviour's birth. Jesus
+was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are
+many myths and legends floating through the world that are often
+beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and
+are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the
+imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names
+and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully
+and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human
+heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on
+which to build our faith. Heathen religions are generally woven of this
+legendary stuff. The Greek and Roman divinities were all mythical. But
+the scientific spirit has swept these imaginary deities out of our sky
+and rendered belief in them impossible. Our religion must be rooted in
+reality and cannot live in clouds, however beautifully they may be
+colored. We refuse hospitality to anything but fact. Give us names and
+dates, is our demand.
+
+The Bible responds to this requirement. Christianity is an historical
+religion. The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement
+as "Once upon a time," but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea. The town is
+there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born. The
+narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king.
+History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of
+iniquity. These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly
+unbeliever can plausibly dispute. So the gospel sets its record in the
+rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of
+Judea. Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem. We are not,
+then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact.
+This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not
+afraid of the geographer's map and the historian's pen. The Christmas
+story is not another beautiful legend in the world's gallery of myths,
+but is sober and solid reality; its story is history. Our religion is
+truth, and we will worship at no other altar.
+
+
+
+
+V. Simplicity of the Narrative
+
+
+Though surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier
+burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the
+simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels
+of the gospels. This event has inspired poets and painters and has been
+embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation.
+Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy
+conception of the scene. But the evangelists had no such purpose or
+thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is
+perfect art. They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax
+collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of
+skill or literary art. Yet all the stylists and artists of the world
+stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme
+achievement. No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word
+is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their
+own eloquent and marvelous tale. The inspired writers mixed no
+imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to
+tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the
+trustworthiness of their narrative. These men did not follow cunningly
+devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our
+Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.
+
+
+
+
+VI. The Town of Bethlehem
+
+
+The land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range
+of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a
+spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur
+shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal
+bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut
+in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into
+the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and
+wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead
+Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.
+
+At the present time the town has eight thousand inhabitants. Its
+flat-roofed houses are well built and its narrow streets are clean. It
+is a busy place, its chief industry being the manufacture of souvenirs
+of olive wood which are sold throughout the Christian world. Its
+principal church is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a
+cave that is one of the most sacred and memorable spots on the globe. It
+is believed that this cave is the place where Christ was born, and a
+silver star inlaid in the stone floor is intended to mark the exact
+spot. It was then used as the stable of the adjoining inn, and in its
+stone manger the infant Jesus may have been laid.
+
+At the time of this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred
+people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic
+metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and
+seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for
+situation, magnificent in its architecture, sacred in its associations
+and world-wide and splendid in its fame, should have been honored with
+this supreme event in the history of the Jews. But an ancient prophet,
+while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on
+this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused
+it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. "But thou, Bethlehem
+Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
+thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
+goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." And so proud
+Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the
+humble village.
+
+Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of
+obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to
+nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The
+most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble
+cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most
+celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is
+a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in
+the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and
+Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its
+masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It
+was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world
+should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and
+that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone.
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near
+
+
+"Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Cæsar
+Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled." This is the point at
+which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of
+our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end
+in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all
+things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell
+where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start
+the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off
+place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start
+with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. Cæsar
+Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be
+taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a
+richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December
+and March, B.C. 5-4, that such a census was being taken in the province
+of Syria.
+
+In accordance with ancient Jewish usage, all citizens repaired to the
+tribe and village from which they were descended, and were there
+enrolled. In the town of Nazareth in the north lived Joseph, a village
+carpenter, and Mary, his espoused wife, who though a virgin was great
+with child, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the mystery
+having been revealed to her and her betrothed husband. They were both
+descended from the royal line of David, and therefore to Bethlehem they
+must go. With us such a journey of eighty miles would mean no more than
+stepping on a railway car at nine o'clock in the morning and stepping
+off at noon. But with them it meant a toilsome journey on foot of
+several days. Slowly they wended their way southward, led on by the
+irresistible hand of Cæsar, far away on his throne. The ancient Hebrew
+prophecy of Micah and the imperial decree of Cæsar thus marvelously
+fitted into each other and worked together. Mary must have known of this
+prophecy, and we know not with what a sense of mystery and fear and joy
+she drew near to the predicted place where the Messiah was to be born.
+
+Bethlehem sits like a crown on its rocky ridge. At length its walls and
+towers loomed in the distance, and then presently up the steep road
+climbed the carpenter and his espoused wife and passed through the gate
+into the village. When they came to the inn, it was already crowded with
+visitors, driven thither by the decree of Cæsar that had set all
+Palestine in commotion. In connection with the inn, generally the
+central space of its four-square inclosure, but probably in this case a
+cave in the limestone rock, was a stable, or place for the camels and
+horses and cattle of the guests. Among these oriental people it was (and
+is) no uncommon thing for travelers, when the chambers of the inn were
+fully occupied, to make a bed of straw and spend the night in this
+place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the
+Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It
+was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this,
+though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors
+would doubtless have found better accommodations.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. The Birth
+
+
+In that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears
+to have been no woman's hand there to minister to her, she herself
+wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no
+other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from
+which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on
+that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is
+now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill
+the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes
+from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child
+and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all
+imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and
+looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed
+that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a
+divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person,
+and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the
+birth of a Cæsar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but
+stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon
+the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been
+disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a
+great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse
+before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis
+of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power
+and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but
+in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to
+save the world.
+
+
+
+
+IX. No Room in the Inn
+
+
+"There was no room for them in the inn." And so Jesus came into a world
+where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all
+this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his
+coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols,
+after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden
+dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was
+not wanted! "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Was
+there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel
+disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this
+matter, no lack of hospitality in the keeper or the guests of the inn,
+as the village was overcrowded, and the fact that these late arrivals
+were compelled to put up with a place out in the enclosure, possibly a
+cave, where the animals were kept, was no intended incivility or
+uncommon hardship. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the reason, the
+fact was that there was no room for Jesus in that inn the first night he
+spent in this world, and this fact was sadly prophetic of his reception
+in the world he came to save.
+
+There were few places where he did find welcome: generally there was no
+room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to
+expect it. And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of
+this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive
+presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places
+where he wanted to be.
+
+Jesus was not wanted in his own country: Herod tried to leave no room
+for him there. He was not wanted in his own town: his neighbors tried
+to hurl him down a cliff to his death. He was not wanted in his own
+church: its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant
+fury and at last crucified him. Even his own family found it hard to
+make room for him in their inner circle. Small room was there in this
+evil world for this pure and lowly spirit. Then why did he come to it?
+Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it. Small room do we
+still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and
+out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin.
+Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the
+world? Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day
+than ever before, and this room is ever widening.
+
+How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her
+babe! Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out
+of which the cattle were fed. How much shall we miss if we do not have
+room for Christ? There is one world where there is room for Jesus and
+where he is wanted: heaven. And all who are like him shall find room
+with him in its many mansions.
+
+
+
+
+X. Angel Ministry
+
+
+Jerusalem and Rome knew nothing of this event. The High Priest offered
+the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the
+coming of the true Sacrifice, and Cæsar slept that night without a dream
+that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a
+worldwide kingdom. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew
+it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and "angels
+seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in
+songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just
+touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the
+surface of the sea."
+
+Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the
+flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its
+music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible
+is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the
+Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning
+light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come
+upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door
+of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling
+the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad
+tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened
+him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his
+bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb
+and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had
+announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so
+they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall
+come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.
+
+These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though
+invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little
+luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to
+be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of
+their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying
+through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are
+always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the
+spirit of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, so they still may bear departing
+spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We
+know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of
+angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly
+pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often
+they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.
+
+How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and
+grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through
+all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to
+measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. But the
+finest and best things cannot be grasped by these coarse processes.
+Sunbeams cannot be weighed on hay-scales, and gorgeously-colored bits of
+cloud cannot be caught in a crucible. We can weigh the new-born baby,
+but not the mother's love for her child. A telescope cannot see an
+angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision.
+There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened
+that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark
+to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns
+float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that
+do the will of God and wait on us.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Angels and Shepherds
+
+
+The Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful
+news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in
+startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there
+had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it
+and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An
+angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall
+he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the
+glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and
+call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and
+then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that
+holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that
+prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.
+Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not
+God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace
+and administers his kingdom?
+
+Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God's way more than
+ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:
+God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most
+startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the
+birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the
+gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where
+there were more sheep than men to hear.
+
+What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride! God
+can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler
+soul. The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace,
+and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place. The gospel is no
+respecter of places and persons. It may be preached in a costly church
+or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school
+house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture. In simplicity
+and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life. It
+has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar
+and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.
+
+
+
+
+XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture
+
+
+In the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping
+watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest
+duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven. The night did not
+seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars
+burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of
+any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on
+the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and
+were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were
+flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth's
+atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from
+the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all
+the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir.
+Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet
+only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it. The encircling hills
+were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes
+were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like
+the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price. Musical
+artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of
+a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but
+angels will sing for anybody.
+
+The simple-minded shepherds were sore afraid at this outburst of
+heavenly music, as wiser people would have been. An angel voice sang the
+solo:
+
+    Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
+    which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day
+    in the city of David a Saviour,  which is Christ the Lord. And this
+    shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling
+    clothes, and lying in a manger.
+
+"Be not afraid!" Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the
+thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come
+too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but
+the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to
+release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into
+the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a
+marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all
+its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor
+over hills and vales.
+
+The good tidings announced the birth of a Saviour, and this is the best
+news this sin-stricken world can hear, for sin is the root of all our
+fear and misery. Back of every bitter tear lies a guilty thought or
+deed. This connection is often visible upon the surface and stabs us in
+the face, and then it may lie hidden under many generations, but it is
+always there. Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights
+our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly
+tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves
+will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed
+into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world,
+and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and
+fill all the centuries with song.
+
+Definite directions were given for finding the new-born Saviour in the
+city of David, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. The
+angelic message was not simply a song in the air, a halo of celestial
+light, a splendid but fading vision, but it bound itself down to
+definite places and circumstances and left something solid. Again we
+note that this thing, was not done in a corner and is not afraid of
+facts. Jesus was a true human child and took upon him our form down to
+his infant clothes. The Christ is a great wonder in his divine
+personality, ever transcending our utmost comprehension, but we can
+understand his swaddling bands. Christianity is not all mystery, but it
+also comes down close around us and embodies itself in many plain facts
+and duties. "Ye shall find the babe." The shepherds were not left to
+wander around in uncertainty, but sent direct to the place. Christ is
+not hidden from us, clear directions point out the place where he is,
+and every soul that seeks him shall find him.
+
+The angel solo broke out into a heavenly chorus which gave a broad
+interpretation of the meaning of the birth of Christ:
+
+    Glory to God in the highest,
+    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
+
+This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and
+beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight
+shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ
+manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in
+devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and
+the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams
+through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is
+concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his
+Son.
+
+The chorus next pronounces peace upon men. Divine glory and human good
+will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they
+at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when
+truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper
+place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at
+enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens;
+human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and
+laden with fruit. As the glory of the sun is transformed into rosy buds
+and sweet fruit, so is the glory of God transformed into human good
+will. The glory of God and the peace of men are never in antagonism, but
+are always complementary and harmonious, they are the two sides of the
+same gospel, two parts of the same song. They cannot be separated and
+must go together; in glorifying God we make peace among men, and in
+making peace among men we glorify God.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem
+
+
+The angels' song died away in the solemn silence, and the shepherds were
+left alone. It was a critical hour with them. Would they follow this
+vision and turn it into victory, or would they let it vanish with the
+last echo of the song and relapse into the old dull routine? No, they
+did not let it pass, and life was never the same to them again. "Let us
+now go," they said, "even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
+come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." They translated
+vision into action and presently were climbing the rocky slope to
+Bethlehem. Had these shepherds not followed up the message their
+knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We
+hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we
+let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message
+does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever
+swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of
+worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. "Let us now go and
+see this thing." We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour.
+Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see
+Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and
+obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.
+
+"And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe
+lying in the manger." Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife
+of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the
+desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the
+passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple
+robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and
+make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the
+Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered
+with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and
+shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes
+treated with more cruel irony? But God's ways are not as our ways.
+Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get
+the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward
+from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very
+poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of
+humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a
+pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart
+of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into
+humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and
+toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the
+common people heard him gladly.
+
+Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. "Ye shall find a babe," was
+the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, "And they found the
+babe." When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint
+us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this
+need he has created bubbling springs and sparkling streams. He gave us
+hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and
+orchards of rosy fruit. He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find
+it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart. He set
+eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the
+Infinite, hearts that cry, "Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us."
+Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of
+the soul be disappointed and mocked? "And they found the babe," is the
+answer to this need and promise. God sends us with all our deep needs
+and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be
+exactly and fully matched and satisfied. He that hath seen this Child
+hath seen the Father.
+
+The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make
+known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child. The
+gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the
+individual heart. We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that
+we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it. And the more we
+give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands
+as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea.
+Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which
+they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God
+hath highly exalted him.
+
+First angels and then shepherds: how startling the contrast. Jesus has
+deep affinities with both: on his divine side he is related to heaven,
+and on his human side he is related to earth. And the first men he drew
+to his side were shepherds, representatives of the common people. He did
+not come as a member of any special class, especially of the upper
+class. No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the
+great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the
+level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking
+hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from
+the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the
+spire's gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time
+elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with Cæsar, but with shepherds,
+and then in three hundred years a Christian Cæsar sat on the throne.
+
+The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of
+Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands;
+and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost
+the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God.
+Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of
+society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it
+vertically from top to bottom.
+
+How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds
+are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. Shepherds would not
+get much out of Sir Isaac Newton, or a child out of Shakespeare, or a
+sorrowing heart out of Emerson. But every one can get milk and honey for
+his soul out of the gospel of Jesus. His wonderful words of life have
+the same sweetness and saving power for shepherd and scholar, peasant
+and prince. However lowly and unlettered one may be there is wide room
+for him around the manger of this Child.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. The Star and the Wise Men
+
+
+The birth of Jesus created a new center for the world and set heaven and
+earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards
+him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds
+wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night,
+and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian
+priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars.
+Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world
+and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars
+were embodiments of deity. A new star in their sky, whatever it may have
+been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a
+religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of
+their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly
+vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and
+appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of
+the Jews.
+
+They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their
+own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety
+and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish
+king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was
+of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his
+divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their
+curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to
+worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of
+these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their
+religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their
+simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe.
+Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science
+and faith grew from more to more.
+
+A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of
+scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke
+of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and
+find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the
+profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God
+in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed
+at the side of this manger.
+
+
+
+
+XV. A Frightened King
+
+
+The inquiry of the wise men startled Jerusalem and frightened Herod. The
+proud metropolis had not yet heard the news. The immortal honor of
+having given birth to the Christ had been denied to her haughty brow and
+had become humble Bethlehem's imperishable crown. The very name of king
+gave Herod a terrible shock. He was a usurper steeped in crime and was
+ever trembling on his throne. No hunted, white-faced, Russian Czar ever
+feared nihilist's bomb more than he feared rebellion's revolt and
+assassin's knife. Rebel after rebel he had crushed into spattered brains
+and blood, and here was rumor of another Rival born under the shadow of
+his throne. Herod was troubled and his terror sent a strange wave and
+shudder of fear through the city. So the same gospel that made angels
+sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world,
+created consternation and trouble up in Herod's palace and in his city.
+Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some.
+The good man's presence is always the bad man's condemnation and stirs
+hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according
+as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself
+is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. An Impotent Destroyer
+
+
+Herod took swift and thorough measures, as he thought, to crush his new
+rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where
+the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the
+beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own
+evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and
+complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be
+ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push
+their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man's
+tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.
+
+The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod's question, put
+their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be
+born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an
+exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its
+spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
+
+Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against
+Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly
+pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no
+truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men
+will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent
+rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in
+Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and
+Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of
+his head.
+
+Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored
+to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful
+persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not
+extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom
+been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him.
+Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even
+to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the
+rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire
+prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity
+would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that
+have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same
+yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our
+hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish
+and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle.
+Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our
+own door and even in our own hearts.
+
+The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were
+in Jerusalem--in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a
+monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly
+spirit--but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them
+on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in
+our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with
+divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in
+the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is
+a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and
+all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred
+with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Splendid Gifts
+
+
+"And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his
+mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their
+treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh."
+Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The
+imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are
+the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining
+fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the
+young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother
+and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the
+expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and
+divineness in life. The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until
+it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds
+its Father. The wise men found a King to worship; they were not
+following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness. Our
+instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its
+appropriate satisfaction. Christ completes our human childhood with
+divine Fatherhood. He that hath seen him hath seen the father.
+
+These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to
+Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been
+laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no
+sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy
+Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of
+Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his
+"Last Supper" because he feared their splendor would distract attention
+from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St.
+Peter's dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting
+the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child.
+Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his
+colossal genius. Shakespeare, "with the best brain in six thousand
+years," who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination
+over all our life, wrote in his will: "I commend my soul into the hands
+of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only
+merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life
+everlasting." Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many
+the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the
+invocation, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love."
+
+Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing
+except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly
+obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It
+would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the
+remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him
+and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written
+about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books
+that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and
+Cæsar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain
+of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the
+writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in
+like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung
+about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and
+the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable
+testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.
+
+About the first use to which any notable invention is put is to spread
+the gospel of Jesus. The very first book printed on a printing press was
+the Bible, and this wonderful and perhaps greatest human invention has
+been busier printing this book than any other to this day and multiplies
+its copies by the hundred million over the world. The newspaper is a
+mighty means of spreading his principles. The railway and steamship
+carry his gospel, and the airship gives wings to the same good news.
+Telegraph and telephone flash it, and wireless waves set the ether over
+whole continents and oceans aquiver with the messages of Jesus Christ.
+The sewing machine sews for him, the typewriter writes for him, and even
+battle ships and bayonets may fight for him. Sooner or later every
+inventor must lay his magic machine at his feet. For him the statesman
+legislates, the scientist investigates, the author writes, the artist
+paints and the singer sings. In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing
+all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his
+feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining
+heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his
+service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his
+feet.
+
+Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every
+century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of
+the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this
+Child, worn deep by millions of feet. The nations are beginning to come.
+By and by these converging paths will be crowded and all the ends of the
+earth shall bring their gold and shall worship at his feet.
+
+What is the explanation of the mighty, worldwide, attractive power of
+this Child? There is only one adequate explanation: "He shall save his
+people from their sins." The world is tired of men who come to save it
+with programmes only an inch long; who have nothing better to propose
+than longer laws and cleaner sanitation; who, unmindful of the
+experiment in Eden, would have us believe that if we were only placed in
+a pleasant garden where we had plenty to eat and little to do we would
+all be good. The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its
+unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty
+to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are
+blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and
+beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like
+music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is
+the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. Let us now go
+even unto Bethlehem while the song is in the air and see this Child and
+worship at his feet.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?
+
+
+When we come to think of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and
+disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long
+preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected
+some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions
+are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a
+child. Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece
+of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not
+have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era
+he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the
+electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or
+knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and
+shower material comforts on the world?
+
+This thought grows out of our blind materialism which leads us to think
+that matter is the master of mind, circumstance more important than
+character and the things of the body than the things of the spirit. But
+material improvements do not necessarily improve men. The locomotive has
+little relation to character. It picks a man up at one point and drops
+him at another the same man he was. If he is selfish and wicked at the
+beginning of the journey, he is just as selfish and wicked at its end.
+It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little
+improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing
+material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly
+was it rotting at the core.
+
+But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting
+regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not
+give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific
+ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the
+intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions
+of money. Shakespeare gave the world no new machine, but he opened the
+eyes of men to see heavenly visions and thus enriched them with
+treasures above all the gold of the world. Martin Luther invented no
+steam engine or sewing machine, but he taught men the rights of
+conscience and created our modern liberties. No material thing, however
+powerful and splendid, can make a better world: this work calls for
+better men. Therefore when God brings into the world a child endowed
+with superior intellectual and moral power, though his gift is only a
+babe and seems insignificant and hardly worth counting among so many,
+yet he has sent one of the greatest gifts of which his omnipotence is
+capable. An old German schoolmaster always took his hat off to each new
+boy that came into his school, never knowing what elements of genius
+might have been mixed in his newly molded brain. When Erasmus came out
+of that school his prophetic instinct was justified. Never despise a
+child, for in it sleeps some of the omnipotence and worth of God.
+
+But the Child which God gave the world as its Christmas gift was no
+merely human child however richly endowed. This Child was human and was
+born in time, but he was also divine and came forth from eternity. The
+possibilities that were sleeping in this Child were foreseen by the
+prophet Isaiah in the names that were prophetically given him, every
+name being a window through which we can look in upon his personality
+and power, every title being one of his crowns: "His name shall be
+called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
+Peace." All these powers and possibilities are incarnated in this Child,
+and he is working them out in a redeemed world. God made no mistake,
+then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave
+the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born.
+All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one
+root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill
+it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad
+in the beauty of this Child.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A World Without Christmas
+
+
+What would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of
+the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to
+trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade
+into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their
+interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days.
+The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers
+would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and
+hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on
+Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak
+just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on
+the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the
+first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home
+gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor.
+The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and
+take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain
+at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.
+
+Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar.
+There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place
+on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other
+events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to
+blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in
+truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew
+history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through
+the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly
+every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our
+schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our
+literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we
+would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of
+purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into
+the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop
+all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We
+would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no
+hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and
+be wrapped in night.
+
+Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world
+and leave us as "infants crying in the night, infants crying for the
+light, and with no language but a cry"?
+
+
+
+
+XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?
+
+
+But has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a
+night? Has the angels' song survived the World War? Have not its notes
+of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned
+and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of
+monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was
+not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and
+spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the
+earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry
+voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These
+ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may
+well give us pause.
+
+But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.
+The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems
+blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds
+roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had
+never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of
+thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm
+passes their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their
+song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still
+unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt
+it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the
+earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in
+verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.
+
+The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the
+voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns
+are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up
+in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing
+away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all
+men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and Cæsar
+and Napoleon and the Kaiser--mark the anticlimax!--are gone, their
+swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the
+same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice
+was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was
+he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the
+Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the
+storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even
+when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into
+form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm
+in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is
+still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a
+majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and
+wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted
+before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the
+greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of
+the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be
+the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets
+of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which "the kindly earth shall
+slumber, lapt in universal law." Then shall the angels' Christmas song
+break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
+notes, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
+whom he is well pleased."
+
+
+
+
+XXI. The Light of the World
+
+
+Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
+constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions
+were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
+stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
+irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
+Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
+itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
+terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
+where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
+pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
+despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
+Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
+human heart cried out that life
+
+    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
+    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
+    And we are here as on a darkling plain
+    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
+    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
+
+Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck
+in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with
+heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle--symbol and
+prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until
+he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that
+little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing
+light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his
+light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.
+
+This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a
+wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and
+its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining
+of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of
+Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot
+live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from
+his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it
+not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and
+dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match
+and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the
+muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father's house. He lifts
+life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.
+
+As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
+there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so
+from the pierced hand of Christ there shines a blaze of light that
+penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this
+Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is
+the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our
+gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are
+scintillations of this Light.
+
+
+O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin
+not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of
+bitterness and despair. Shine upon us with the light of thy truth and
+thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our
+Father's house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning
+into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may
+nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation
+Of Christmas, by James H. Snowden
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14629 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14629 ***</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="cover-box"><a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="cover-img" src="images/cover-s.jpg" title="[Cover]" alt="[Illustration]" width="318" height="546" />
+</a><div class="caption">[Cover]</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="jacket-box"><a href="images/jacket.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="jacket-img" src="images/jacket-s.jpg" title="[Repeating pattern from inside dust jacket]" alt="[Illustration]" width="319" height="155" />
+</a><div class="caption">[Repeating pattern from inside dust jacket]</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="jacketflap-box">
+<div id="jacketflap-frame">
+<div class="jacketflap">
+
+<div class="title">A Wonderful Night</div>
+
+<div class="authorship">By <span class="author">James H. Snowden</span></div>
+
+
+<div class="illustrators">Decorations by<br />
+Maud and Miska Petersham</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="acorns1-box"><a href="images/acorns.png">
+<img class="illustration" id="acorns1-img" src="images/acorns-s.png" title="[Acorns]" alt="" width="20" height="13" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="first-text-dropcap">
+<span class="first-word">Nights</span> differ as much as days. Some nights have witnessed great events
+and been charged with ethical significance in the history of the world.
+One such night stands forth crowned with supreme distinction, the night
+that heard angels sing, and was starred with the Birth of Bethlehem.
+This book treats the various events and steps that led to the central
+wonder and interprets the story in terms of its significance today and
+invests it with poetic light.
+</p>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="acorns2-box"><a href="images/acorns.png">
+<img class="illustration" id="acorns2-img" src="images/acorns-s.png" title="[Acorns]" alt="" width="20" height="13" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="publisher">The Macmillan Company</div>
+<div class="pub-ny">Publishers <span style="letter-spacing: 0.25em">::</span> New York</div>
+
+</div></div>
+<div class="caption">[Dust jacket flap]</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="title1-box"><a href="images/title.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="title1-img" src="images/title-s.jpg" title="A Wonderful Night" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]" width="428" height="119" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="publisher">
+<div class="illustration" id="mmco-box"><a href="images/mmco.png">
+<img class="illustration" id="mmco-img" src="images/mmco-s.png" title="The MM Co." alt="[Illustration: The MM Co. [logo]]" width="164" height="53" />
+</a>
+</div>
+<div class="division">The Macmillan Company
+<div class="locations">New York &#183; Boston &#183; Chichago &#183; Dallas<br />
+Atlanta &#183; San Francisco</div></div>
+
+<div class="division">Macmillan &#38; Co., <span class="limited">Limited</span>
+<div class="locations">London &#183; Bombay &#183; Calcutta<br />
+Melbourne</div></div>
+
+<div class="division">The Macmillan Co. of Canada, <span class="limited">Ltd.</span>
+<div class="locations">Toronto</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="frontispiece-box"><a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="frontispiece-img" src="images/frontis-s.jpg" title="[Frontispiece]" alt="[Illustration]" width="430" height="681" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="titlep-box"><a href="images/titlep.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="titlep-img" src="images/titlep-s.jpg" title="[Title Page]" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night / An Interpretation of Christmas / By James H. Snowden / Decorations by Maud and Miska Petersham / The Macmillan Company Publishers MCMXIX]" width="436" height="720" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="date">Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919.</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Contents</h1>
+
+
+<div id="chapter">Chapter</div>
+
+<ol class="contents">
+<li><a href="#i" class="link">An Age of Wonders</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ii" class="link">Preparation for the Event</a></li>
+<li><a href="#iii" class="link">A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy</a></li>
+<li><a href="#iv" class="link">An Historical Event</a></li>
+<li><a href="#v" class="link">Simplicity of the Narrative</a></li>
+<li><a href="#vi" class="link">The Town of Bethlehem</a></li>
+<li><a href="#vii" class="link">The Wonderful Night Draws Near</a></li>
+<li><a href="#viii" class="link">The Birth</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ix" class="link">No Room in the Inn</a></li>
+<li><a href="#x" class="link">Angel Ministry</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xi" class="link">Angels and Shepherds</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xii" class="link">The Concert in a Sheep Pasture</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xiii" class="link">The First Visitors to Bethlehem</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xiv" class="link">The Star and the Wise Men</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xv" class="link">A Frightened King</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xvi" class="link">An Impotent Destroyer</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xvii" class="link">Splendid Gifts</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xviii" class="link">Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xix" class="link">A World Without Christmas</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xx" class="link">Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xxi" class="link">The Light of the World</a></li>
+</ol>
+
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="epigraph">
+<p class="stanza">
+O Little town of Bethleham,<br />
+<span class="il1">How still we see thee lie!</span><br />
+Above thy deep and dreamless sleep<br />
+<span class="il1">The silent stars go by:</span><br />
+Yet in thy dark streets shineth<br />
+<span class="il1">The everlasting Light;</span><br />
+The hopes and fears of all the years<br />
+<span class="il1">Are met in thee to-night.</span>
+</p>
+<p class="bq-credit">
+&#8212;Phillips Brooks.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="title2-box"><a href="images/title.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="title2-img" src="images/title-s.jpg" title="A Wonderful Night" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]" width="428" height="119" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="titleb-box"><a href="images/titleb.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="titleb-img" src="images/titleb-s.jpg" title="A Wonderful Night" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]" width="437" height="184" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h1 style="margin-top: 0em"><a id="i" name="i">I. An Age of Wonders</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/i.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="i-img" src="images/i-s.jpg" title="W" alt="W" width="144" height="198" /></a>e</span>
+live in an age of wonders. Great discoveries and startling events
+crowd upon us so fast that we have scarcely recovered from the
+bewildering effects of one before another comes, and we are thus kept in
+a constant whirl of excitement. The heavens are full of shooting stars,
+and while watching one we are distracted by another. So frequent is this
+experience that our nerves almost refuse to respond to the shock of a
+new sensation. We are no longer surprised at surprises. The marvelous
+has become the commonplace, and the unexpected is what we now expect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its
+wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have
+become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they
+were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any
+wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic
+eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more
+revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French
+Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the
+sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century
+created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and
+startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in
+their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.
+The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human
+brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing,
+which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and
+every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and
+in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists
+of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more
+useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the
+hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest
+fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our
+modern magic machines than to part with these.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer
+and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow
+the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in
+eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new
+wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and
+the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in
+the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages,
+but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not
+die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist&#8217;s
+discoveries and the inventor&#8217;s cunning devices: the greatest marvel is
+not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the
+present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning. On that
+morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that
+heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the
+world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time.
+Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world.
+Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as
+mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such
+a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely
+greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out
+of a new star in the sky.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="ii" name="ii">II. Preparation for the Event</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/ii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="ii-img" src="images/ii-s.jpg" title="N" alt="N" width="144" height="196" /></a>ear</span>
+events may have remote causes. The river that sweeps by us cannot
+be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills.
+The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin
+in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wide circle of causes converged towards this birth; all the spokes of
+the ancient world ran into this hub. When Abraham started west as an
+emigrant out of Babylonia, &#8220;not knowing whither he went,&#8221; he was
+unconsciously traveling towards Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries
+headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that
+bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest
+and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar,
+sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all
+so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of
+the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could
+spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and
+righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an
+atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people
+and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these
+ideas were rooted in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pagan achievements, also, &#8220;the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
+that was Rome,&#8221; were roots to this same tree of preparation for the
+coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories
+of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by
+its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally
+impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain
+nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made
+positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a
+marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible
+and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed
+it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the
+gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw
+light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the
+world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in
+no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The
+harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months
+before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through
+millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The
+centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from
+Abraham to Mary, &#8220;but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
+his Son.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="iii" name="iii">III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/iii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="iii-img" src="images/iii-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="143" height="198" /></a>his</span>
+birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had
+cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years.
+Through all their national vicissitudes, enslavement in Egypt,
+wanderings in, the wilderness, establishment and growth in the promised
+land, internal division and external captivity in Babylon, restoration,
+and final subjection to the Romans, this hope burned on the horizon of
+their future as a fixed star. It was this that ever led them on and held
+them together and made it impossible to break or subdue their spirit.
+This was the dawn that filled all their dark and bitter days with the
+rosy glow of hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the Messiah came not, and as the centuries slowly rolled along they
+must have grown weary and at times have doubted. Sceptics scoffed,
+&#8220;Where is the sign of his coming?&#8221; But the great heart of the nation
+remained true to its trust, while prophets caught glimpses of the coming
+glory and white-headed, trembling old saints prayed that they might live
+a little longer and not die before he came. Perhaps this hope was never
+at a lower ebb than when the Roman power was ruthlessly grinding the
+nation down into the dust. But suddenly at this darkest hour a blinding
+light burnt through the floor of heaven and shepherds ran about
+announcing that the Messiah was born! Who can imagine the surprise, the
+wonder, the overwhelming amazement this news created? How many were
+eager to go to Bethlehem and see this thing which had come to pass! And
+when it was found to be true, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and
+old men blessed God and said, &#8220;Lord, now lettest thou thy servants
+depart in peace.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet why should they have wondered at God&#8217;s faithfulness in keeping his
+promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it
+to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless
+in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with
+God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to
+doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so
+far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our
+thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they have been repeated
+to us until we are familiar with them, when they are fulfilled we wonder
+at the faithfulness that will bring so great things to pass.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="iv" name="iv">IV. An Historical Event</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/iv.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="iv-img" src="images/iv-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="144" height="197" /></a>he</span>
+story starts with the place and time of the Saviour&#8217;s birth. Jesus
+was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are
+many myths and legends floating through the world that are often
+beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and
+are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the
+imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names
+and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully
+and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human
+heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on
+which to build our faith. Heathen religions are generally woven of this
+legendary stuff. The Greek and Roman divinities were all mythical. But
+the scientific spirit has swept these imaginary deities out of our sky
+and rendered belief in them impossible. Our religion must be rooted in
+reality and cannot live in clouds, however beautifully they may be
+colored. We refuse hospitality to anything but fact. Give us names and
+dates, is our demand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bible responds to this requirement. Christianity is an historical
+religion. The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement
+as &#8220;Once upon a time,&#8221; but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea. The town is
+there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born. The
+narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king.
+History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of
+iniquity. These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly
+unbeliever can plausibly dispute. So the gospel sets its record in the
+rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of
+Judea. Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem. We are not,
+then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact.
+This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not
+afraid of the geographer&#8217;s map and the historian&#8217;s pen. The Christmas
+story is not another beautiful legend in the world&#8217;s gallery of myths,
+but is sober and solid reality; its story is history. Our religion is
+truth, and we will worship at no other altar.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="v" name="v">V. Simplicity of the Narrative</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/v.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="v-img" src="images/v-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="143" height="195" /></a>hough</span>
+surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier
+burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the
+simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels
+of the gospels. This event has inspired poets and painters and has been
+embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation.
+Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy
+conception of the scene. But the evangelists had no such purpose or
+thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is
+perfect art. They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax
+collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of
+skill or literary art. Yet all the stylists and artists of the world
+stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme
+achievement. No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word
+is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their
+own eloquent and marvelous tale. The inspired writers mixed no
+imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to
+tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the
+trustworthiness of their narrative. These men did not follow cunningly
+devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our
+Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="vi" name="vi">VI. The Town of Bethlehem</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/vi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="vi-img" src="images/vi-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="146" height="196" /></a>he</span>
+land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range
+of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a
+spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur
+shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal
+bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut
+in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into
+the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and
+wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead
+Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the present time the town has eight thousand inhabitants. Its
+flat-roofed houses are well built and its narrow streets are clean. It
+is a busy place, its chief industry being the manufacture of souvenirs
+of olive wood which are sold throughout the Christian world. Its
+principal church is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a
+cave that is one of the most sacred and memorable spots on the globe. It
+is believed that this cave is the place where Christ was born, and a
+silver star inlaid in the stone floor is intended to mark the exact
+spot. It was then used as the stable of the adjoining inn, and in its
+stone manger the infant Jesus may have been laid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the time of this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred
+people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic
+metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and
+seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for
+situation, magnificent in its architecture, sacred in its associations
+and world-wide and splendid in its fame, should have been honored with
+this supreme event in the history of the Jews. But an ancient prophet,
+while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on
+this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused
+it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. &#8220;But thou, Bethlehem
+Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
+thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
+goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.&#8221; And so proud
+Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the
+humble village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of
+obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to
+nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The
+most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble
+cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most
+celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is
+a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in
+the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and
+Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its
+masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It
+was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world
+should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and
+that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="vii" name="vii">VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/vii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="vii-img" src="images/vii-s.jpg" title="&#8220;N" alt="&#8220;N" width="144" height="195" /></a>ow</span>
+it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from C&#230;sar
+Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled.&#8221; This is the point at
+which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of
+our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end
+in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all
+things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell
+where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start
+the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off
+place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start
+with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. C&#230;sar
+Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be
+taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a
+richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December
+and March, B.&#160;C. 5&#8211;4, that such a census was being taken in the province
+of Syria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In accordance with ancient Jewish usage, all citizens repaired to the
+tribe and village from which they were descended, and were there
+enrolled. In the town of Nazareth in the north lived Joseph, a village
+carpenter, and Mary, his espoused wife, who though a virgin was great
+with child, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the mystery
+having been revealed to her and her betrothed husband. They were both
+descended from the royal line of David, and therefore to Bethlehem they
+must go. With us such a journey of eighty miles would mean no more than
+stepping on a railway car at nine o&#8217;clock in the morning and stepping
+off at noon. But with them it meant a toilsome journey on foot of
+several days. Slowly they wended their way southward, led on by the
+irresistible hand of C&#230;sar, far away on his throne. The ancient Hebrew
+prophecy of Micah and the imperial decree of C&#230;sar thus marvelously
+fitted into each other and worked together. Mary must have known of this
+prophecy, and we know not with what a sense of mystery and fear and joy
+she drew near to the predicted place where the Messiah was to be born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bethlehem sits like a crown on its rocky ridge. At length its walls and
+towers loomed in the distance, and then presently up the steep road
+climbed the carpenter and his espoused wife and passed through the gate
+into the village. When they came to the inn, it was already crowded with
+visitors, driven thither by the decree of C&#230;sar that had set all
+Palestine in commotion. In connection with the inn, generally the
+central space of its four-square inclosure, but probably in this case a
+cave in the limestone rock, was a stable, or place for the camels and
+horses and cattle of the guests. Among these oriental people it was (and
+is) no uncommon thing for travelers, when the chambers of the inn were
+fully occupied, to make a bed of straw and spend the night in this
+place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the
+Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It
+was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this,
+though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors
+would doubtless have found better accommodations.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="viii" name="viii">VIII. The Birth</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/viii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="viii-img" src="images/viii-s.jpg" title="I" alt="I" width="145" height="197" /></a>n</span>
+that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears
+to have been no woman&#8217;s hand there to minister to her, she herself
+wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no
+other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from
+which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on
+that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is
+now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill
+the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes
+from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child
+and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all
+imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and
+looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed
+that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a
+divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person,
+and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the
+birth of a C&#230;sar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but
+stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon
+the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been
+disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a
+great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse
+before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis
+of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power
+and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but
+in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to
+save the world.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="ix" name="ix">IX. No Room in the Inn</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/ix.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="ix-img" src="images/ix-s.jpg" title="&#8220;T" alt="&#8220;T" width="144" height="196" /></a>here</span>
+was no room for them in the inn.&#8221; And so Jesus came into a world
+where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all
+this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his
+coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols,
+after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden
+dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was
+not wanted! &#8220;He came unto his own, and his own received him not.&#8221; Was
+there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel
+disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this
+matter, no lack of hospitality in the keeper or the guests of the inn,
+as the village was overcrowded, and the fact that these late arrivals
+were compelled to put up with a place out in the enclosure, possibly a
+cave, where the animals were kept, was no intended incivility or
+uncommon hardship. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the reason, the
+fact was that there was no room for Jesus in that inn the first night he
+spent in this world, and this fact was sadly prophetic of his reception
+in the world he came to save.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were few places where he did find welcome: generally there was no
+room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to
+expect it. And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of
+this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive
+presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places
+where he wanted to be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jesus was not wanted in his own country: Herod tried to leave no room
+for him there. He was not wanted in his own town: his neighbors tried
+to hurl him down a cliff to his death. He was not wanted in his own
+church: its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant
+fury and at last crucified him. Even his own family found it hard to
+make room for him in their inner circle. Small room was there in this
+evil world for this pure and lowly spirit. Then why did he come to it?
+Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it. Small room do we
+still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and
+out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin.
+Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the
+world? Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day
+than ever before, and this room is ever widening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her
+babe! Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out
+of which the cattle were fed. How much shall we miss if we do not have
+room for Christ? There is one world where there is room for Jesus and
+where he is wanted: heaven. And all who are like him shall find room
+with him in its many mansions.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="x" name="x">X. Angel Ministry</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/x.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="x-img" src="images/x-s.jpg" title="J" alt="J" width="144" height="195" /></a>erusalem</span>
+and Rome knew nothing of this event. The High Priest offered
+the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the
+coming of the true Sacrifice, and C&#230;sar slept that night without a dream
+that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a
+worldwide kingdom. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew
+it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and &#8220;angels
+seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in
+songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just
+touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the
+surface of the sea.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the
+flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its
+music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible
+is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the
+Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning
+light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come
+upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door
+of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling
+the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad
+tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened
+him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his
+bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb
+and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had
+announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so
+they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall
+come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though
+invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little
+luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to
+be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of
+their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying
+through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are
+always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the
+spirit of Lazarus to Abraham&#8217;s bosom, so they still may bear departing
+spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We
+know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of
+angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly
+pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often
+they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and
+grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through
+all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to
+measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. But the
+finest and best things cannot be grasped by these coarse processes.
+Sunbeams cannot be weighed on hay-scales, and gorgeously-colored bits of
+cloud cannot be caught in a crucible. We can weigh the new-born baby,
+but not the mother&#8217;s love for her child. A telescope cannot see an
+angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision.
+There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened
+that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark
+to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns
+float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that
+do the will of God and wait on us.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xi" name="xi">XI. Angels and Shepherds</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xi-img" src="images/xi-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="143" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful
+news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in
+startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there
+had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it
+and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An
+angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall
+he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the
+glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and
+call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and
+then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that
+holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that
+prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.
+Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not
+God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace
+and administers his kingdom?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God&#8217;s way more than
+ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:
+God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most
+startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the
+birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the
+gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where
+there were more sheep than men to hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride! God
+can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler
+soul. The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace,
+and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place. The gospel is no
+respecter of places and persons. It may be preached in a costly church
+or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school
+house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture. In simplicity
+and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life. It
+has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar
+and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xii" name="xii">XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xii-img" src="images/xii-s.jpg" title="I" alt="I" width="145" height="197" /></a>n</span>
+the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping
+watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest
+duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven. The night did not
+seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars
+burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of
+any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on
+the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and
+were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were
+flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth&#8217;s
+atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from
+the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all
+the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir.
+Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet
+only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it. The encircling hills
+were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes
+were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like
+the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price. Musical
+artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of
+a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but
+angels will sing for anybody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The simple-minded shepherds were sore afraid at this outburst of
+heavenly music, as wiser people would have been. An angel voice sang the
+solo:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote class="prose">
+<p>
+    Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
+    which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day
+    in the city of David a Saviour,  which is Christ the Lord. And this
+    shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling
+    clothes, and lying in a manger.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+&#8220;Be not afraid!&#8221; Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the
+thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come
+too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but
+the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to
+release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into
+the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a
+marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all
+its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor
+over hills and vales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good tidings announced the birth of a Saviour, and this is the best
+news this sin-stricken world can hear, for sin is the root of all our
+fear and misery. Back of every bitter tear lies a guilty thought or
+deed. This connection is often visible upon the surface and stabs us in
+the face, and then it may lie hidden under many generations, but it is
+always there. Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights
+our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly
+tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves
+will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed
+into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world,
+and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and
+fill all the centuries with song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Definite directions were given for finding the new-born Saviour in the
+city of David, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. The
+angelic message was not simply a song in the air, a halo of celestial
+light, a splendid but fading vision, but it bound itself down to
+definite places and circumstances and left something solid. Again we
+note that this thing, was not done in a corner and is not afraid of
+facts. Jesus was a true human child and took upon him our form down to
+his infant clothes. The Christ is a great wonder in his divine
+personality, ever transcending our utmost comprehension, but we can
+understand his swaddling bands. Christianity is not all mystery, but it
+also comes down close around us and embodies itself in many plain facts
+and duties. &#8220;Ye shall find the babe.&#8221; The shepherds were not left to
+wander around in uncertainty, but sent direct to the place. Christ is
+not hidden from us, clear directions point out the place where he is,
+and every soul that seeks him shall find him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The angel solo broke out into a heavenly chorus which gave a broad
+interpretation of the meaning of the birth of Christ:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote class="prose">
+<p>
+    Glory to God in the highest,
+</p>
+<p>
+    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and
+beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight
+shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ
+manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in
+devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and
+the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams
+through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is
+concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his
+Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chorus next pronounces peace upon men. Divine glory and human good
+will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they
+at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when
+truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper
+place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at
+enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens;
+human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and
+laden with fruit. As the glory of the sun is transformed into rosy buds
+and sweet fruit, so is the glory of God transformed into human good
+will. The glory of God and the peace of men are never in antagonism, but
+are always complementary and harmonious, they are the two sides of the
+same gospel, two parts of the same song. They cannot be separated and
+must go together; in glorifying God we make peace among men, and in
+making peace among men we glorify God.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xiii" name="xiii">XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xiii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xiii-img" src="images/xiii-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="145" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+angels&#8217; song died away in the solemn silence, and the shepherds were
+left alone. It was a critical hour with them. Would they follow this
+vision and turn it into victory, or would they let it vanish with the
+last echo of the song and relapse into the old dull routine? No, they
+did not let it pass, and life was never the same to them again. &#8220;Let us
+now go,&#8221; they said, &#8220;even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
+come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.&#8221; They translated
+vision into action and presently were climbing the rocky slope to
+Bethlehem. Had these shepherds not followed up the message their
+knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We
+hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we
+let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message
+does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever
+swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of
+worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. &#8220;Let us now go and
+see this thing.&#8221; We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour.
+Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see
+Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and
+obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#8220;And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe
+lying in the manger.&#8221; Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife
+of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the
+desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the
+passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple
+robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and
+make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the
+Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered
+with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and
+shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes
+treated with more cruel irony? But God&#8217;s ways are not as our ways.
+Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get
+the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward
+from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very
+poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of
+humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a
+pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart
+of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into
+humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and
+toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the
+common people heard him gladly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. &#8220;Ye shall find a babe,&#8221; was
+the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, &#8220;And they found the
+babe.&#8221; When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint
+us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this
+need he has created bubbling springs and sparkling streams. He gave us
+hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and
+orchards of rosy fruit. He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find
+it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart. He set
+eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the
+Infinite, hearts that cry, &#8220;Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us.&#8221;
+Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of
+the soul be disappointed and mocked? &#8220;And they found the babe,&#8221; is the
+answer to this need and promise. God sends us with all our deep needs
+and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be
+exactly and fully matched and satisfied. He that hath seen this Child
+hath seen the Father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make
+known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child. The
+gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the
+individual heart. We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that
+we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it. And the more we
+give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands
+as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea.
+Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which
+they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God
+hath highly exalted him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First angels and then shepherds: how startling the contrast. Jesus has
+deep affinities with both: on his divine side he is related to heaven,
+and on his human side he is related to earth. And the first men he drew
+to his side were shepherds, representatives of the common people. He did
+not come as a member of any special class, especially of the upper
+class. No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the
+great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the
+level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking
+hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from
+the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the
+spire&#8217;s gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time
+elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with C&#230;sar, but with shepherds,
+and then in three hundred years a Christian C&#230;sar sat on the throne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of
+Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands;
+and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost
+the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God.
+Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of
+society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it
+vertically from top to bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds
+are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. Shepherds would not
+get much out of Sir Isaac Newton, or a child out of Shakespeare, or a
+sorrowing heart out of Emerson. But every one can get milk and honey for
+his soul out of the gospel of Jesus. His wonderful words of life have
+the same sweetness and saving power for shepherd and scholar, peasant
+and prince. However lowly and unlettered one may be there is wide room
+for him around the manger of this Child.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xiv" name="xiv">XIV. The Star and the Wise Men</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xiv.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xiv-img" src="images/xiv-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="148" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+birth of Jesus created a new center for the world and set heaven and
+earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards
+him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds
+wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night,
+and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian
+priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars.
+Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world
+and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars
+were embodiments of deity. A new star in their sky, whatever it may have
+been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a
+religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of
+their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly
+vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and
+appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of
+the Jews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their
+own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety
+and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish
+king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was
+of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his
+divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their
+curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to
+worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of
+these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their
+religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their
+simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe.
+Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science
+and faith grew from more to more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of
+scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke
+of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and
+find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the
+profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God
+in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed
+at the side of this manger.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xv" name="xv">XV. A Frightened King</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xv.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xv-img" src="images/xv-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="146" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+inquiry of the wise men startled Jerusalem and frightened Herod. The
+proud metropolis had not yet heard the news. The immortal honor of
+having given birth to the Christ had been denied to her haughty brow and
+had become humble Bethlehem&#8217;s imperishable crown. The very name of king
+gave Herod a terrible shock. He was a usurper steeped in crime and was
+ever trembling on his throne. No hunted, white-faced, Russian Czar ever
+feared nihilist&#8217;s bomb more than he feared rebellion&#8217;s revolt and
+assassin&#8217;s knife. Rebel after rebel he had crushed into spattered brains
+and blood, and here was rumor of another Rival born under the shadow of
+his throne. Herod was troubled and his terror sent a strange wave and
+shudder of fear through the city. So the same gospel that made angels
+sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world,
+created consternation and trouble up in Herod&#8217;s palace and in his city.
+Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some.
+The good man&#8217;s presence is always the bad man&#8217;s condemnation and stirs
+hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according
+as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself
+is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xvi" name="xvi">XVI. An Impotent Destroyer</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xvi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xvi-img" src="images/xvi-s.jpg" title="H" alt="H" width="146" height="197" /></a>erod</span>
+took swift and thorough measures, as he thought, to crush his new
+rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where
+the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the
+beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own
+evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and
+complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be
+ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push
+their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man&#8217;s
+tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod&#8217;s question, put
+their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be
+born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an
+exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its
+spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against
+Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly
+pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no
+truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men
+will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent
+rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in
+Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and
+Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of
+his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored
+to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful
+persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not
+extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom
+been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him.
+Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even
+to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the
+rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire
+prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity
+would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that
+have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same
+yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our
+hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish
+and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle.
+Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our
+own door and even in our own hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were
+in Jerusalem&#8212;in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a
+monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly
+spirit&#8212;but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them
+on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in
+our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with
+divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in
+the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is
+a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and
+all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred
+with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xvii" name="xvii">XVII. Splendid Gifts</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xvii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xvii-img" src="images/xvii-s.jpg" title="&#8220;A" alt="&#8220;A" width="147" height="198" /></a>nd</span>
+they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his
+mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their
+treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.&#8221;
+Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The
+imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are
+the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining
+fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the
+young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother
+and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the
+expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and
+divineness in life. The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until
+it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds
+its Father. The wise men found a King to worship; they were not
+following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness. Our
+instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its
+appropriate satisfaction. Christ completes our human childhood with
+divine Fatherhood. He that hath seen him hath seen the father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to
+Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been
+laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no
+sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy
+Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of
+Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his
+&#8220;Last Supper&#8221; because he feared their splendor would distract attention
+from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St.
+Peter&#8217;s dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting
+the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child.
+Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his
+colossal genius. Shakespeare, &#8220;with the best brain in six thousand
+years,&#8221; who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination
+over all our life, wrote in his will: &#8220;I commend my soul into the hands
+of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only
+merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life
+everlasting.&#8221; Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many
+the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the
+invocation, &#8220;Strong Son of God, immortal Love.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing
+except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly
+obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It
+would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the
+remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him
+and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written
+about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books
+that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and
+C&#230;sar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain
+of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the
+writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in
+like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung
+about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and
+the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable
+testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About the first use to which any notable invention is put is to spread
+the gospel of Jesus. The very first book printed on a printing press was
+the Bible, and this wonderful and perhaps greatest human invention has
+been busier printing this book than any other to this day and multiplies
+its copies by the hundred million over the world. The newspaper is a
+mighty means of spreading his principles. The railway and steamship
+carry his gospel, and the airship gives wings to the same good news.
+Telegraph and telephone flash it, and wireless waves set the ether over
+whole continents and oceans aquiver with the messages of Jesus Christ.
+The sewing machine sews for him, the typewriter writes for him, and even
+battle ships and bayonets may fight for him. Sooner or later every
+inventor must lay his magic machine at his feet. For him the statesman
+legislates, the scientist investigates, the author writes, the artist
+paints and the singer sings. In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing
+all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his
+feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining
+heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his
+service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every
+century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of
+the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this
+Child, worn deep by millions of feet. The nations are beginning to come.
+By and by these converging paths will be crowded and all the ends of the
+earth shall bring their gold and shall worship at his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is the explanation of the mighty, worldwide, attractive power of
+this Child? There is only one adequate explanation: &#8220;He shall save his
+people from their sins.&#8221; The world is tired of men who come to save it
+with programmes only an inch long; who have nothing better to propose
+than longer laws and cleaner sanitation; who, unmindful of the
+experiment in Eden, would have us believe that if we were only placed in
+a pleasant garden where we had plenty to eat and little to do we would
+all be good. The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its
+unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty
+to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are
+blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and
+beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like
+music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is
+the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. Let us now go
+even unto Bethlehem while the song is in the air and see this Child and
+worship at his feet.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xviii" name="xviii">XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xviii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xviii-img" src="images/xviii-s.jpg" title="W" alt="W" width="148" height="198" /></a>hen</span>
+we come to think of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and
+disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long
+preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected
+some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions
+are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a
+child. Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece
+of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not
+have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era
+he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the
+electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or
+knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and
+shower material comforts on the world?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This thought grows out of our blind materialism which leads us to think
+that matter is the master of mind, circumstance more important than
+character and the things of the body than the things of the spirit. But
+material improvements do not necessarily improve men. The locomotive has
+little relation to character. It picks a man up at one point and drops
+him at another the same man he was. If he is selfish and wicked at the
+beginning of the journey, he is just as selfish and wicked at its end.
+It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little
+improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing
+material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly
+was it rotting at the core.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting
+regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not
+give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific
+ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the
+intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions
+of money. Shakespeare gave the world no new machine, but he opened the
+eyes of men to see heavenly visions and thus enriched them with
+treasures above all the gold of the world. Martin Luther invented no
+steam engine or sewing machine, but he taught men the rights of
+conscience and created our modern liberties. No material thing, however
+powerful and splendid, can make a better world: this work calls for
+better men. Therefore when God brings into the world a child endowed
+with superior intellectual and moral power, though his gift is only a
+babe and seems insignificant and hardly worth counting among so many,
+yet he has sent one of the greatest gifts of which his omnipotence is
+capable. An old German schoolmaster always took his hat off to each new
+boy that came into his school, never knowing what elements of genius
+might have been mixed in his newly molded brain. When Erasmus came out
+of that school his prophetic instinct was justified. Never despise a
+child, for in it sleeps some of the omnipotence and worth of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Child which God gave the world as its Christmas gift was no
+merely human child however richly endowed. This Child was human and was
+born in time, but he was also divine and came forth from eternity. The
+possibilities that were sleeping in this Child were foreseen by the
+prophet Isaiah in the names that were prophetically given him, every
+name being a window through which we can look in upon his personality
+and power, every title being one of his crowns: &#8220;His name shall be
+called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
+Peace.&#8221; All these powers and possibilities are incarnated in this Child,
+and he is working them out in a redeemed world. God made no mistake,
+then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave
+the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born.
+All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one
+root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill
+it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad
+in the beauty of this Child.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xix" name="xix">XIX. A World Without Christmas</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xix.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xix-img" src="images/xix-s.jpg" title="W" alt="W" width="147" height="197" /></a>hat</span>
+would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of
+the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to
+trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade
+into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their
+interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days.
+The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers
+would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and
+hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on
+Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak
+just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on
+the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the
+first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home
+gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor.
+The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and
+take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain
+at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar.
+There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place
+on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other
+events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to
+blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in
+truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew
+history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through
+the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly
+every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our
+schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our
+literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we
+would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of
+purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into
+the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop
+all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We
+would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no
+hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and
+be wrapped in night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world
+and leave us as &#8220;infants crying in the night, infants crying for the
+light, and with no language but a cry&#8221;?
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xx" name="xx">XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xx.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xx-img" src="images/xx-s.jpg" title="B" alt="B" width="148" height="196" /></a>ut</span>
+has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a
+night? Has the angels&#8217; song survived the World War? Have not its notes
+of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned
+and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of
+monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was
+not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and
+spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels&#8217; song that gladdened the
+earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry
+voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These
+ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may
+well give us pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.
+The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems
+blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds
+roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had
+never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of
+thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm
+passes their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their
+song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still
+unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt
+it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the
+earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in
+verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the
+voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns
+are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up
+in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing
+away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all
+men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and C&#230;sar
+and Napoleon and the Kaiser&#8212;mark the anticlimax!&#8212;are gone, their
+swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the
+same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice
+was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was
+he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the
+Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the
+storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even
+when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into
+form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm
+in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is
+still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a
+majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and
+wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted
+before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the
+greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of
+the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be
+the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets
+of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which &#8220;the kindly earth shall
+slumber, lapt in universal law.&#8221; Then shall the angels&#8217; Christmas song
+break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
+notes, &#8220;Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
+whom he is well pleased.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xxi" name="xxi">XXI. The Light of the World</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xxi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xxi-img" src="images/xxi-s.jpg" title="J" alt="J" width="148" height="196" /></a>esus</span>
+was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
+constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions
+were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
+stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
+irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
+Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
+itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
+terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
+where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
+pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
+despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
+Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
+human heart cried out that life
+</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="stanza">
+    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,<br />
+    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;<br />
+    And we are here as on a darkling plain<br />
+    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,<br />
+    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck
+in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with
+heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle&#8212;symbol and
+prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until
+he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that
+little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing
+light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his
+light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a
+wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and
+its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining
+of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of
+Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot
+live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from
+his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it
+not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and
+dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match
+and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the
+muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father&#8217;s house. He lifts
+life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
+there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so
+from the pierced hand of Christ there shines a blaze of light that
+penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this
+Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is
+the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our
+gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are
+scintillations of this Light.
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin
+not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of
+bitterness and despair. Shine upon us with the light of thy truth and
+thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our
+Father&#8217;s house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning
+into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may
+nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="end-box"><a href="images/end.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="end-img" src="images/end-s.jpg" title="" alt="[Illustration]" width="422" height="180" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div id="printed-in-usa">Printed in the United States of America</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14629 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14629 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14629)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of
+Christmas, by James H. Snowden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas
+
+Author: James H. Snowden
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2005 [EBook #14629]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WONDERFUL NIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Ben Beasley and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Wonderful Night
+
+By JAMES H. SNOWDEN
+
+
+Decorations by
+Maud and Miska Petersham
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nights differ as much as days. Some nights have witnessed great events
+and been charged with ethical significance in the history of the world.
+One such night stands forth crowned with supreme distinction, the night
+that heard angels sing, and was starred with the Birth of Bethlehem.
+This book treats the various events and steps that led to the central
+wonder and interprets the story in terms of its significance today and
+invests it with poetic light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
+
+[Transcriber's note: The above text is taken from the front flap of the
+dust jacket.]
+
+
+
+
+A Wonderful Night
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICHAGO · DALLAS
+ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+TORONTO
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A Wonderful
+Night
+
+An Interpretation of
+Christmas
+
+By James H. Snowden
+
+Decorations by Maud and
+Miska Petersham
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Macmillan Company
+Publishers MCMXIX
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+    I. An Age of Wonders
+
+   II. Preparation for the Event
+
+  III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy
+
+   IV. An Historical Event
+
+    V. Simplicity of the Narrative
+
+   VI. The Town of Bethlehem
+
+  VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near
+
+ VIII. The Birth
+
+   IX. No Room in the Inn
+
+    X. Angel Ministry
+
+   XI. Angels and Shepherds
+
+  XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture
+
+ XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem
+
+  XIV. The Star and the Wise Men
+
+   XV. A Frightened King
+
+  XVI. An Impotent Destroyer
+
+ XVII. Splendid Gifts
+
+XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?
+
+  XIX. A World Without Christmas
+
+   XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?
+
+  XXI. The Light of the World
+
+
+
+
+O Little town of Bethleham,
+  How still we see thee lie!
+Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
+  The silent stars go by:
+Yet in thy dark streets shineth
+  The everlasting Light;
+The hopes and fears of all the years
+  Are met in thee to-night.
+
+                  --Phillips Brooks.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]
+
+
+
+
+I. An Age of Wonders
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: The first letter of each chapter is in the form of
+an illustrated dropped capital.]
+
+We live in an age of wonders. Great discoveries and startling events
+crowd upon us so fast that we have scarcely recovered from the
+bewildering effects of one before another comes, and we are thus kept in
+a constant whirl of excitement. The heavens are full of shooting stars,
+and while watching one we are distracted by another. So frequent is this
+experience that our nerves almost refuse to respond to the shock of a
+new sensation. We are no longer surprised at surprises. The marvelous
+has become the commonplace, and the unexpected is what we now expect.
+
+Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its
+wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have
+become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they
+were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any
+wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic
+eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more
+revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French
+Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the
+sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century
+created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and
+startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.
+
+The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in
+their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.
+The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human
+brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing,
+which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and
+every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and
+in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists
+of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more
+useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the
+hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest
+fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our
+modern magic machines than to part with these.
+
+The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer
+and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow
+the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in
+eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new
+wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and
+the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in
+the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages,
+but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not
+die.
+
+Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist's
+discoveries and the inventor's cunning devices: the greatest marvel is
+not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the
+present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning. On that
+morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that
+heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the
+world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time.
+Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world.
+Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as
+mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such
+a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely
+greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out
+of a new star in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+II. Preparation for the Event
+
+
+Near events may have remote causes. The river that sweeps by us cannot
+be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills.
+The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin
+in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.
+
+A wide circle of causes converged towards this birth; all the spokes of
+the ancient world ran into this hub. When Abraham started west as an
+emigrant out of Babylonia, "not knowing whither he went," he was
+unconsciously traveling towards Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries
+headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that
+bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest
+and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar,
+sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all
+so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of
+the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could
+spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and
+righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an
+atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people
+and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these
+ideas were rooted in the world.
+
+Pagan achievements, also, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
+that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the
+coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories
+of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by
+its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally
+impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain
+nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made
+positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a
+marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible
+and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed
+it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the
+gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw
+light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.
+
+God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the
+world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in
+no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The
+harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months
+before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through
+millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The
+centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from
+Abraham to Mary, "but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
+his Son."
+
+
+
+
+III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy
+
+
+This birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had
+cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years.
+Through all their national vicissitudes, enslavement in Egypt,
+wanderings in, the wilderness, establishment and growth in the promised
+land, internal division and external captivity in Babylon, restoration,
+and final subjection to the Romans, this hope burned on the horizon of
+their future as a fixed star. It was this that ever led them on and held
+them together and made it impossible to break or subdue their spirit.
+This was the dawn that filled all their dark and bitter days with the
+rosy glow of hope.
+
+Yet the Messiah came not, and as the centuries slowly rolled along they
+must have grown weary and at times have doubted. Sceptics scoffed,
+"Where is the sign of his coming?" But the great heart of the nation
+remained true to its trust, while prophets caught glimpses of the coming
+glory and white-headed, trembling old saints prayed that they might live
+a little longer and not die before he came. Perhaps this hope was never
+at a lower ebb than when the Roman power was ruthlessly grinding the
+nation down into the dust. But suddenly at this darkest hour a blinding
+light burnt through the floor of heaven and shepherds ran about
+announcing that the Messiah was born! Who can imagine the surprise, the
+wonder, the overwhelming amazement this news created? How many were
+eager to go to Bethlehem and see this thing which had come to pass! And
+when it was found to be true, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and
+old men blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servants
+depart in peace."
+
+Yet why should they have wondered at God's faithfulness in keeping his
+promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it
+to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless
+in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with
+God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to
+doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so
+far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our
+thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they have been repeated
+to us until we are familiar with them, when they are fulfilled we wonder
+at the faithfulness that will bring so great things to pass.
+
+
+
+
+IV. An Historical Event
+
+
+The story starts with the place and time of the Saviour's birth. Jesus
+was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are
+many myths and legends floating through the world that are often
+beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and
+are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the
+imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names
+and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully
+and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human
+heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on
+which to build our faith. Heathen religions are generally woven of this
+legendary stuff. The Greek and Roman divinities were all mythical. But
+the scientific spirit has swept these imaginary deities out of our sky
+and rendered belief in them impossible. Our religion must be rooted in
+reality and cannot live in clouds, however beautifully they may be
+colored. We refuse hospitality to anything but fact. Give us names and
+dates, is our demand.
+
+The Bible responds to this requirement. Christianity is an historical
+religion. The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement
+as "Once upon a time," but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea. The town is
+there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born. The
+narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king.
+History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of
+iniquity. These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly
+unbeliever can plausibly dispute. So the gospel sets its record in the
+rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of
+Judea. Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem. We are not,
+then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact.
+This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not
+afraid of the geographer's map and the historian's pen. The Christmas
+story is not another beautiful legend in the world's gallery of myths,
+but is sober and solid reality; its story is history. Our religion is
+truth, and we will worship at no other altar.
+
+
+
+
+V. Simplicity of the Narrative
+
+
+Though surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier
+burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the
+simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels
+of the gospels. This event has inspired poets and painters and has been
+embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation.
+Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy
+conception of the scene. But the evangelists had no such purpose or
+thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is
+perfect art. They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax
+collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of
+skill or literary art. Yet all the stylists and artists of the world
+stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme
+achievement. No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word
+is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their
+own eloquent and marvelous tale. The inspired writers mixed no
+imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to
+tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the
+trustworthiness of their narrative. These men did not follow cunningly
+devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our
+Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.
+
+
+
+
+VI. The Town of Bethlehem
+
+
+The land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range
+of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a
+spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur
+shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal
+bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut
+in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into
+the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and
+wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead
+Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.
+
+At the present time the town has eight thousand inhabitants. Its
+flat-roofed houses are well built and its narrow streets are clean. It
+is a busy place, its chief industry being the manufacture of souvenirs
+of olive wood which are sold throughout the Christian world. Its
+principal church is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a
+cave that is one of the most sacred and memorable spots on the globe. It
+is believed that this cave is the place where Christ was born, and a
+silver star inlaid in the stone floor is intended to mark the exact
+spot. It was then used as the stable of the adjoining inn, and in its
+stone manger the infant Jesus may have been laid.
+
+At the time of this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred
+people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic
+metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and
+seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for
+situation, magnificent in its architecture, sacred in its associations
+and world-wide and splendid in its fame, should have been honored with
+this supreme event in the history of the Jews. But an ancient prophet,
+while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on
+this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused
+it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. "But thou, Bethlehem
+Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
+thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
+goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." And so proud
+Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the
+humble village.
+
+Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of
+obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to
+nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The
+most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble
+cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most
+celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is
+a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in
+the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and
+Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its
+masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It
+was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world
+should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and
+that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone.
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near
+
+
+"Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Cæsar
+Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled." This is the point at
+which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of
+our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end
+in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all
+things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell
+where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start
+the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off
+place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start
+with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. Cæsar
+Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be
+taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a
+richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December
+and March, B.C. 5-4, that such a census was being taken in the province
+of Syria.
+
+In accordance with ancient Jewish usage, all citizens repaired to the
+tribe and village from which they were descended, and were there
+enrolled. In the town of Nazareth in the north lived Joseph, a village
+carpenter, and Mary, his espoused wife, who though a virgin was great
+with child, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the mystery
+having been revealed to her and her betrothed husband. They were both
+descended from the royal line of David, and therefore to Bethlehem they
+must go. With us such a journey of eighty miles would mean no more than
+stepping on a railway car at nine o'clock in the morning and stepping
+off at noon. But with them it meant a toilsome journey on foot of
+several days. Slowly they wended their way southward, led on by the
+irresistible hand of Cæsar, far away on his throne. The ancient Hebrew
+prophecy of Micah and the imperial decree of Cæsar thus marvelously
+fitted into each other and worked together. Mary must have known of this
+prophecy, and we know not with what a sense of mystery and fear and joy
+she drew near to the predicted place where the Messiah was to be born.
+
+Bethlehem sits like a crown on its rocky ridge. At length its walls and
+towers loomed in the distance, and then presently up the steep road
+climbed the carpenter and his espoused wife and passed through the gate
+into the village. When they came to the inn, it was already crowded with
+visitors, driven thither by the decree of Cæsar that had set all
+Palestine in commotion. In connection with the inn, generally the
+central space of its four-square inclosure, but probably in this case a
+cave in the limestone rock, was a stable, or place for the camels and
+horses and cattle of the guests. Among these oriental people it was (and
+is) no uncommon thing for travelers, when the chambers of the inn were
+fully occupied, to make a bed of straw and spend the night in this
+place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the
+Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It
+was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this,
+though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors
+would doubtless have found better accommodations.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. The Birth
+
+
+In that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears
+to have been no woman's hand there to minister to her, she herself
+wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no
+other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from
+which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on
+that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is
+now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill
+the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes
+from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child
+and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all
+imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and
+looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed
+that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a
+divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person,
+and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the
+birth of a Cæsar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but
+stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon
+the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been
+disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a
+great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse
+before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis
+of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power
+and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but
+in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to
+save the world.
+
+
+
+
+IX. No Room in the Inn
+
+
+"There was no room for them in the inn." And so Jesus came into a world
+where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all
+this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his
+coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols,
+after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden
+dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was
+not wanted! "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Was
+there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel
+disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this
+matter, no lack of hospitality in the keeper or the guests of the inn,
+as the village was overcrowded, and the fact that these late arrivals
+were compelled to put up with a place out in the enclosure, possibly a
+cave, where the animals were kept, was no intended incivility or
+uncommon hardship. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the reason, the
+fact was that there was no room for Jesus in that inn the first night he
+spent in this world, and this fact was sadly prophetic of his reception
+in the world he came to save.
+
+There were few places where he did find welcome: generally there was no
+room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to
+expect it. And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of
+this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive
+presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places
+where he wanted to be.
+
+Jesus was not wanted in his own country: Herod tried to leave no room
+for him there. He was not wanted in his own town: his neighbors tried
+to hurl him down a cliff to his death. He was not wanted in his own
+church: its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant
+fury and at last crucified him. Even his own family found it hard to
+make room for him in their inner circle. Small room was there in this
+evil world for this pure and lowly spirit. Then why did he come to it?
+Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it. Small room do we
+still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and
+out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin.
+Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the
+world? Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day
+than ever before, and this room is ever widening.
+
+How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her
+babe! Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out
+of which the cattle were fed. How much shall we miss if we do not have
+room for Christ? There is one world where there is room for Jesus and
+where he is wanted: heaven. And all who are like him shall find room
+with him in its many mansions.
+
+
+
+
+X. Angel Ministry
+
+
+Jerusalem and Rome knew nothing of this event. The High Priest offered
+the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the
+coming of the true Sacrifice, and Cæsar slept that night without a dream
+that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a
+worldwide kingdom. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew
+it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and "angels
+seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in
+songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just
+touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the
+surface of the sea."
+
+Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the
+flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its
+music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible
+is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the
+Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning
+light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come
+upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door
+of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling
+the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad
+tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened
+him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his
+bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb
+and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had
+announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so
+they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall
+come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.
+
+These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though
+invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little
+luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to
+be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of
+their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying
+through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are
+always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the
+spirit of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, so they still may bear departing
+spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We
+know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of
+angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly
+pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often
+they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.
+
+How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and
+grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through
+all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to
+measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. But the
+finest and best things cannot be grasped by these coarse processes.
+Sunbeams cannot be weighed on hay-scales, and gorgeously-colored bits of
+cloud cannot be caught in a crucible. We can weigh the new-born baby,
+but not the mother's love for her child. A telescope cannot see an
+angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision.
+There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened
+that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark
+to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns
+float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that
+do the will of God and wait on us.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Angels and Shepherds
+
+
+The Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful
+news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in
+startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there
+had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it
+and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An
+angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall
+he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the
+glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and
+call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and
+then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that
+holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that
+prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.
+Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not
+God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace
+and administers his kingdom?
+
+Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God's way more than
+ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:
+God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most
+startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the
+birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the
+gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where
+there were more sheep than men to hear.
+
+What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride! God
+can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler
+soul. The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace,
+and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place. The gospel is no
+respecter of places and persons. It may be preached in a costly church
+or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school
+house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture. In simplicity
+and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life. It
+has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar
+and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.
+
+
+
+
+XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture
+
+
+In the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping
+watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest
+duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven. The night did not
+seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars
+burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of
+any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on
+the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and
+were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were
+flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth's
+atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from
+the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all
+the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir.
+Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet
+only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it. The encircling hills
+were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes
+were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like
+the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price. Musical
+artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of
+a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but
+angels will sing for anybody.
+
+The simple-minded shepherds were sore afraid at this outburst of
+heavenly music, as wiser people would have been. An angel voice sang the
+solo:
+
+    Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
+    which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day
+    in the city of David a Saviour,  which is Christ the Lord. And this
+    shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling
+    clothes, and lying in a manger.
+
+"Be not afraid!" Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the
+thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come
+too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but
+the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to
+release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into
+the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a
+marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all
+its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor
+over hills and vales.
+
+The good tidings announced the birth of a Saviour, and this is the best
+news this sin-stricken world can hear, for sin is the root of all our
+fear and misery. Back of every bitter tear lies a guilty thought or
+deed. This connection is often visible upon the surface and stabs us in
+the face, and then it may lie hidden under many generations, but it is
+always there. Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights
+our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly
+tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves
+will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed
+into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world,
+and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and
+fill all the centuries with song.
+
+Definite directions were given for finding the new-born Saviour in the
+city of David, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. The
+angelic message was not simply a song in the air, a halo of celestial
+light, a splendid but fading vision, but it bound itself down to
+definite places and circumstances and left something solid. Again we
+note that this thing, was not done in a corner and is not afraid of
+facts. Jesus was a true human child and took upon him our form down to
+his infant clothes. The Christ is a great wonder in his divine
+personality, ever transcending our utmost comprehension, but we can
+understand his swaddling bands. Christianity is not all mystery, but it
+also comes down close around us and embodies itself in many plain facts
+and duties. "Ye shall find the babe." The shepherds were not left to
+wander around in uncertainty, but sent direct to the place. Christ is
+not hidden from us, clear directions point out the place where he is,
+and every soul that seeks him shall find him.
+
+The angel solo broke out into a heavenly chorus which gave a broad
+interpretation of the meaning of the birth of Christ:
+
+    Glory to God in the highest,
+    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
+
+This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and
+beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight
+shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ
+manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in
+devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and
+the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams
+through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is
+concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his
+Son.
+
+The chorus next pronounces peace upon men. Divine glory and human good
+will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they
+at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when
+truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper
+place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at
+enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens;
+human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and
+laden with fruit. As the glory of the sun is transformed into rosy buds
+and sweet fruit, so is the glory of God transformed into human good
+will. The glory of God and the peace of men are never in antagonism, but
+are always complementary and harmonious, they are the two sides of the
+same gospel, two parts of the same song. They cannot be separated and
+must go together; in glorifying God we make peace among men, and in
+making peace among men we glorify God.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem
+
+
+The angels' song died away in the solemn silence, and the shepherds were
+left alone. It was a critical hour with them. Would they follow this
+vision and turn it into victory, or would they let it vanish with the
+last echo of the song and relapse into the old dull routine? No, they
+did not let it pass, and life was never the same to them again. "Let us
+now go," they said, "even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
+come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." They translated
+vision into action and presently were climbing the rocky slope to
+Bethlehem. Had these shepherds not followed up the message their
+knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We
+hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we
+let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message
+does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever
+swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of
+worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. "Let us now go and
+see this thing." We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour.
+Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see
+Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and
+obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.
+
+"And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe
+lying in the manger." Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife
+of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the
+desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the
+passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple
+robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and
+make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the
+Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered
+with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and
+shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes
+treated with more cruel irony? But God's ways are not as our ways.
+Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get
+the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward
+from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very
+poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of
+humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a
+pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart
+of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into
+humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and
+toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the
+common people heard him gladly.
+
+Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. "Ye shall find a babe," was
+the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, "And they found the
+babe." When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint
+us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this
+need he has created bubbling springs and sparkling streams. He gave us
+hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and
+orchards of rosy fruit. He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find
+it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart. He set
+eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the
+Infinite, hearts that cry, "Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us."
+Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of
+the soul be disappointed and mocked? "And they found the babe," is the
+answer to this need and promise. God sends us with all our deep needs
+and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be
+exactly and fully matched and satisfied. He that hath seen this Child
+hath seen the Father.
+
+The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make
+known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child. The
+gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the
+individual heart. We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that
+we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it. And the more we
+give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands
+as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea.
+Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which
+they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God
+hath highly exalted him.
+
+First angels and then shepherds: how startling the contrast. Jesus has
+deep affinities with both: on his divine side he is related to heaven,
+and on his human side he is related to earth. And the first men he drew
+to his side were shepherds, representatives of the common people. He did
+not come as a member of any special class, especially of the upper
+class. No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the
+great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the
+level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking
+hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from
+the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the
+spire's gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time
+elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with Cæsar, but with shepherds,
+and then in three hundred years a Christian Cæsar sat on the throne.
+
+The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of
+Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands;
+and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost
+the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God.
+Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of
+society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it
+vertically from top to bottom.
+
+How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds
+are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. Shepherds would not
+get much out of Sir Isaac Newton, or a child out of Shakespeare, or a
+sorrowing heart out of Emerson. But every one can get milk and honey for
+his soul out of the gospel of Jesus. His wonderful words of life have
+the same sweetness and saving power for shepherd and scholar, peasant
+and prince. However lowly and unlettered one may be there is wide room
+for him around the manger of this Child.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. The Star and the Wise Men
+
+
+The birth of Jesus created a new center for the world and set heaven and
+earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards
+him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds
+wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night,
+and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian
+priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars.
+Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world
+and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars
+were embodiments of deity. A new star in their sky, whatever it may have
+been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a
+religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of
+their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly
+vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and
+appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of
+the Jews.
+
+They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their
+own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety
+and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish
+king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was
+of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his
+divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their
+curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to
+worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of
+these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their
+religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their
+simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe.
+Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science
+and faith grew from more to more.
+
+A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of
+scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke
+of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and
+find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the
+profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God
+in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed
+at the side of this manger.
+
+
+
+
+XV. A Frightened King
+
+
+The inquiry of the wise men startled Jerusalem and frightened Herod. The
+proud metropolis had not yet heard the news. The immortal honor of
+having given birth to the Christ had been denied to her haughty brow and
+had become humble Bethlehem's imperishable crown. The very name of king
+gave Herod a terrible shock. He was a usurper steeped in crime and was
+ever trembling on his throne. No hunted, white-faced, Russian Czar ever
+feared nihilist's bomb more than he feared rebellion's revolt and
+assassin's knife. Rebel after rebel he had crushed into spattered brains
+and blood, and here was rumor of another Rival born under the shadow of
+his throne. Herod was troubled and his terror sent a strange wave and
+shudder of fear through the city. So the same gospel that made angels
+sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world,
+created consternation and trouble up in Herod's palace and in his city.
+Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some.
+The good man's presence is always the bad man's condemnation and stirs
+hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according
+as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself
+is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. An Impotent Destroyer
+
+
+Herod took swift and thorough measures, as he thought, to crush his new
+rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where
+the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the
+beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own
+evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and
+complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be
+ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push
+their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man's
+tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.
+
+The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod's question, put
+their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be
+born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an
+exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its
+spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
+
+Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against
+Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly
+pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no
+truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men
+will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent
+rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in
+Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and
+Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of
+his head.
+
+Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored
+to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful
+persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not
+extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom
+been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him.
+Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even
+to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the
+rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire
+prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity
+would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that
+have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same
+yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our
+hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish
+and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle.
+Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our
+own door and even in our own hearts.
+
+The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were
+in Jerusalem--in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a
+monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly
+spirit--but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them
+on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in
+our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with
+divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in
+the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is
+a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and
+all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred
+with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Splendid Gifts
+
+
+"And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his
+mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their
+treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh."
+Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The
+imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are
+the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining
+fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the
+young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother
+and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the
+expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and
+divineness in life. The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until
+it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds
+its Father. The wise men found a King to worship; they were not
+following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness. Our
+instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its
+appropriate satisfaction. Christ completes our human childhood with
+divine Fatherhood. He that hath seen him hath seen the father.
+
+These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to
+Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been
+laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no
+sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy
+Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of
+Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his
+"Last Supper" because he feared their splendor would distract attention
+from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St.
+Peter's dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting
+the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child.
+Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his
+colossal genius. Shakespeare, "with the best brain in six thousand
+years," who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination
+over all our life, wrote in his will: "I commend my soul into the hands
+of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only
+merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life
+everlasting." Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many
+the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the
+invocation, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love."
+
+Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing
+except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly
+obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It
+would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the
+remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him
+and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written
+about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books
+that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and
+Cæsar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain
+of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the
+writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in
+like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung
+about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and
+the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable
+testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.
+
+About the first use to which any notable invention is put is to spread
+the gospel of Jesus. The very first book printed on a printing press was
+the Bible, and this wonderful and perhaps greatest human invention has
+been busier printing this book than any other to this day and multiplies
+its copies by the hundred million over the world. The newspaper is a
+mighty means of spreading his principles. The railway and steamship
+carry his gospel, and the airship gives wings to the same good news.
+Telegraph and telephone flash it, and wireless waves set the ether over
+whole continents and oceans aquiver with the messages of Jesus Christ.
+The sewing machine sews for him, the typewriter writes for him, and even
+battle ships and bayonets may fight for him. Sooner or later every
+inventor must lay his magic machine at his feet. For him the statesman
+legislates, the scientist investigates, the author writes, the artist
+paints and the singer sings. In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing
+all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his
+feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining
+heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his
+service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his
+feet.
+
+Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every
+century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of
+the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this
+Child, worn deep by millions of feet. The nations are beginning to come.
+By and by these converging paths will be crowded and all the ends of the
+earth shall bring their gold and shall worship at his feet.
+
+What is the explanation of the mighty, worldwide, attractive power of
+this Child? There is only one adequate explanation: "He shall save his
+people from their sins." The world is tired of men who come to save it
+with programmes only an inch long; who have nothing better to propose
+than longer laws and cleaner sanitation; who, unmindful of the
+experiment in Eden, would have us believe that if we were only placed in
+a pleasant garden where we had plenty to eat and little to do we would
+all be good. The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its
+unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty
+to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are
+blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and
+beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like
+music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is
+the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. Let us now go
+even unto Bethlehem while the song is in the air and see this Child and
+worship at his feet.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?
+
+
+When we come to think of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and
+disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long
+preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected
+some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions
+are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a
+child. Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece
+of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not
+have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era
+he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the
+electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or
+knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and
+shower material comforts on the world?
+
+This thought grows out of our blind materialism which leads us to think
+that matter is the master of mind, circumstance more important than
+character and the things of the body than the things of the spirit. But
+material improvements do not necessarily improve men. The locomotive has
+little relation to character. It picks a man up at one point and drops
+him at another the same man he was. If he is selfish and wicked at the
+beginning of the journey, he is just as selfish and wicked at its end.
+It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little
+improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing
+material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly
+was it rotting at the core.
+
+But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting
+regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not
+give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific
+ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the
+intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions
+of money. Shakespeare gave the world no new machine, but he opened the
+eyes of men to see heavenly visions and thus enriched them with
+treasures above all the gold of the world. Martin Luther invented no
+steam engine or sewing machine, but he taught men the rights of
+conscience and created our modern liberties. No material thing, however
+powerful and splendid, can make a better world: this work calls for
+better men. Therefore when God brings into the world a child endowed
+with superior intellectual and moral power, though his gift is only a
+babe and seems insignificant and hardly worth counting among so many,
+yet he has sent one of the greatest gifts of which his omnipotence is
+capable. An old German schoolmaster always took his hat off to each new
+boy that came into his school, never knowing what elements of genius
+might have been mixed in his newly molded brain. When Erasmus came out
+of that school his prophetic instinct was justified. Never despise a
+child, for in it sleeps some of the omnipotence and worth of God.
+
+But the Child which God gave the world as its Christmas gift was no
+merely human child however richly endowed. This Child was human and was
+born in time, but he was also divine and came forth from eternity. The
+possibilities that were sleeping in this Child were foreseen by the
+prophet Isaiah in the names that were prophetically given him, every
+name being a window through which we can look in upon his personality
+and power, every title being one of his crowns: "His name shall be
+called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
+Peace." All these powers and possibilities are incarnated in this Child,
+and he is working them out in a redeemed world. God made no mistake,
+then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave
+the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born.
+All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one
+root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill
+it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad
+in the beauty of this Child.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A World Without Christmas
+
+
+What would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of
+the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to
+trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade
+into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their
+interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days.
+The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers
+would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and
+hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on
+Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak
+just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on
+the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the
+first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home
+gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor.
+The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and
+take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain
+at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.
+
+Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar.
+There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place
+on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other
+events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to
+blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in
+truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew
+history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through
+the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly
+every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our
+schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our
+literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we
+would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of
+purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into
+the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop
+all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We
+would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no
+hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and
+be wrapped in night.
+
+Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world
+and leave us as "infants crying in the night, infants crying for the
+light, and with no language but a cry"?
+
+
+
+
+XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?
+
+
+But has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a
+night? Has the angels' song survived the World War? Have not its notes
+of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned
+and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of
+monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was
+not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and
+spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the
+earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry
+voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These
+ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may
+well give us pause.
+
+But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.
+The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems
+blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds
+roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had
+never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of
+thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm
+passes their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their
+song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still
+unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt
+it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the
+earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in
+verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.
+
+The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the
+voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns
+are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up
+in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing
+away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all
+men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and Cæsar
+and Napoleon and the Kaiser--mark the anticlimax!--are gone, their
+swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the
+same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice
+was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was
+he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the
+Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the
+storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even
+when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into
+form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm
+in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is
+still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a
+majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and
+wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted
+before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the
+greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of
+the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be
+the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets
+of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which "the kindly earth shall
+slumber, lapt in universal law." Then shall the angels' Christmas song
+break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
+notes, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
+whom he is well pleased."
+
+
+
+
+XXI. The Light of the World
+
+
+Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
+constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions
+were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
+stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
+irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
+Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
+itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
+terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
+where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
+pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
+despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
+Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
+human heart cried out that life
+
+    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
+    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
+    And we are here as on a darkling plain
+    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
+    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
+
+Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck
+in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with
+heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle--symbol and
+prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until
+he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that
+little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing
+light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his
+light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.
+
+This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a
+wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and
+its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining
+of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of
+Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot
+live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from
+his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it
+not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and
+dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match
+and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the
+muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father's house. He lifts
+life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.
+
+As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
+there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so
+from the pierced hand of Christ there shines a blaze of light that
+penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this
+Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is
+the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our
+gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are
+scintillations of this Light.
+
+
+O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin
+not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of
+bitterness and despair. Shine upon us with the light of thy truth and
+thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our
+Father's house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning
+into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may
+nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation
+Of Christmas, by James H. Snowden
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Wonderful Night: An Interpretation of Christmas by James H. Snowden</title>
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of
+Christmas, by James H. Snowden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas
+
+Author: James H. Snowden
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2005 [EBook #14629]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WONDERFUL NIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Ben Beasley and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="cover-box"><a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="cover-img" src="images/cover-s.jpg" title="[Cover]" alt="[Illustration]" width="318" height="546" />
+</a><div class="caption">[Cover]</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="jacket-box"><a href="images/jacket.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="jacket-img" src="images/jacket-s.jpg" title="[Repeating pattern from inside dust jacket]" alt="[Illustration]" width="319" height="155" />
+</a><div class="caption">[Repeating pattern from inside dust jacket]</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="jacketflap-box">
+<div id="jacketflap-frame">
+<div class="jacketflap">
+
+<div class="title">A Wonderful Night</div>
+
+<div class="authorship">By <span class="author">James H. Snowden</span></div>
+
+
+<div class="illustrators">Decorations by<br />
+Maud and Miska Petersham</div>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="acorns1-box"><a href="images/acorns.png">
+<img class="illustration" id="acorns1-img" src="images/acorns-s.png" title="[Acorns]" alt="" width="20" height="13" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="first-text-dropcap">
+<span class="first-word">Nights</span> differ as much as days. Some nights have witnessed great events
+and been charged with ethical significance in the history of the world.
+One such night stands forth crowned with supreme distinction, the night
+that heard angels sing, and was starred with the Birth of Bethlehem.
+This book treats the various events and steps that led to the central
+wonder and interprets the story in terms of its significance today and
+invests it with poetic light.
+</p>
+
+<div class="illustration" id="acorns2-box"><a href="images/acorns.png">
+<img class="illustration" id="acorns2-img" src="images/acorns-s.png" title="[Acorns]" alt="" width="20" height="13" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="publisher">The Macmillan Company</div>
+<div class="pub-ny">Publishers <span style="letter-spacing: 0.25em">::</span> New York</div>
+
+</div></div>
+<div class="caption">[Dust jacket flap]</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="title1-box"><a href="images/title.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="title1-img" src="images/title-s.jpg" title="A Wonderful Night" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]" width="428" height="119" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="publisher">
+<div class="illustration" id="mmco-box"><a href="images/mmco.png">
+<img class="illustration" id="mmco-img" src="images/mmco-s.png" title="The MM Co." alt="[Illustration: The MM Co. [logo]]" width="164" height="53" />
+</a>
+</div>
+<div class="division">The Macmillan Company
+<div class="locations">New York &#183; Boston &#183; Chichago &#183; Dallas<br />
+Atlanta &#183; San Francisco</div></div>
+
+<div class="division">Macmillan &#38; Co., <span class="limited">Limited</span>
+<div class="locations">London &#183; Bombay &#183; Calcutta<br />
+Melbourne</div></div>
+
+<div class="division">The Macmillan Co. of Canada, <span class="limited">Ltd.</span>
+<div class="locations">Toronto</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="frontispiece-box"><a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="frontispiece-img" src="images/frontis-s.jpg" title="[Frontispiece]" alt="[Illustration]" width="430" height="681" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="titlep-box"><a href="images/titlep.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="titlep-img" src="images/titlep-s.jpg" title="[Title Page]" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night / An Interpretation of Christmas / By James H. Snowden / Decorations by Maud and Miska Petersham / The Macmillan Company Publishers MCMXIX]" width="436" height="720" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="date">Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919.</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Contents</h1>
+
+
+<div id="chapter">Chapter</div>
+
+<ol class="contents">
+<li><a href="#i" class="link">An Age of Wonders</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ii" class="link">Preparation for the Event</a></li>
+<li><a href="#iii" class="link">A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy</a></li>
+<li><a href="#iv" class="link">An Historical Event</a></li>
+<li><a href="#v" class="link">Simplicity of the Narrative</a></li>
+<li><a href="#vi" class="link">The Town of Bethlehem</a></li>
+<li><a href="#vii" class="link">The Wonderful Night Draws Near</a></li>
+<li><a href="#viii" class="link">The Birth</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ix" class="link">No Room in the Inn</a></li>
+<li><a href="#x" class="link">Angel Ministry</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xi" class="link">Angels and Shepherds</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xii" class="link">The Concert in a Sheep Pasture</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xiii" class="link">The First Visitors to Bethlehem</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xiv" class="link">The Star and the Wise Men</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xv" class="link">A Frightened King</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xvi" class="link">An Impotent Destroyer</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xvii" class="link">Splendid Gifts</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xviii" class="link">Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xix" class="link">A World Without Christmas</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xx" class="link">Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?</a></li>
+<li><a href="#xxi" class="link">The Light of the World</a></li>
+</ol>
+
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="epigraph">
+<p class="stanza">
+O Little town of Bethleham,<br />
+<span class="il1">How still we see thee lie!</span><br />
+Above thy deep and dreamless sleep<br />
+<span class="il1">The silent stars go by:</span><br />
+Yet in thy dark streets shineth<br />
+<span class="il1">The everlasting Light;</span><br />
+The hopes and fears of all the years<br />
+<span class="il1">Are met in thee to-night.</span>
+</p>
+<p class="bq-credit">
+&#8212;Phillips Brooks.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="title2-box"><a href="images/title.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="title2-img" src="images/title-s.jpg" title="A Wonderful Night" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]" width="428" height="119" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="titleb-box"><a href="images/titleb.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="titleb-img" src="images/titleb-s.jpg" title="A Wonderful Night" alt="[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]" width="437" height="184" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h1 style="margin-top: 0em"><a id="i" name="i">I. An Age of Wonders</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/i.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="i-img" src="images/i-s.jpg" title="W" alt="W" width="144" height="198" /></a>e</span>
+live in an age of wonders. Great discoveries and startling events
+crowd upon us so fast that we have scarcely recovered from the
+bewildering effects of one before another comes, and we are thus kept in
+a constant whirl of excitement. The heavens are full of shooting stars,
+and while watching one we are distracted by another. So frequent is this
+experience that our nerves almost refuse to respond to the shock of a
+new sensation. We are no longer surprised at surprises. The marvelous
+has become the commonplace, and the unexpected is what we now expect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its
+wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have
+become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they
+were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any
+wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic
+eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more
+revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French
+Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the
+sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century
+created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and
+startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in
+their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.
+The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human
+brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing,
+which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and
+every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and
+in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists
+of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more
+useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the
+hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest
+fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our
+modern magic machines than to part with these.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer
+and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow
+the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in
+eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new
+wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and
+the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in
+the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages,
+but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not
+die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist&#8217;s
+discoveries and the inventor&#8217;s cunning devices: the greatest marvel is
+not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the
+present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning. On that
+morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that
+heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the
+world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time.
+Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world.
+Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as
+mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such
+a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely
+greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out
+of a new star in the sky.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="ii" name="ii">II. Preparation for the Event</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/ii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="ii-img" src="images/ii-s.jpg" title="N" alt="N" width="144" height="196" /></a>ear</span>
+events may have remote causes. The river that sweeps by us cannot
+be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills.
+The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin
+in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wide circle of causes converged towards this birth; all the spokes of
+the ancient world ran into this hub. When Abraham started west as an
+emigrant out of Babylonia, &#8220;not knowing whither he went,&#8221; he was
+unconsciously traveling towards Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries
+headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that
+bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest
+and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar,
+sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all
+so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of
+the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could
+spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and
+righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an
+atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people
+and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these
+ideas were rooted in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pagan achievements, also, &#8220;the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
+that was Rome,&#8221; were roots to this same tree of preparation for the
+coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories
+of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by
+its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally
+impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain
+nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made
+positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a
+marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible
+and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed
+it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the
+gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw
+light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the
+world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in
+no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The
+harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months
+before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through
+millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The
+centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from
+Abraham to Mary, &#8220;but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
+his Son.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="iii" name="iii">III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/iii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="iii-img" src="images/iii-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="143" height="198" /></a>his</span>
+birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had
+cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years.
+Through all their national vicissitudes, enslavement in Egypt,
+wanderings in, the wilderness, establishment and growth in the promised
+land, internal division and external captivity in Babylon, restoration,
+and final subjection to the Romans, this hope burned on the horizon of
+their future as a fixed star. It was this that ever led them on and held
+them together and made it impossible to break or subdue their spirit.
+This was the dawn that filled all their dark and bitter days with the
+rosy glow of hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the Messiah came not, and as the centuries slowly rolled along they
+must have grown weary and at times have doubted. Sceptics scoffed,
+&#8220;Where is the sign of his coming?&#8221; But the great heart of the nation
+remained true to its trust, while prophets caught glimpses of the coming
+glory and white-headed, trembling old saints prayed that they might live
+a little longer and not die before he came. Perhaps this hope was never
+at a lower ebb than when the Roman power was ruthlessly grinding the
+nation down into the dust. But suddenly at this darkest hour a blinding
+light burnt through the floor of heaven and shepherds ran about
+announcing that the Messiah was born! Who can imagine the surprise, the
+wonder, the overwhelming amazement this news created? How many were
+eager to go to Bethlehem and see this thing which had come to pass! And
+when it was found to be true, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and
+old men blessed God and said, &#8220;Lord, now lettest thou thy servants
+depart in peace.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet why should they have wondered at God&#8217;s faithfulness in keeping his
+promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it
+to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless
+in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with
+God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to
+doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so
+far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our
+thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they have been repeated
+to us until we are familiar with them, when they are fulfilled we wonder
+at the faithfulness that will bring so great things to pass.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="iv" name="iv">IV. An Historical Event</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/iv.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="iv-img" src="images/iv-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="144" height="197" /></a>he</span>
+story starts with the place and time of the Saviour&#8217;s birth. Jesus
+was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are
+many myths and legends floating through the world that are often
+beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and
+are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the
+imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names
+and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully
+and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human
+heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on
+which to build our faith. Heathen religions are generally woven of this
+legendary stuff. The Greek and Roman divinities were all mythical. But
+the scientific spirit has swept these imaginary deities out of our sky
+and rendered belief in them impossible. Our religion must be rooted in
+reality and cannot live in clouds, however beautifully they may be
+colored. We refuse hospitality to anything but fact. Give us names and
+dates, is our demand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bible responds to this requirement. Christianity is an historical
+religion. The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement
+as &#8220;Once upon a time,&#8221; but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea. The town is
+there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born. The
+narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king.
+History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of
+iniquity. These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly
+unbeliever can plausibly dispute. So the gospel sets its record in the
+rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of
+Judea. Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem. We are not,
+then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact.
+This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not
+afraid of the geographer&#8217;s map and the historian&#8217;s pen. The Christmas
+story is not another beautiful legend in the world&#8217;s gallery of myths,
+but is sober and solid reality; its story is history. Our religion is
+truth, and we will worship at no other altar.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="v" name="v">V. Simplicity of the Narrative</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/v.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="v-img" src="images/v-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="143" height="195" /></a>hough</span>
+surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier
+burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the
+simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels
+of the gospels. This event has inspired poets and painters and has been
+embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation.
+Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy
+conception of the scene. But the evangelists had no such purpose or
+thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is
+perfect art. They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax
+collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of
+skill or literary art. Yet all the stylists and artists of the world
+stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme
+achievement. No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word
+is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their
+own eloquent and marvelous tale. The inspired writers mixed no
+imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to
+tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the
+trustworthiness of their narrative. These men did not follow cunningly
+devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our
+Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="vi" name="vi">VI. The Town of Bethlehem</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/vi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="vi-img" src="images/vi-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="146" height="196" /></a>he</span>
+land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range
+of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a
+spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur
+shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal
+bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut
+in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into
+the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and
+wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead
+Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the present time the town has eight thousand inhabitants. Its
+flat-roofed houses are well built and its narrow streets are clean. It
+is a busy place, its chief industry being the manufacture of souvenirs
+of olive wood which are sold throughout the Christian world. Its
+principal church is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a
+cave that is one of the most sacred and memorable spots on the globe. It
+is believed that this cave is the place where Christ was born, and a
+silver star inlaid in the stone floor is intended to mark the exact
+spot. It was then used as the stable of the adjoining inn, and in its
+stone manger the infant Jesus may have been laid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the time of this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred
+people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic
+metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and
+seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for
+situation, magnificent in its architecture, sacred in its associations
+and world-wide and splendid in its fame, should have been honored with
+this supreme event in the history of the Jews. But an ancient prophet,
+while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on
+this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused
+it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. &#8220;But thou, Bethlehem
+Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
+thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
+goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.&#8221; And so proud
+Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the
+humble village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of
+obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to
+nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The
+most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble
+cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most
+celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is
+a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in
+the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and
+Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its
+masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It
+was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world
+should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and
+that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="vii" name="vii">VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/vii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="vii-img" src="images/vii-s.jpg" title="&#8220;N" alt="&#8220;N" width="144" height="195" /></a>ow</span>
+it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from C&#230;sar
+Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled.&#8221; This is the point at
+which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of
+our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end
+in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all
+things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell
+where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start
+the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off
+place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start
+with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. C&#230;sar
+Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be
+taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a
+richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December
+and March, B.&#160;C. 5&#8211;4, that such a census was being taken in the province
+of Syria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In accordance with ancient Jewish usage, all citizens repaired to the
+tribe and village from which they were descended, and were there
+enrolled. In the town of Nazareth in the north lived Joseph, a village
+carpenter, and Mary, his espoused wife, who though a virgin was great
+with child, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the mystery
+having been revealed to her and her betrothed husband. They were both
+descended from the royal line of David, and therefore to Bethlehem they
+must go. With us such a journey of eighty miles would mean no more than
+stepping on a railway car at nine o&#8217;clock in the morning and stepping
+off at noon. But with them it meant a toilsome journey on foot of
+several days. Slowly they wended their way southward, led on by the
+irresistible hand of C&#230;sar, far away on his throne. The ancient Hebrew
+prophecy of Micah and the imperial decree of C&#230;sar thus marvelously
+fitted into each other and worked together. Mary must have known of this
+prophecy, and we know not with what a sense of mystery and fear and joy
+she drew near to the predicted place where the Messiah was to be born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bethlehem sits like a crown on its rocky ridge. At length its walls and
+towers loomed in the distance, and then presently up the steep road
+climbed the carpenter and his espoused wife and passed through the gate
+into the village. When they came to the inn, it was already crowded with
+visitors, driven thither by the decree of C&#230;sar that had set all
+Palestine in commotion. In connection with the inn, generally the
+central space of its four-square inclosure, but probably in this case a
+cave in the limestone rock, was a stable, or place for the camels and
+horses and cattle of the guests. Among these oriental people it was (and
+is) no uncommon thing for travelers, when the chambers of the inn were
+fully occupied, to make a bed of straw and spend the night in this
+place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the
+Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It
+was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this,
+though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors
+would doubtless have found better accommodations.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="viii" name="viii">VIII. The Birth</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/viii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="viii-img" src="images/viii-s.jpg" title="I" alt="I" width="145" height="197" /></a>n</span>
+that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears
+to have been no woman&#8217;s hand there to minister to her, she herself
+wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no
+other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from
+which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on
+that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is
+now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill
+the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes
+from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child
+and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all
+imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and
+looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed
+that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a
+divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person,
+and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the
+birth of a C&#230;sar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but
+stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon
+the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been
+disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a
+great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse
+before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis
+of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power
+and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but
+in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to
+save the world.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="ix" name="ix">IX. No Room in the Inn</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/ix.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="ix-img" src="images/ix-s.jpg" title="&#8220;T" alt="&#8220;T" width="144" height="196" /></a>here</span>
+was no room for them in the inn.&#8221; And so Jesus came into a world
+where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all
+this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his
+coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols,
+after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden
+dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was
+not wanted! &#8220;He came unto his own, and his own received him not.&#8221; Was
+there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel
+disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this
+matter, no lack of hospitality in the keeper or the guests of the inn,
+as the village was overcrowded, and the fact that these late arrivals
+were compelled to put up with a place out in the enclosure, possibly a
+cave, where the animals were kept, was no intended incivility or
+uncommon hardship. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the reason, the
+fact was that there was no room for Jesus in that inn the first night he
+spent in this world, and this fact was sadly prophetic of his reception
+in the world he came to save.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were few places where he did find welcome: generally there was no
+room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to
+expect it. And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of
+this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive
+presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places
+where he wanted to be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jesus was not wanted in his own country: Herod tried to leave no room
+for him there. He was not wanted in his own town: his neighbors tried
+to hurl him down a cliff to his death. He was not wanted in his own
+church: its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant
+fury and at last crucified him. Even his own family found it hard to
+make room for him in their inner circle. Small room was there in this
+evil world for this pure and lowly spirit. Then why did he come to it?
+Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it. Small room do we
+still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and
+out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin.
+Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the
+world? Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day
+than ever before, and this room is ever widening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her
+babe! Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out
+of which the cattle were fed. How much shall we miss if we do not have
+room for Christ? There is one world where there is room for Jesus and
+where he is wanted: heaven. And all who are like him shall find room
+with him in its many mansions.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="x" name="x">X. Angel Ministry</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/x.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="x-img" src="images/x-s.jpg" title="J" alt="J" width="144" height="195" /></a>erusalem</span>
+and Rome knew nothing of this event. The High Priest offered
+the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the
+coming of the true Sacrifice, and C&#230;sar slept that night without a dream
+that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a
+worldwide kingdom. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew
+it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and &#8220;angels
+seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in
+songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just
+touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the
+surface of the sea.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the
+flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its
+music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible
+is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the
+Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning
+light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come
+upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door
+of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling
+the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad
+tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened
+him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his
+bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb
+and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had
+announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so
+they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall
+come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though
+invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little
+luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to
+be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of
+their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying
+through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are
+always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the
+spirit of Lazarus to Abraham&#8217;s bosom, so they still may bear departing
+spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We
+know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of
+angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly
+pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often
+they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and
+grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through
+all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to
+measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. But the
+finest and best things cannot be grasped by these coarse processes.
+Sunbeams cannot be weighed on hay-scales, and gorgeously-colored bits of
+cloud cannot be caught in a crucible. We can weigh the new-born baby,
+but not the mother&#8217;s love for her child. A telescope cannot see an
+angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision.
+There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened
+that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark
+to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns
+float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that
+do the will of God and wait on us.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xi" name="xi">XI. Angels and Shepherds</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xi-img" src="images/xi-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="143" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful
+news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in
+startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there
+had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it
+and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An
+angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall
+he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the
+glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and
+call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and
+then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that
+holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that
+prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.
+Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not
+God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace
+and administers his kingdom?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God&#8217;s way more than
+ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:
+God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most
+startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the
+birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the
+gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where
+there were more sheep than men to hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride! God
+can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler
+soul. The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace,
+and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place. The gospel is no
+respecter of places and persons. It may be preached in a costly church
+or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school
+house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture. In simplicity
+and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life. It
+has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar
+and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xii" name="xii">XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xii-img" src="images/xii-s.jpg" title="I" alt="I" width="145" height="197" /></a>n</span>
+the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping
+watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest
+duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven. The night did not
+seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars
+burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of
+any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on
+the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and
+were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were
+flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth&#8217;s
+atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from
+the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all
+the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir.
+Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet
+only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it. The encircling hills
+were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes
+were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like
+the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price. Musical
+artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of
+a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but
+angels will sing for anybody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The simple-minded shepherds were sore afraid at this outburst of
+heavenly music, as wiser people would have been. An angel voice sang the
+solo:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote class="prose">
+<p>
+    Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
+    which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day
+    in the city of David a Saviour,  which is Christ the Lord. And this
+    shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling
+    clothes, and lying in a manger.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+&#8220;Be not afraid!&#8221; Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the
+thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come
+too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but
+the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to
+release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into
+the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a
+marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all
+its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor
+over hills and vales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good tidings announced the birth of a Saviour, and this is the best
+news this sin-stricken world can hear, for sin is the root of all our
+fear and misery. Back of every bitter tear lies a guilty thought or
+deed. This connection is often visible upon the surface and stabs us in
+the face, and then it may lie hidden under many generations, but it is
+always there. Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights
+our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly
+tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves
+will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed
+into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world,
+and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and
+fill all the centuries with song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Definite directions were given for finding the new-born Saviour in the
+city of David, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. The
+angelic message was not simply a song in the air, a halo of celestial
+light, a splendid but fading vision, but it bound itself down to
+definite places and circumstances and left something solid. Again we
+note that this thing, was not done in a corner and is not afraid of
+facts. Jesus was a true human child and took upon him our form down to
+his infant clothes. The Christ is a great wonder in his divine
+personality, ever transcending our utmost comprehension, but we can
+understand his swaddling bands. Christianity is not all mystery, but it
+also comes down close around us and embodies itself in many plain facts
+and duties. &#8220;Ye shall find the babe.&#8221; The shepherds were not left to
+wander around in uncertainty, but sent direct to the place. Christ is
+not hidden from us, clear directions point out the place where he is,
+and every soul that seeks him shall find him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The angel solo broke out into a heavenly chorus which gave a broad
+interpretation of the meaning of the birth of Christ:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote class="prose">
+<p>
+    Glory to God in the highest,
+</p>
+<p>
+    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and
+beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight
+shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ
+manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in
+devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and
+the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams
+through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is
+concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his
+Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chorus next pronounces peace upon men. Divine glory and human good
+will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they
+at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when
+truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper
+place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at
+enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens;
+human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and
+laden with fruit. As the glory of the sun is transformed into rosy buds
+and sweet fruit, so is the glory of God transformed into human good
+will. The glory of God and the peace of men are never in antagonism, but
+are always complementary and harmonious, they are the two sides of the
+same gospel, two parts of the same song. They cannot be separated and
+must go together; in glorifying God we make peace among men, and in
+making peace among men we glorify God.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xiii" name="xiii">XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xiii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xiii-img" src="images/xiii-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="145" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+angels&#8217; song died away in the solemn silence, and the shepherds were
+left alone. It was a critical hour with them. Would they follow this
+vision and turn it into victory, or would they let it vanish with the
+last echo of the song and relapse into the old dull routine? No, they
+did not let it pass, and life was never the same to them again. &#8220;Let us
+now go,&#8221; they said, &#8220;even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
+come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.&#8221; They translated
+vision into action and presently were climbing the rocky slope to
+Bethlehem. Had these shepherds not followed up the message their
+knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We
+hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we
+let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message
+does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever
+swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of
+worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. &#8220;Let us now go and
+see this thing.&#8221; We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour.
+Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see
+Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and
+obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#8220;And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe
+lying in the manger.&#8221; Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife
+of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the
+desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the
+passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple
+robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and
+make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the
+Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered
+with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and
+shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes
+treated with more cruel irony? But God&#8217;s ways are not as our ways.
+Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get
+the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward
+from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very
+poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of
+humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a
+pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart
+of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into
+humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and
+toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the
+common people heard him gladly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. &#8220;Ye shall find a babe,&#8221; was
+the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, &#8220;And they found the
+babe.&#8221; When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint
+us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this
+need he has created bubbling springs and sparkling streams. He gave us
+hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and
+orchards of rosy fruit. He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find
+it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart. He set
+eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the
+Infinite, hearts that cry, &#8220;Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us.&#8221;
+Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of
+the soul be disappointed and mocked? &#8220;And they found the babe,&#8221; is the
+answer to this need and promise. God sends us with all our deep needs
+and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be
+exactly and fully matched and satisfied. He that hath seen this Child
+hath seen the Father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make
+known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child. The
+gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the
+individual heart. We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that
+we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it. And the more we
+give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands
+as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea.
+Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which
+they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God
+hath highly exalted him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First angels and then shepherds: how startling the contrast. Jesus has
+deep affinities with both: on his divine side he is related to heaven,
+and on his human side he is related to earth. And the first men he drew
+to his side were shepherds, representatives of the common people. He did
+not come as a member of any special class, especially of the upper
+class. No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the
+great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the
+level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking
+hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from
+the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the
+spire&#8217;s gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time
+elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with C&#230;sar, but with shepherds,
+and then in three hundred years a Christian C&#230;sar sat on the throne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of
+Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands;
+and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost
+the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God.
+Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of
+society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it
+vertically from top to bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds
+are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. Shepherds would not
+get much out of Sir Isaac Newton, or a child out of Shakespeare, or a
+sorrowing heart out of Emerson. But every one can get milk and honey for
+his soul out of the gospel of Jesus. His wonderful words of life have
+the same sweetness and saving power for shepherd and scholar, peasant
+and prince. However lowly and unlettered one may be there is wide room
+for him around the manger of this Child.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xiv" name="xiv">XIV. The Star and the Wise Men</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xiv.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xiv-img" src="images/xiv-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="148" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+birth of Jesus created a new center for the world and set heaven and
+earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards
+him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds
+wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night,
+and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian
+priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars.
+Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world
+and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars
+were embodiments of deity. A new star in their sky, whatever it may have
+been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a
+religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of
+their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly
+vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and
+appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of
+the Jews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their
+own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety
+and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish
+king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was
+of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his
+divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their
+curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to
+worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of
+these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their
+religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their
+simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe.
+Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science
+and faith grew from more to more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of
+scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke
+of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and
+find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the
+profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God
+in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed
+at the side of this manger.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xv" name="xv">XV. A Frightened King</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xv.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xv-img" src="images/xv-s.jpg" title="T" alt="T" width="146" height="195" /></a>he</span>
+inquiry of the wise men startled Jerusalem and frightened Herod. The
+proud metropolis had not yet heard the news. The immortal honor of
+having given birth to the Christ had been denied to her haughty brow and
+had become humble Bethlehem&#8217;s imperishable crown. The very name of king
+gave Herod a terrible shock. He was a usurper steeped in crime and was
+ever trembling on his throne. No hunted, white-faced, Russian Czar ever
+feared nihilist&#8217;s bomb more than he feared rebellion&#8217;s revolt and
+assassin&#8217;s knife. Rebel after rebel he had crushed into spattered brains
+and blood, and here was rumor of another Rival born under the shadow of
+his throne. Herod was troubled and his terror sent a strange wave and
+shudder of fear through the city. So the same gospel that made angels
+sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world,
+created consternation and trouble up in Herod&#8217;s palace and in his city.
+Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some.
+The good man&#8217;s presence is always the bad man&#8217;s condemnation and stirs
+hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according
+as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself
+is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xvi" name="xvi">XVI. An Impotent Destroyer</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xvi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xvi-img" src="images/xvi-s.jpg" title="H" alt="H" width="146" height="197" /></a>erod</span>
+took swift and thorough measures, as he thought, to crush his new
+rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where
+the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the
+beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own
+evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and
+complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be
+ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push
+their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man&#8217;s
+tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod&#8217;s question, put
+their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be
+born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an
+exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its
+spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against
+Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly
+pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no
+truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men
+will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent
+rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in
+Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and
+Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of
+his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored
+to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful
+persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not
+extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom
+been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him.
+Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even
+to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the
+rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire
+prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity
+would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that
+have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same
+yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our
+hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish
+and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle.
+Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our
+own door and even in our own hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were
+in Jerusalem&#8212;in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a
+monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly
+spirit&#8212;but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them
+on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in
+our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with
+divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in
+the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is
+a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and
+all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred
+with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xvii" name="xvii">XVII. Splendid Gifts</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xvii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xvii-img" src="images/xvii-s.jpg" title="&#8220;A" alt="&#8220;A" width="147" height="198" /></a>nd</span>
+they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his
+mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their
+treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.&#8221;
+Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The
+imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are
+the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining
+fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the
+young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother
+and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the
+expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and
+divineness in life. The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until
+it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds
+its Father. The wise men found a King to worship; they were not
+following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness. Our
+instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its
+appropriate satisfaction. Christ completes our human childhood with
+divine Fatherhood. He that hath seen him hath seen the father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to
+Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been
+laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no
+sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy
+Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of
+Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his
+&#8220;Last Supper&#8221; because he feared their splendor would distract attention
+from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St.
+Peter&#8217;s dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting
+the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child.
+Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his
+colossal genius. Shakespeare, &#8220;with the best brain in six thousand
+years,&#8221; who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination
+over all our life, wrote in his will: &#8220;I commend my soul into the hands
+of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only
+merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life
+everlasting.&#8221; Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many
+the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the
+invocation, &#8220;Strong Son of God, immortal Love.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing
+except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly
+obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It
+would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the
+remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him
+and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written
+about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books
+that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and
+C&#230;sar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain
+of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the
+writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in
+like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung
+about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and
+the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable
+testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About the first use to which any notable invention is put is to spread
+the gospel of Jesus. The very first book printed on a printing press was
+the Bible, and this wonderful and perhaps greatest human invention has
+been busier printing this book than any other to this day and multiplies
+its copies by the hundred million over the world. The newspaper is a
+mighty means of spreading his principles. The railway and steamship
+carry his gospel, and the airship gives wings to the same good news.
+Telegraph and telephone flash it, and wireless waves set the ether over
+whole continents and oceans aquiver with the messages of Jesus Christ.
+The sewing machine sews for him, the typewriter writes for him, and even
+battle ships and bayonets may fight for him. Sooner or later every
+inventor must lay his magic machine at his feet. For him the statesman
+legislates, the scientist investigates, the author writes, the artist
+paints and the singer sings. In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing
+all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his
+feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining
+heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his
+service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every
+century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of
+the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this
+Child, worn deep by millions of feet. The nations are beginning to come.
+By and by these converging paths will be crowded and all the ends of the
+earth shall bring their gold and shall worship at his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is the explanation of the mighty, worldwide, attractive power of
+this Child? There is only one adequate explanation: &#8220;He shall save his
+people from their sins.&#8221; The world is tired of men who come to save it
+with programmes only an inch long; who have nothing better to propose
+than longer laws and cleaner sanitation; who, unmindful of the
+experiment in Eden, would have us believe that if we were only placed in
+a pleasant garden where we had plenty to eat and little to do we would
+all be good. The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its
+unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty
+to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are
+blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and
+beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like
+music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is
+the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. Let us now go
+even unto Bethlehem while the song is in the air and see this Child and
+worship at his feet.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xviii" name="xviii">XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xviii.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xviii-img" src="images/xviii-s.jpg" title="W" alt="W" width="148" height="198" /></a>hen</span>
+we come to think of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and
+disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long
+preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected
+some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions
+are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a
+child. Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece
+of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not
+have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era
+he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the
+electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or
+knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and
+shower material comforts on the world?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This thought grows out of our blind materialism which leads us to think
+that matter is the master of mind, circumstance more important than
+character and the things of the body than the things of the spirit. But
+material improvements do not necessarily improve men. The locomotive has
+little relation to character. It picks a man up at one point and drops
+him at another the same man he was. If he is selfish and wicked at the
+beginning of the journey, he is just as selfish and wicked at its end.
+It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little
+improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing
+material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly
+was it rotting at the core.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting
+regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not
+give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific
+ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the
+intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions
+of money. Shakespeare gave the world no new machine, but he opened the
+eyes of men to see heavenly visions and thus enriched them with
+treasures above all the gold of the world. Martin Luther invented no
+steam engine or sewing machine, but he taught men the rights of
+conscience and created our modern liberties. No material thing, however
+powerful and splendid, can make a better world: this work calls for
+better men. Therefore when God brings into the world a child endowed
+with superior intellectual and moral power, though his gift is only a
+babe and seems insignificant and hardly worth counting among so many,
+yet he has sent one of the greatest gifts of which his omnipotence is
+capable. An old German schoolmaster always took his hat off to each new
+boy that came into his school, never knowing what elements of genius
+might have been mixed in his newly molded brain. When Erasmus came out
+of that school his prophetic instinct was justified. Never despise a
+child, for in it sleeps some of the omnipotence and worth of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Child which God gave the world as its Christmas gift was no
+merely human child however richly endowed. This Child was human and was
+born in time, but he was also divine and came forth from eternity. The
+possibilities that were sleeping in this Child were foreseen by the
+prophet Isaiah in the names that were prophetically given him, every
+name being a window through which we can look in upon his personality
+and power, every title being one of his crowns: &#8220;His name shall be
+called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
+Peace.&#8221; All these powers and possibilities are incarnated in this Child,
+and he is working them out in a redeemed world. God made no mistake,
+then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave
+the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born.
+All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one
+root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill
+it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad
+in the beauty of this Child.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xix" name="xix">XIX. A World Without Christmas</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xix.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xix-img" src="images/xix-s.jpg" title="W" alt="W" width="147" height="197" /></a>hat</span>
+would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of
+the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to
+trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade
+into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their
+interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days.
+The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers
+would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and
+hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on
+Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak
+just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on
+the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the
+first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home
+gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor.
+The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and
+take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain
+at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar.
+There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place
+on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other
+events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to
+blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in
+truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew
+history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through
+the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly
+every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our
+schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our
+literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we
+would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of
+purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into
+the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop
+all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We
+would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no
+hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and
+be wrapped in night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world
+and leave us as &#8220;infants crying in the night, infants crying for the
+light, and with no language but a cry&#8221;?
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xx" name="xx">XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xx.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xx-img" src="images/xx-s.jpg" title="B" alt="B" width="148" height="196" /></a>ut</span>
+has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a
+night? Has the angels&#8217; song survived the World War? Have not its notes
+of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned
+and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of
+monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was
+not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and
+spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels&#8217; song that gladdened the
+earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry
+voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These
+ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may
+well give us pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.
+The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems
+blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds
+roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had
+never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of
+thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm
+passes their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their
+song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still
+unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt
+it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the
+earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in
+verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the
+voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns
+are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up
+in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing
+away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all
+men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and C&#230;sar
+and Napoleon and the Kaiser&#8212;mark the anticlimax!&#8212;are gone, their
+swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the
+same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice
+was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was
+he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the
+Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the
+storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even
+when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into
+form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm
+in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is
+still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a
+majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and
+wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted
+before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the
+greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of
+the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be
+the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets
+of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which &#8220;the kindly earth shall
+slumber, lapt in universal law.&#8221; Then shall the angels&#8217; Christmas song
+break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
+notes, &#8220;Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
+whom he is well pleased.&#8221;
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a id="xxi" name="xxi">XXI. The Light of the World</a></h1>
+
+
+<p class="first">
+<span class="first-word"><a href="images/xxi.jpg"><img class="illustration" id="xxi-img" src="images/xxi-s.jpg" title="J" alt="J" width="148" height="196" /></a>esus</span>
+was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
+constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions
+were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
+stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
+irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
+Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
+itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
+terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
+where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
+pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
+despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
+Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
+human heart cried out that life
+</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="stanza">
+    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,<br />
+    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;<br />
+    And we are here as on a darkling plain<br />
+    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,<br />
+    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck
+in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with
+heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle&#8212;symbol and
+prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until
+he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that
+little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing
+light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his
+light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a
+wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and
+its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining
+of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of
+Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot
+live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from
+his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it
+not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and
+dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match
+and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the
+muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father&#8217;s house. He lifts
+life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
+there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so
+from the pierced hand of Christ there shines a blaze of light that
+penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this
+Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is
+the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our
+gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are
+scintillations of this Light.
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin
+not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of
+bitterness and despair. Shine upon us with the light of thy truth and
+thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our
+Father&#8217;s house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning
+into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may
+nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="illustration" id="end-box"><a href="images/end.jpg">
+<img class="illustration" id="end-img" src="images/end-s.jpg" title="" alt="[Illustration]" width="422" height="180" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div id="printed-in-usa">Printed in the United States of America</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation
+Of Christmas, by James H. Snowden
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WONDERFUL NIGHT ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1770 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of
+Christmas, by James H. Snowden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas
+
+Author: James H. Snowden
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2005 [EBook #14629]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WONDERFUL NIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Ben Beasley and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Wonderful Night
+
+By JAMES H. SNOWDEN
+
+
+Decorations by
+Maud and Miska Petersham
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nights differ as much as days. Some nights have witnessed great events
+and been charged with ethical significance in the history of the world.
+One such night stands forth crowned with supreme distinction, the night
+that heard angels sing, and was starred with the Birth of Bethlehem.
+This book treats the various events and steps that led to the central
+wonder and interprets the story in terms of its significance today and
+invests it with poetic light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
+
+[Transcriber's note: The above text is taken from the front flap of the
+dust jacket.]
+
+
+
+
+A Wonderful Night
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICHAGO . DALLAS
+ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+TORONTO
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A Wonderful
+Night
+
+An Interpretation of
+Christmas
+
+By James H. Snowden
+
+Decorations by Maud and
+Miska Petersham
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Macmillan Company
+Publishers MCMXIX
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+    I. An Age of Wonders
+
+   II. Preparation for the Event
+
+  III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy
+
+   IV. An Historical Event
+
+    V. Simplicity of the Narrative
+
+   VI. The Town of Bethlehem
+
+  VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near
+
+ VIII. The Birth
+
+   IX. No Room in the Inn
+
+    X. Angel Ministry
+
+   XI. Angels and Shepherds
+
+  XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture
+
+ XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem
+
+  XIV. The Star and the Wise Men
+
+   XV. A Frightened King
+
+  XVI. An Impotent Destroyer
+
+ XVII. Splendid Gifts
+
+XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?
+
+  XIX. A World Without Christmas
+
+   XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?
+
+  XXI. The Light of the World
+
+
+
+
+O Little town of Bethleham,
+  How still we see thee lie!
+Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
+  The silent stars go by:
+Yet in thy dark streets shineth
+  The everlasting Light;
+The hopes and fears of all the years
+  Are met in thee to-night.
+
+                  --Phillips Brooks.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Wonderful Night]
+
+
+
+
+I. An Age of Wonders
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: The first letter of each chapter is in the form of
+an illustrated dropped capital.]
+
+We live in an age of wonders. Great discoveries and startling events
+crowd upon us so fast that we have scarcely recovered from the
+bewildering effects of one before another comes, and we are thus kept in
+a constant whirl of excitement. The heavens are full of shooting stars,
+and while watching one we are distracted by another. So frequent is this
+experience that our nerves almost refuse to respond to the shock of a
+new sensation. We are no longer surprised at surprises. The marvelous
+has become the commonplace, and the unexpected is what we now expect.
+
+Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its
+wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have
+become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they
+were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any
+wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic
+eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more
+revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French
+Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the
+sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century
+created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and
+startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.
+
+The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in
+their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.
+The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human
+brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing,
+which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and
+every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and
+in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists
+of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more
+useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the
+hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest
+fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our
+modern magic machines than to part with these.
+
+The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer
+and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow
+the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in
+eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new
+wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and
+the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in
+the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages,
+but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not
+die.
+
+Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist's
+discoveries and the inventor's cunning devices: the greatest marvel is
+not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the
+present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning. On that
+morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that
+heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the
+world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time.
+Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world.
+Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as
+mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such
+a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely
+greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out
+of a new star in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+II. Preparation for the Event
+
+
+Near events may have remote causes. The river that sweeps by us cannot
+be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills.
+The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin
+in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.
+
+A wide circle of causes converged towards this birth; all the spokes of
+the ancient world ran into this hub. When Abraham started west as an
+emigrant out of Babylonia, "not knowing whither he went," he was
+unconsciously traveling towards Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries
+headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that
+bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest
+and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar,
+sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all
+so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of
+the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could
+spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and
+righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an
+atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people
+and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these
+ideas were rooted in the world.
+
+Pagan achievements, also, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
+that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the
+coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories
+of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by
+its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally
+impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain
+nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made
+positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a
+marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible
+and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed
+it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the
+gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw
+light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.
+
+God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the
+world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in
+no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The
+harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months
+before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through
+millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The
+centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from
+Abraham to Mary, "but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
+his Son."
+
+
+
+
+III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy
+
+
+This birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had
+cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years.
+Through all their national vicissitudes, enslavement in Egypt,
+wanderings in, the wilderness, establishment and growth in the promised
+land, internal division and external captivity in Babylon, restoration,
+and final subjection to the Romans, this hope burned on the horizon of
+their future as a fixed star. It was this that ever led them on and held
+them together and made it impossible to break or subdue their spirit.
+This was the dawn that filled all their dark and bitter days with the
+rosy glow of hope.
+
+Yet the Messiah came not, and as the centuries slowly rolled along they
+must have grown weary and at times have doubted. Sceptics scoffed,
+"Where is the sign of his coming?" But the great heart of the nation
+remained true to its trust, while prophets caught glimpses of the coming
+glory and white-headed, trembling old saints prayed that they might live
+a little longer and not die before he came. Perhaps this hope was never
+at a lower ebb than when the Roman power was ruthlessly grinding the
+nation down into the dust. But suddenly at this darkest hour a blinding
+light burnt through the floor of heaven and shepherds ran about
+announcing that the Messiah was born! Who can imagine the surprise, the
+wonder, the overwhelming amazement this news created? How many were
+eager to go to Bethlehem and see this thing which had come to pass! And
+when it was found to be true, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and
+old men blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servants
+depart in peace."
+
+Yet why should they have wondered at God's faithfulness in keeping his
+promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it
+to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless
+in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with
+God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to
+doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so
+far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our
+thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they have been repeated
+to us until we are familiar with them, when they are fulfilled we wonder
+at the faithfulness that will bring so great things to pass.
+
+
+
+
+IV. An Historical Event
+
+
+The story starts with the place and time of the Saviour's birth. Jesus
+was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are
+many myths and legends floating through the world that are often
+beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and
+are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the
+imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names
+and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully
+and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human
+heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on
+which to build our faith. Heathen religions are generally woven of this
+legendary stuff. The Greek and Roman divinities were all mythical. But
+the scientific spirit has swept these imaginary deities out of our sky
+and rendered belief in them impossible. Our religion must be rooted in
+reality and cannot live in clouds, however beautifully they may be
+colored. We refuse hospitality to anything but fact. Give us names and
+dates, is our demand.
+
+The Bible responds to this requirement. Christianity is an historical
+religion. The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement
+as "Once upon a time," but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea. The town is
+there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born. The
+narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king.
+History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of
+iniquity. These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly
+unbeliever can plausibly dispute. So the gospel sets its record in the
+rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of
+Judea. Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem. We are not,
+then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact.
+This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not
+afraid of the geographer's map and the historian's pen. The Christmas
+story is not another beautiful legend in the world's gallery of myths,
+but is sober and solid reality; its story is history. Our religion is
+truth, and we will worship at no other altar.
+
+
+
+
+V. Simplicity of the Narrative
+
+
+Though surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier
+burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the
+simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels
+of the gospels. This event has inspired poets and painters and has been
+embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation.
+Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy
+conception of the scene. But the evangelists had no such purpose or
+thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is
+perfect art. They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax
+collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of
+skill or literary art. Yet all the stylists and artists of the world
+stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme
+achievement. No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word
+is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their
+own eloquent and marvelous tale. The inspired writers mixed no
+imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to
+tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the
+trustworthiness of their narrative. These men did not follow cunningly
+devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our
+Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.
+
+
+
+
+VI. The Town of Bethlehem
+
+
+The land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range
+of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a
+spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur
+shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal
+bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut
+in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into
+the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and
+wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead
+Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.
+
+At the present time the town has eight thousand inhabitants. Its
+flat-roofed houses are well built and its narrow streets are clean. It
+is a busy place, its chief industry being the manufacture of souvenirs
+of olive wood which are sold throughout the Christian world. Its
+principal church is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a
+cave that is one of the most sacred and memorable spots on the globe. It
+is believed that this cave is the place where Christ was born, and a
+silver star inlaid in the stone floor is intended to mark the exact
+spot. It was then used as the stable of the adjoining inn, and in its
+stone manger the infant Jesus may have been laid.
+
+At the time of this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred
+people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic
+metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and
+seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for
+situation, magnificent in its architecture, sacred in its associations
+and world-wide and splendid in its fame, should have been honored with
+this supreme event in the history of the Jews. But an ancient prophet,
+while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on
+this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused
+it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. "But thou, Bethlehem
+Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
+thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
+goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." And so proud
+Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the
+humble village.
+
+Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of
+obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to
+nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The
+most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble
+cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most
+celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is
+a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in
+the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and
+Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its
+masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It
+was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world
+should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and
+that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone.
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near
+
+
+"Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar
+Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled." This is the point at
+which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of
+our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end
+in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all
+things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell
+where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start
+the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off
+place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start
+with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. Caesar
+Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be
+taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a
+richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December
+and March, B.C. 5-4, that such a census was being taken in the province
+of Syria.
+
+In accordance with ancient Jewish usage, all citizens repaired to the
+tribe and village from which they were descended, and were there
+enrolled. In the town of Nazareth in the north lived Joseph, a village
+carpenter, and Mary, his espoused wife, who though a virgin was great
+with child, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the mystery
+having been revealed to her and her betrothed husband. They were both
+descended from the royal line of David, and therefore to Bethlehem they
+must go. With us such a journey of eighty miles would mean no more than
+stepping on a railway car at nine o'clock in the morning and stepping
+off at noon. But with them it meant a toilsome journey on foot of
+several days. Slowly they wended their way southward, led on by the
+irresistible hand of Caesar, far away on his throne. The ancient Hebrew
+prophecy of Micah and the imperial decree of Caesar thus marvelously
+fitted into each other and worked together. Mary must have known of this
+prophecy, and we know not with what a sense of mystery and fear and joy
+she drew near to the predicted place where the Messiah was to be born.
+
+Bethlehem sits like a crown on its rocky ridge. At length its walls and
+towers loomed in the distance, and then presently up the steep road
+climbed the carpenter and his espoused wife and passed through the gate
+into the village. When they came to the inn, it was already crowded with
+visitors, driven thither by the decree of Caesar that had set all
+Palestine in commotion. In connection with the inn, generally the
+central space of its four-square inclosure, but probably in this case a
+cave in the limestone rock, was a stable, or place for the camels and
+horses and cattle of the guests. Among these oriental people it was (and
+is) no uncommon thing for travelers, when the chambers of the inn were
+fully occupied, to make a bed of straw and spend the night in this
+place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the
+Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It
+was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this,
+though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors
+would doubtless have found better accommodations.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. The Birth
+
+
+In that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears
+to have been no woman's hand there to minister to her, she herself
+wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no
+other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from
+which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on
+that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is
+now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill
+the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes
+from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child
+and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all
+imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and
+looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed
+that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a
+divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person,
+and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the
+birth of a Caesar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but
+stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon
+the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been
+disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a
+great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse
+before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis
+of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power
+and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but
+in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to
+save the world.
+
+
+
+
+IX. No Room in the Inn
+
+
+"There was no room for them in the inn." And so Jesus came into a world
+where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all
+this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his
+coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols,
+after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden
+dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was
+not wanted! "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Was
+there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel
+disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this
+matter, no lack of hospitality in the keeper or the guests of the inn,
+as the village was overcrowded, and the fact that these late arrivals
+were compelled to put up with a place out in the enclosure, possibly a
+cave, where the animals were kept, was no intended incivility or
+uncommon hardship. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the reason, the
+fact was that there was no room for Jesus in that inn the first night he
+spent in this world, and this fact was sadly prophetic of his reception
+in the world he came to save.
+
+There were few places where he did find welcome: generally there was no
+room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to
+expect it. And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of
+this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive
+presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places
+where he wanted to be.
+
+Jesus was not wanted in his own country: Herod tried to leave no room
+for him there. He was not wanted in his own town: his neighbors tried
+to hurl him down a cliff to his death. He was not wanted in his own
+church: its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant
+fury and at last crucified him. Even his own family found it hard to
+make room for him in their inner circle. Small room was there in this
+evil world for this pure and lowly spirit. Then why did he come to it?
+Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it. Small room do we
+still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and
+out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin.
+Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the
+world? Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day
+than ever before, and this room is ever widening.
+
+How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her
+babe! Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out
+of which the cattle were fed. How much shall we miss if we do not have
+room for Christ? There is one world where there is room for Jesus and
+where he is wanted: heaven. And all who are like him shall find room
+with him in its many mansions.
+
+
+
+
+X. Angel Ministry
+
+
+Jerusalem and Rome knew nothing of this event. The High Priest offered
+the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the
+coming of the true Sacrifice, and Caesar slept that night without a dream
+that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a
+worldwide kingdom. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew
+it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and "angels
+seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in
+songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just
+touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the
+surface of the sea."
+
+Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the
+flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its
+music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible
+is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the
+Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning
+light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come
+upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door
+of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling
+the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad
+tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened
+him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his
+bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb
+and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had
+announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so
+they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall
+come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.
+
+These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though
+invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little
+luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to
+be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of
+their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying
+through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are
+always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the
+spirit of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, so they still may bear departing
+spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We
+know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of
+angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly
+pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often
+they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.
+
+How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and
+grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through
+all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to
+measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. But the
+finest and best things cannot be grasped by these coarse processes.
+Sunbeams cannot be weighed on hay-scales, and gorgeously-colored bits of
+cloud cannot be caught in a crucible. We can weigh the new-born baby,
+but not the mother's love for her child. A telescope cannot see an
+angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision.
+There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened
+that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark
+to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns
+float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that
+do the will of God and wait on us.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Angels and Shepherds
+
+
+The Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful
+news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in
+startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there
+had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it
+and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An
+angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall
+he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the
+glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and
+call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and
+then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that
+holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that
+prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.
+Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not
+God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace
+and administers his kingdom?
+
+Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God's way more than
+ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:
+God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most
+startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the
+birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the
+gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where
+there were more sheep than men to hear.
+
+What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride! God
+can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler
+soul. The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace,
+and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place. The gospel is no
+respecter of places and persons. It may be preached in a costly church
+or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school
+house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture. In simplicity
+and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life. It
+has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar
+and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.
+
+
+
+
+XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture
+
+
+In the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping
+watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest
+duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven. The night did not
+seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars
+burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of
+any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on
+the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and
+were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were
+flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth's
+atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from
+the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all
+the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir.
+Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet
+only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it. The encircling hills
+were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes
+were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like
+the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price. Musical
+artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of
+a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but
+angels will sing for anybody.
+
+The simple-minded shepherds were sore afraid at this outburst of
+heavenly music, as wiser people would have been. An angel voice sang the
+solo:
+
+    Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy
+    which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day
+    in the city of David a Saviour,  which is Christ the Lord. And this
+    shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling
+    clothes, and lying in a manger.
+
+"Be not afraid!" Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the
+thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come
+too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but
+the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to
+release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into
+the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a
+marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all
+its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor
+over hills and vales.
+
+The good tidings announced the birth of a Saviour, and this is the best
+news this sin-stricken world can hear, for sin is the root of all our
+fear and misery. Back of every bitter tear lies a guilty thought or
+deed. This connection is often visible upon the surface and stabs us in
+the face, and then it may lie hidden under many generations, but it is
+always there. Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights
+our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly
+tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves
+will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed
+into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world,
+and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and
+fill all the centuries with song.
+
+Definite directions were given for finding the new-born Saviour in the
+city of David, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. The
+angelic message was not simply a song in the air, a halo of celestial
+light, a splendid but fading vision, but it bound itself down to
+definite places and circumstances and left something solid. Again we
+note that this thing, was not done in a corner and is not afraid of
+facts. Jesus was a true human child and took upon him our form down to
+his infant clothes. The Christ is a great wonder in his divine
+personality, ever transcending our utmost comprehension, but we can
+understand his swaddling bands. Christianity is not all mystery, but it
+also comes down close around us and embodies itself in many plain facts
+and duties. "Ye shall find the babe." The shepherds were not left to
+wander around in uncertainty, but sent direct to the place. Christ is
+not hidden from us, clear directions point out the place where he is,
+and every soul that seeks him shall find him.
+
+The angel solo broke out into a heavenly chorus which gave a broad
+interpretation of the meaning of the birth of Christ:
+
+    Glory to God in the highest,
+    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
+
+This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and
+beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight
+shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ
+manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in
+devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and
+the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams
+through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is
+concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his
+Son.
+
+The chorus next pronounces peace upon men. Divine glory and human good
+will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they
+at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when
+truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper
+place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at
+enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens;
+human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and
+laden with fruit. As the glory of the sun is transformed into rosy buds
+and sweet fruit, so is the glory of God transformed into human good
+will. The glory of God and the peace of men are never in antagonism, but
+are always complementary and harmonious, they are the two sides of the
+same gospel, two parts of the same song. They cannot be separated and
+must go together; in glorifying God we make peace among men, and in
+making peace among men we glorify God.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem
+
+
+The angels' song died away in the solemn silence, and the shepherds were
+left alone. It was a critical hour with them. Would they follow this
+vision and turn it into victory, or would they let it vanish with the
+last echo of the song and relapse into the old dull routine? No, they
+did not let it pass, and life was never the same to them again. "Let us
+now go," they said, "even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
+come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." They translated
+vision into action and presently were climbing the rocky slope to
+Bethlehem. Had these shepherds not followed up the message their
+knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We
+hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we
+let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message
+does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever
+swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of
+worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. "Let us now go and
+see this thing." We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour.
+Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see
+Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and
+obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.
+
+"And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe
+lying in the manger." Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife
+of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the
+desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the
+passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple
+robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and
+make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the
+Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered
+with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and
+shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes
+treated with more cruel irony? But God's ways are not as our ways.
+Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get
+the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward
+from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very
+poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of
+humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a
+pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart
+of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into
+humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and
+toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the
+common people heard him gladly.
+
+Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. "Ye shall find a babe," was
+the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, "And they found the
+babe." When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint
+us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this
+need he has created bubbling springs and sparkling streams. He gave us
+hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and
+orchards of rosy fruit. He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find
+it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart. He set
+eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the
+Infinite, hearts that cry, "Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us."
+Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of
+the soul be disappointed and mocked? "And they found the babe," is the
+answer to this need and promise. God sends us with all our deep needs
+and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be
+exactly and fully matched and satisfied. He that hath seen this Child
+hath seen the Father.
+
+The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make
+known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child. The
+gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the
+individual heart. We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that
+we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it. And the more we
+give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands
+as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea.
+Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which
+they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God
+hath highly exalted him.
+
+First angels and then shepherds: how startling the contrast. Jesus has
+deep affinities with both: on his divine side he is related to heaven,
+and on his human side he is related to earth. And the first men he drew
+to his side were shepherds, representatives of the common people. He did
+not come as a member of any special class, especially of the upper
+class. No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the
+great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the
+level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking
+hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from
+the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the
+spire's gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time
+elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with Caesar, but with shepherds,
+and then in three hundred years a Christian Caesar sat on the throne.
+
+The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of
+Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands;
+and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost
+the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God.
+Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of
+society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it
+vertically from top to bottom.
+
+How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds
+are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. Shepherds would not
+get much out of Sir Isaac Newton, or a child out of Shakespeare, or a
+sorrowing heart out of Emerson. But every one can get milk and honey for
+his soul out of the gospel of Jesus. His wonderful words of life have
+the same sweetness and saving power for shepherd and scholar, peasant
+and prince. However lowly and unlettered one may be there is wide room
+for him around the manger of this Child.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. The Star and the Wise Men
+
+
+The birth of Jesus created a new center for the world and set heaven and
+earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards
+him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds
+wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night,
+and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian
+priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars.
+Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world
+and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars
+were embodiments of deity. A new star in their sky, whatever it may have
+been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a
+religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of
+their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly
+vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and
+appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of
+the Jews.
+
+They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their
+own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety
+and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish
+king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was
+of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his
+divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their
+curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to
+worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of
+these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their
+religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their
+simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe.
+Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science
+and faith grew from more to more.
+
+A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of
+scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke
+of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and
+find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the
+profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God
+in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed
+at the side of this manger.
+
+
+
+
+XV. A Frightened King
+
+
+The inquiry of the wise men startled Jerusalem and frightened Herod. The
+proud metropolis had not yet heard the news. The immortal honor of
+having given birth to the Christ had been denied to her haughty brow and
+had become humble Bethlehem's imperishable crown. The very name of king
+gave Herod a terrible shock. He was a usurper steeped in crime and was
+ever trembling on his throne. No hunted, white-faced, Russian Czar ever
+feared nihilist's bomb more than he feared rebellion's revolt and
+assassin's knife. Rebel after rebel he had crushed into spattered brains
+and blood, and here was rumor of another Rival born under the shadow of
+his throne. Herod was troubled and his terror sent a strange wave and
+shudder of fear through the city. So the same gospel that made angels
+sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world,
+created consternation and trouble up in Herod's palace and in his city.
+Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some.
+The good man's presence is always the bad man's condemnation and stirs
+hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according
+as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself
+is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. An Impotent Destroyer
+
+
+Herod took swift and thorough measures, as he thought, to crush his new
+rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where
+the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the
+beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own
+evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and
+complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be
+ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push
+their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man's
+tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.
+
+The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod's question, put
+their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be
+born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an
+exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its
+spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
+
+Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against
+Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly
+pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no
+truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men
+will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent
+rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in
+Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and
+Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of
+his head.
+
+Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored
+to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful
+persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not
+extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom
+been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him.
+Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even
+to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the
+rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire
+prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity
+would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that
+have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same
+yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our
+hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish
+and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle.
+Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our
+own door and even in our own hearts.
+
+The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were
+in Jerusalem--in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a
+monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly
+spirit--but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them
+on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in
+our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with
+divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in
+the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is
+a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and
+all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred
+with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Splendid Gifts
+
+
+"And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his
+mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their
+treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh."
+Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The
+imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are
+the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining
+fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the
+young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother
+and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the
+expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and
+divineness in life. The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until
+it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds
+its Father. The wise men found a King to worship; they were not
+following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness. Our
+instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its
+appropriate satisfaction. Christ completes our human childhood with
+divine Fatherhood. He that hath seen him hath seen the father.
+
+These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to
+Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been
+laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no
+sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy
+Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of
+Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his
+"Last Supper" because he feared their splendor would distract attention
+from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St.
+Peter's dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting
+the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child.
+Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his
+colossal genius. Shakespeare, "with the best brain in six thousand
+years," who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination
+over all our life, wrote in his will: "I commend my soul into the hands
+of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only
+merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life
+everlasting." Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many
+the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the
+invocation, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love."
+
+Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing
+except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly
+obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It
+would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the
+remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him
+and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written
+about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books
+that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and
+Caesar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain
+of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the
+writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in
+like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung
+about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and
+the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable
+testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.
+
+About the first use to which any notable invention is put is to spread
+the gospel of Jesus. The very first book printed on a printing press was
+the Bible, and this wonderful and perhaps greatest human invention has
+been busier printing this book than any other to this day and multiplies
+its copies by the hundred million over the world. The newspaper is a
+mighty means of spreading his principles. The railway and steamship
+carry his gospel, and the airship gives wings to the same good news.
+Telegraph and telephone flash it, and wireless waves set the ether over
+whole continents and oceans aquiver with the messages of Jesus Christ.
+The sewing machine sews for him, the typewriter writes for him, and even
+battle ships and bayonets may fight for him. Sooner or later every
+inventor must lay his magic machine at his feet. For him the statesman
+legislates, the scientist investigates, the author writes, the artist
+paints and the singer sings. In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing
+all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his
+feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining
+heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his
+service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his
+feet.
+
+Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every
+century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of
+the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this
+Child, worn deep by millions of feet. The nations are beginning to come.
+By and by these converging paths will be crowded and all the ends of the
+earth shall bring their gold and shall worship at his feet.
+
+What is the explanation of the mighty, worldwide, attractive power of
+this Child? There is only one adequate explanation: "He shall save his
+people from their sins." The world is tired of men who come to save it
+with programmes only an inch long; who have nothing better to propose
+than longer laws and cleaner sanitation; who, unmindful of the
+experiment in Eden, would have us believe that if we were only placed in
+a pleasant garden where we had plenty to eat and little to do we would
+all be good. The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its
+unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty
+to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are
+blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and
+beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like
+music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is
+the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. Let us now go
+even unto Bethlehem while the song is in the air and see this Child and
+worship at his feet.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?
+
+
+When we come to think of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and
+disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long
+preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected
+some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions
+are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a
+child. Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece
+of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not
+have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era
+he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the
+electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or
+knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and
+shower material comforts on the world?
+
+This thought grows out of our blind materialism which leads us to think
+that matter is the master of mind, circumstance more important than
+character and the things of the body than the things of the spirit. But
+material improvements do not necessarily improve men. The locomotive has
+little relation to character. It picks a man up at one point and drops
+him at another the same man he was. If he is selfish and wicked at the
+beginning of the journey, he is just as selfish and wicked at its end.
+It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little
+improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing
+material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly
+was it rotting at the core.
+
+But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting
+regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not
+give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific
+ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the
+intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions
+of money. Shakespeare gave the world no new machine, but he opened the
+eyes of men to see heavenly visions and thus enriched them with
+treasures above all the gold of the world. Martin Luther invented no
+steam engine or sewing machine, but he taught men the rights of
+conscience and created our modern liberties. No material thing, however
+powerful and splendid, can make a better world: this work calls for
+better men. Therefore when God brings into the world a child endowed
+with superior intellectual and moral power, though his gift is only a
+babe and seems insignificant and hardly worth counting among so many,
+yet he has sent one of the greatest gifts of which his omnipotence is
+capable. An old German schoolmaster always took his hat off to each new
+boy that came into his school, never knowing what elements of genius
+might have been mixed in his newly molded brain. When Erasmus came out
+of that school his prophetic instinct was justified. Never despise a
+child, for in it sleeps some of the omnipotence and worth of God.
+
+But the Child which God gave the world as its Christmas gift was no
+merely human child however richly endowed. This Child was human and was
+born in time, but he was also divine and came forth from eternity. The
+possibilities that were sleeping in this Child were foreseen by the
+prophet Isaiah in the names that were prophetically given him, every
+name being a window through which we can look in upon his personality
+and power, every title being one of his crowns: "His name shall be
+called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
+Peace." All these powers and possibilities are incarnated in this Child,
+and he is working them out in a redeemed world. God made no mistake,
+then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave
+the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born.
+All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one
+root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill
+it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad
+in the beauty of this Child.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A World Without Christmas
+
+
+What would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of
+the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to
+trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade
+into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their
+interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days.
+The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers
+would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and
+hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on
+Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak
+just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on
+the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the
+first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home
+gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor.
+The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and
+take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain
+at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.
+
+Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar.
+There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place
+on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other
+events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to
+blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in
+truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew
+history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through
+the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly
+every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our
+schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our
+literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we
+would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of
+purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into
+the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop
+all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We
+would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no
+hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and
+be wrapped in night.
+
+Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world
+and leave us as "infants crying in the night, infants crying for the
+light, and with no language but a cry"?
+
+
+
+
+XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?
+
+
+But has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a
+night? Has the angels' song survived the World War? Have not its notes
+of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned
+and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of
+monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was
+not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and
+spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the
+earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry
+voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These
+ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may
+well give us pause.
+
+But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.
+The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems
+blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds
+roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had
+never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of
+thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm
+passes their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their
+song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still
+unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt
+it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the
+earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in
+verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.
+
+The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the
+voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns
+are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up
+in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing
+away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all
+men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and Caesar
+and Napoleon and the Kaiser--mark the anticlimax!--are gone, their
+swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the
+same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice
+was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was
+he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the
+Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the
+storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even
+when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into
+form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm
+in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is
+still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a
+majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and
+wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted
+before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the
+greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of
+the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be
+the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets
+of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which "the kindly earth shall
+slumber, lapt in universal law." Then shall the angels' Christmas song
+break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
+notes, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
+whom he is well pleased."
+
+
+
+
+XXI. The Light of the World
+
+
+Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
+constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions
+were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
+stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
+irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
+Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
+itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
+terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
+where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
+pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
+despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
+Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
+human heart cried out that life
+
+    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
+    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
+    And we are here as on a darkling plain
+    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
+    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
+
+Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck
+in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with
+heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle--symbol and
+prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until
+he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that
+little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing
+light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his
+light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.
+
+This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a
+wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and
+its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining
+of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of
+Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot
+live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from
+his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it
+not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and
+dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match
+and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the
+muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father's house. He lifts
+life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.
+
+As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
+there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so
+from the pierced hand of Christ there shines a blaze of light that
+penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this
+Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is
+the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our
+gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are
+scintillations of this Light.
+
+
+O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin
+not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of
+bitterness and despair. Shine upon us with the light of thy truth and
+thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our
+Father's house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning
+into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may
+nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
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+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation
+Of Christmas, by James H. Snowden
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