looks into the
upturned face.

And so Jesus came. With all of its contrasts it was a winsome coming. A
pure young mother nursing her babe; the babe with its sweet wondrous face,
a fresh act of God indeed; the simple unselfish cattle; the bright stars;
the Glory shining; the sudden flood of music; the Lord's messenger; the
message--a very winsome coming.

He came into the peculiar climate of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is Judea. Out of
the Babylonian remnant of Israel had come great men, true leaders, with
great zeal for the city, and the temple, and the temple service, and for
the law. They made the mould in which this later Jerusalem was cast. But
that mould retaining its old form, had now become filled with the baser
metals. The high ideals of the new makers of the city had shrunk into mere
ideas. The small, strongly entrenched ruling circle were tenacious
sticklers for traditions as interpreted by themselves. That fine old word
conservative (with an underneath meaning of "what we prefer") was one of
their sweetest morsels. Underneath their great pride as Moses' successors,
the favored custodians of the nation's most sacred treasures, was a
passionate love for gold. The temple service was secretly organized on
the profit-sharing plan, with the larger share, as usual, for the
organizers.

That hardest thing in the whole range of human action to overcome, either
by God or man or the devil--prejudice--they had, in the Simon-pure form,
superlatively refined. The original treasure of God's Word was about as
much overlaid and hidden away by writings about it as--it has been in some
other times. Of course they were looking for a Messiah, the one hope of
their sacredly guarded literature. But He must be the sort that they
wanted, and--could use.

Herod the King was a man of great ability, great ambition, great passion,
and great absence of anything akin to conscience. But the virtual ruler
was the high priest. His office was bargained for, bought and sold for the
money and power it controlled in the way all too familiar to corrupt
political life in all times, and not wholly unknown in our own. The old
spiritual ideals of Moses, and Samuel, preached amid degeneracy by Elijah
and Isaiah, were buried away clear out of sight by mere formalism, though
still burning warm and tender in the hearts of a few. This was the
atmosphere of the old national capital into which Jesus came.

<u>The Bethlehem Fog.</u>

Then it was that J