en the
dominions of vassal kings like Herod had to furnish the statistics
demanded by their master. He had received his kingdom on the footing of
a subject, and grew more entirely dependent on Augustus as years passed,
asking his sanction at every turn for steps he proposed to take. He
would, thus, be only too ready to meet his wish, by obtaining the
statistics he sought, as may be judged from the fact that in one of the
last years of his life, just before Christ's birth, he made the whole
Jewish nation take a solemn oath of allegiance to the emperor as well as
to himself.

"It is quite probable that the mode of taking the required statistics
was left very much to Herod, at once to show respect to him before his
people, and from the known opposition of the Jews to anything like a
general numeration, even apart from the taxation to which it was
designed to lead. At the time to which the narrative refers, a simple
registration seems to have been made, on the old Hebrew plan of
enrolling by families in their ancestral districts, of course for future
use; and thus it passed over quietly.... The proclamation having been
made through the land, Joseph had no choice but to go to Bethlehem, the
city of David, the place in which his family descent, from the house and
lineage of David, required him to be inscribed."

2. Jesus Born Amidst Poor Surroundings.--Undoubtedly the accommodations
for physical comfort amidst which Jesus was born were few and poor. But
the environment, considered in the light of the customs of the country
and time, was far from the state of abject deprivation which modern and
western ways would make it appear. "Camping out" was no unusual exigency
among travelers in Palestine at the time of our Lord's birth; nor is it
considered such to-day. It is, however, beyond question that Jesus was
born into a comparatively poor family, amidst humble surroundings
associated with the inconveniences incident to travel. Cunningham
Geikie, _Life and Words of Christ_, chap. 9, pp. 112, 113, says: "It was
to Bethlehem that Joseph and Mary were coming, the town of Ruth and
Boaz, and the early home of their own great forefather David. As they
approached it from Jerusalem they would pass, at the last mile, a spot
sacred to Jewish memory, where the light of Jacob's life went out, when
his first love, Rachel, died, and was buried, as her tomb still shows,
'in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.' ... Traveling in the East
ha