are the way for the
ministry of Christ, and this ministry forms the sum and substance of the
gospel story.

The time was "in the days of Herod," called "the Great," a monster of
cruelty, a vassal of Rome, who ruled the Jews with savage tyranny. The
political slavery of the people was only less pitiful than their spiritual
decline, for religion had become an empty form, a mere system of
ceremonies and rites. However, God is never without his witnesses and his
true worshipers. Among these were "a certain priest named Zacharias" and
his wife Elisabeth, who lived in the hill country of Judea, south of
Jerusalem. They "were both righteous before God," not sinless but without
reproach, carefully observing the moral and also the ritual requirements
of the law. Yet godliness is no guarantee against sorrow or against the
disappointment of human hopes, and these pious souls were saddened because
their home was childless. This trial was peculiarly great among a people
who regarded childlessness as a sign of divine displeasure and it was even
more distressing to the hearts of the faithful who were yearning for the
birth of the promised Messiah.

Twice each year Zacharias went to Jerusalem to perform for a week his
sacred tasks. Finally there came to him a privilege which a priest could
enjoy only once in his lifetime; the "lot" fell upon him, and he thus was
chosen to enter the Holy Place at the hour of prayer and there offer
incense upon the golden altar just before the veil in the very presence of
God. It was the supreme hour of his life. As the cloud of perfume began to
rise, true symbol of accepted petitions, an angel appeared and assured the
startled priest that his supplications had been heard. For what had
Zacharias then been praying--for a son, or for the salvation of his people?
Were not both desires included in that supplication? As the representative
of a nation, the priest hardly could have confined his petition to what
was purely personal and private. Yet, as he pleaded for the coming of the
Messiah, there must have been in his soul the secret yearning of the long
years or the memory of that abandoned hope which he had always associated
in thought with the salvation of Israel. Many a minister of Christ has a
similar experience; in the very performance of his public tasks there
rests on his soul the conscious shadow of some private grief.

The angel declared that the prayer for national salvation had been heard,
and h