comed; but by the still shining of
a silent star and by the ineffable and transcendent voices of an Angel
Choir.

How long did the Shepherds listen to that chorus? How long did it ring
over the hills and far away? Whither went the Wise Men? Into what dim
distance vanished the star?

"Where are the roses of yesterday?
What has become of last year's snow?"

And the residuum of it all was a little Baby held to a woman's breast in
a miserable hovel in the most forlorn and detested corner of the world.
And yet to-day and at this hour, and at every hour during the
twenty-four, men are looking into that chamber; men are bowing to that
Child and His mother, and even that mother is at the feet of the Child.

From the snow peaks of the North land, "from Greenland's icy mountains
to India's coral strand," and on and on through all the burning tropics
to the companion ice of the other pole, the antarctic, and girdling the
world from east to west as well, the adoration continues. It comes alike
from the world's noblest, from the world's highest, from the world's
truest, from the world's kindest, from the world's poorest, from the
world's humblest, from the world's best.

Do not even the soldiers in the trenches upon the far-flung battle lines
pause to listen, look to see as for a moment dies away the cannonade? Do
not even the sailors of war and trade peer across the tossing waters of
the great deep, longing for a truce of God if only for an hour upon this
winter morning?

[Illustration: "The world bows down to a Mother and her Child--and the
Mother herself is at the feet of the Child."]

Yes, they all look into the manger as they look upon the cross and if
only for an instant this war reddened planet comes to "_see and
believe_." What keen vision saw in the Baby the Son of God and the Son
of Man? What simple faith can see these things in Him now? "_Let us now
go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass_."

That birth is known as the Incarnation. Ye know not "_how the bones do
grow in the womb of her that is with child_." Life itself is
insusceptible of any definition which satisfies, but we know that we
live, nevertheless. Science points out a common origin in protoplasmic
cells and is quite unable to explain so common a fact as sex
differentiation. I care not what methods of accounting for life you
propose, you yet have to refer it to the Author of all life "_in whom we
live and move and have ou