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 o
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