found better accommodations.

VIII. The Birth

In that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears
to have been no woman's hand there to minister to her, she herself
wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no
other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from
which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on
that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is
now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill
the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes
from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child
and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all
imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and
looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed
that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a
divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person,
and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the
birth of a Caesar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but
stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon
the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been
disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a
great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse
before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis
of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power
and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but
in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to
save the world.

IX. No Room in the Inn

"There was no room for them in the inn." And so Jesus came into a world
where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all
this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his
coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols,
after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden
dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was
not wanted! "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Was
there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel
disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this
matter, no lack of hospitality in the kee