p. 213.

[153:4] Ibid. vol. i. p. 47.

[153:5] Ibid. p. 20.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BIRTH-PLACE OF CHRIST JESUS.

The writer of that portion of the Gospel according to _Matthew_ which
treats of the _place_ in which Jesus was born, implies, as we stated in
our last chapter, that he was born in a _house_. His words are these:

"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea _in the days of
Herod the king_, behold, there came wise men from the east" to
worship him. "And when they were come _into the house_, they
saw the young child with Mary his mother."[154:1]

The writer of the _Luke_ version implies that he was born in _a stable_,
as the following statement will show:

"The days being accomplished that she (Mary) should be
delivered . . . she brought forth her first-born son, and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and _laid him in a manger_,
there being no room for him in the _inn_."[154:2]

If these accounts were contained in these Gospels in the time of
Eusebius, the first ecclesiastical historian, who flourished during the
Council of Nice (A. D. 327), it is very strange that, in speaking of the
birth of Jesus, he should have omitted even mentioning them, and should
have given an altogether different version. He tells us that Jesus was
neither born in a _house_, nor in a _stable_, but in a _cave_, and that
at the time of Constantine a magnificent temple was erected on the spot,
so that the Christians might worship in the place where their Saviour's
feet had stood.[154:3]

In the apocryphal Gospel called "_Protevangelion_," attributed to James,
the brother of Jesus, we are informed that Mary and her husband, being
away from their home in Nazareth, and when within three miles of
Bethlehem, to which city they were going, Mary said to Joseph:

"Take me down from the ass, for that which is in me presses to
come forth."

Joseph, replying, said:

"Whither shall I take thee, _for the place is desert_?"

Then said Mary again to Joseph:

"Take me down, for that which is within me mightily presses
me."

Joseph then took her down from off the ass, and he found there a _cave_
and put her into it.

Joseph then left Mary in the cave, and started toward Bethlehem for a
midwife, whom he found and brought back with him. When they neared the
spot a bright cloud overshadowed the cave.

"But on a sudden the cloud became _a great light in the cav