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Seeing 'em together reminds me of that scraggy, old snowball bush in full bloom, leaning down to the little Stars of Bethlehem reaching up to it. What that good man have been to me only my Heavenly Father can know and Tom Mayberry suspicion.
Let camel or ox stabled that night in Bethlehem, after the burden-bearing of the day, stand and look at Him who is to carry the burdens of the world. Put back the straw and hear the first cry of Him who is come to assuage the lamentation of all ages. Christmas bells ring out the peace of nations! We want on our standards less of the lion and eagle and more of the dove.
As he supposed it not safe to pass the hot months of the year at Jerusalem, he resolved to spend the summer on Mount Lebanon, but civil commotions obliged him to relinquish the idea. He then turned his attention to Bethlehem, but the influence of the Greek revolt had reached Palestine, and was putting the Greeks in constant fear of their lives. His only resort was to return to Smyrna.
The function is to commemorate the revelation of Christianity to the Gentile world; and the lesson is the fulfilment of all that the better part of Heathendom had believed in and sought after, in the religion which emanates from Bethlehem.
At last he slept, exhausted, and past his piteous, prostrate childhood and helplessness the slow procession wound its way up the mountain road toward the crescent of Bethlehem, knowing nothing of his nearness to its unburdened comfort and simple peace. When he awakened, the night had fallen, and he opened his eyes upon a high vault of blue velvet darkness strewn with great stars.
As the wise men from the East travelled steadily across arid wastes with eyes fixed only on the strange bright luminary that was guiding them to Bethlehem, so we should regard this world as a desert across which we must hasten to the presence of our God."
When the people came to recognize that the ideal of a world of equal welfare, which had been represented to them by the clergy as a dangerous delusion, was no other than the very dream of Christ; when they realized that the hope which led on the advocates of the new order was no baleful ignis fatuus, as the churches had taught, but nothing less nor other than the Star of Bethlehem, it is not to be wondered at that the impulse which the revolutionary movement received should have been overwhelming.
Then Herod was very angry. He sent out his soldiers to Bethlehem. They came, and by the cruel king's command they seized all the little children in Bethlehem who were three years old, or younger, and killed them all. What a cry went up to God from the mothers in Bethlehem, as their children were torn from their arms and slain!
And the three brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: but David would not drink of it, but poured it out to the LORD.
At breakfast, mealy porridge was served out with the coffee. It is eatable, but not pleasant without sugar. Williams and I got leave to spend the morning out, and walked to Bethlehem over the veldt. A rather nice little town, but all the stores shut, and looking like a dead place. It was full of troops. Some stores had sentries over them, for there had been a great deal of looting.
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