The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1912-12-25

written Dy washington Olduueu.
The story is told with completeness
and reality-just as one might re-
late the story of the birth of Lin
coin or any other great man.
Joseph and Mary were young peo-
pie who lived in Nazareth of Galilee
which is sixty miles north of Beth
Eehem. They had to go to Bethle-
hem because it was the city in which
their family belonged and the Ro-
man emperor who was making a
great census in his empire required
every family to be enrolled in its
native place.
So Joseph and Mary had come,
in the middle of the winter, to this
old town of Bethlehem. 1t was a
Kong journey for those days and
those roads, far more wearisome
than a trip to Denver or Minneapo-
lis would be for people on the Hud-
son or in Connecticut. If they
travelled by the principal road, as
doubtless they did, We know exactly
the route they followed-across the
great plain of Esdraelon, over the
mountains of Samaria and the hill
country of Judea to the great city
of Jerusalem, then southwark,
about six miles, from that city to
Bethlehem.
Now let DR.. GLADDEN. proceed
with his narrative:
Whether Joseph and Mary had
ever visited Bethlehem before, we
do not know.
THE first thing to do was to find
a place where they could abide in
Bethlehem, and this was no
easy task. The little town seems to
have been full of people who had
come perhaps upon the same errand
that brought them. You can i'm
agine how it would be If all the de-
scendants of all the families that
once lived in one of the old New
England hill towns-in Leitchfeld,
say, or Deerfield, or Leominster,-I
if all these families in all parts of
the country were ordered to go back
there and register
so it was at Bethlehem. Very
little dependence was placed on inns
or hotels by travellers in those days.
There were few places of public en-
tertainment. Every private family
gladly received and kindly cared
for such pilgrims as CHANGED to pass
through their neighborhood.
But no matter how hospitable
men may be, when their houses are
full to overlooking they can take no /
more guests, and this was the con-
dition in which Joseph and Mary |
found the homes in Bethlehem. To |
the inn they made their way; but
the inn was simply a shelter-a
shed enclosing a court, with no fur
niture and no other provision for
the comfort of the traveller than the
stone walls and the roof which pro-
tected him from the storm. Here
upon the bare floor he could spread
his rugs for sleep; here he could
partake of the food that he had
brought in his haversack; and his
beast could be left secure in the
court within the building.
Such were the inns, or khans, of
the East when Joseph and Mary
came to Bethlehem. But even such
cold comfort as this was not for
them. The bare shelter was so
crowded that there was no room
for them there. The only place
they could find was in the stable,
and this. as seems probable, was a
kind of cave or excavation in the
side of the rock, near the inn.
1T has been believed from the
earliest day that the place where
Jesus was born was a cave under a
rock. This story was
current among His followers not
hundred years after His death, and
here is no reason to doubt it's truth.
1t was perhaps some such place
Is the pioneers in Minnesota and
Dakota used to call a "dugout"-a
shelter, partly underground, where
nan and beast together were some
lines forced to find protection from
he wintry cold. This was the best
Joseph and Mary
,ould find in Bethlehem; and here
It was that the wonderful Babe was
born, and found His cradle in
'''Thus it was that the life which
was and is the Light of Men began ,
here on the earth. Doubtless this
was the greatest moment in the {
worlds history. Could anyone who
looked on this babe as He lay in the !
have dreamed of the place {
HI would fiji Of tho chanpa. Ha