Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1912-12-20
BIRTH OF CHRIST

account of the birth of Christ, written
by Washington GLADDEN.. The story is
told with completeness and reality
just as one might relate the story of
the birth of Lincoln or any other
great man.
Joseph and Mary were young people
who lived in Nazareth of Galilee
which is sixty miles north of Bethle-
hem. They had to go to Bethlehem
because it was the city in which their
family belonged and the Roman
emperor who was making a great
census in his empire required every
family to be enrolled in it's native
place.
So Joseph and Mary had come, in
the middle of the winte, to this old
town of Bethlehem. 1t was a long
journey for those days and those
roads, far more wearisome than
trip to Denver or Minneapolis would
be for people on the Hudson or the
Connecticut. If they travelled by the
principal road, as doubtless they did,
we know exactly the route they fol-
lowed-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 or Mary had
ever visited Bethlehe m before, we do
not know.
"The first thing to do was to find
place where they could abide in
Bethlehem, and this was not an 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 imagine how
it would be if all the descendants of
all the families that once lived in one
of the old New Eng land hill towns
in Litchfield, say, or Deerfeld, or
LeOminster--if all the descendants of
all these families in all parts of the
country were ordered to go back there
and register.
$50 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 shelter-a shed
enclosing court, with no furniture
and no other provision for the com fort
of the traveller than stone walls and
the roof which protected 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.
This bare shelter was so crowded that
there was no room for them then.
The only place they could find shelter
was in the stable, and this, as seems
probable, was kind of cave or ex-
cavation in the side of the rock, near
the inn.
''It has been believed from the
earliest day that the place where
Jesus was born was a cave under a
sheltering rock. This story was cur
rent among His followers not
hundred years after His death, and
there is no reason to doubt its truth.
1t was perhaps some such place as the
pioneers in Minnesota and Dakota
used to call a 'dugout'-a shelter.
partly underground, where man and
beast together were sometimes forced
to find protection from the wintry
cold. This was the best entertainment
Joseph and Mary could find in Bethle-
hem and here it was that the wonder
full Babe was born, and found His
cradle in manger.
Thus it was that the life which
was and is the Light of Men began
here on earth. Doubtless this was the
greatest moment in the worlds his
tory. Could anyone who looked on
this Babe as He lay in the manager
have dreamed of the place He would
fill. of the changes He would bring,
of the kingdom He would establish in
the world? Could anyone there have
guessed that nineteen centuries from
that day five hundred millions of the
human race would be calling them