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- 2026-01-26T19:09:22.943Z
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- text
- 613 # THE NATIVITY
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617 HE word “nativity” is a long one, but the picture facing page 125 explains what it means. The little Child, its mother, with a circle of light above her head, the manger spread with loose straw, the rude roof under which they are sheltered, the stars that are seen shining outside under the edge of the roof—all this lets us see that our picture is that of the holy night when our Saviour was born in Bethlehem.
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619 It is almost nineteen hundred years since the events described in our picture occurred, but the further we get away from that time the more interesting it all is to us. Christ being born into the world has made so much difference with the world, that when Christmas—which is only another name for Christ’s birthday
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622 —comes around we think more and more about it, and make more of it. Nobody knew away back there in Bethlehem how much it meant for Jesus to be born. Mary, the Child’s mother, did not know. Joseph, the Child’s father, did not know. The angels understood it better, and we read how a multitude of them sang in the sky, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.” But people generally knew very little about it, and cared very little. In the little town of Bethlehem things went on as usual. The night came on just as at other times around the poor little shed where Jesus was born. The stars shone in that same quiet way which it is always their habit to do. Nobody suspected, nobody knew, that the little Child that came into the world that night was to be the greatest man that ever lived—our Saviour.
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624 The world had expected for a great while that something of the kind was going to happen, but nobody knew exactly
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627 what. The idea had become a pretty general one that some one was going to appear in the world that would be a friend to men and their Redeemer, but nobody knew who or when it was to be, or exactly what he was going to do. We can all tell what has happened when it is past, but not many people can tell what is going to happen; but there are a few that can. We call such people prophets. You find a good deal said about them in the Old Testament. These Old Testament prophets knew beforehand that a Saviour was going to appear. Isaiah was such a prophet, and if you will read the fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter of Isaiah, you will see that he was expecting something that was certainly very much like what happened that night in Bethlehem; and as you read further on in the Old Testament, you will discover that this expectation was continually increasing.
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629 It was something as it would be if you had never seen the sun, and on a clear
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632 morning were to stand out very early and see it come up over the horizon. The first thing you would notice would be a little touch of light away up on the sky in the east, which you would think perhaps was a fire a long way off. Then you would see a little cloud growing red along its edges; pretty soon after you would discover that the tops of the hills were becoming bright all over. You would be sure now that something would pretty soon come into sight, but would not know what it was going to be, and would all the time be getting more and more interested and excited. After a while the sky would be full of light, and some of the highest hills be tipped with sunshine. Then at last, suddenly, right on the edge of the horizon, there flashes a spark of something so bright and so dazzling it almost makes the tears come in your eyes to look at it. The *sun* is rising. Now the brightness in the air, the red in the clouds, the glory on the hills, are all understood.
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