H When I was travelling in Armenia and Kurdistan some three years ago, it befell me more than once or twice to have to spend the night in the stable, "because there was no room in the inn " ; and the difference in actual accommodation was not so great as you might have supposed. The East Syrian people amongst whom I was travelling part of the time are very closely allied in race to the inhabitants of Palestine in the time of our Lord, and the customs are much the same still.^
^ I never felt the full pathos of the scene of the birth of Jesus till, standing one day in a room of an old inn in the market-town of Eisleben, in Central Germany, I was told that on that very spot, four centuries ago, amidst the noise of a market- day and the bustle of a public-house, the wife of the poor miner, Hans Luther, who happened to be there on business, being surprised like Mary with sudden distress, brought forth in sorrow and poverty the child who was to become Martin Luther, the hero of the Eeformation, and the maker of modern Europe.*
3. The birth in the manger because there was no room in the inn was natural. The fact that the child who was born was He whom Christendom celebrates does not make the indifference of Bethlehem a peculiar crime. Thejnen of that time were not different from us all. They did not know. God, who taught through this His Son that, when we give alms, we should not sound a trumpet before us, gave His great gift with the like simplicity. When He gave His Son, He sent no heralds. The men to whom He came were busy with the cares which have always busied men. They were like ourselves, eager over what have always been recognized as great questions — questions about taxa-
• Bishop W. E. Collins, Hours of Insight, 114. ' J. Stalker, The Life of Jesus Christ, 12.
ST. LUKE II. 7 7
tion, national independence, a world empire, and singularly care- less as to where the children are born.
ll We need to make room amid the crowding thoughts for the coming o! the Lord of life and light. And some day, when we have done it, there will be a country which has a national religion, because there will be a country which believes in the Incarnation. It will realize something more of the mighty mystery that flesh ~and blood are the temple of the Holy Spirit. It will realize how our souls, which come hither to tabernacle in flesh a little time, give us kindred with the Christ who was born among us. And we shall make room amid our crowding and eager thoughts for Him to come in us.^
4. The birth in the manger was of His own ordering. It was the Divine Babe's will to be born in such a place as that, and therefore He so ordered matters that His parents should not come to the inn till it was full, and that there should be no other place but that stable where they should lodge. It was not chance, God forbid ! It was the will of the unborn Infant Him- self. For He it is who ordereth all things in heaven and earth. He would be born in the city of David, because He was the Son of David, the King of Israel, and was to fulfil all the prophecies ; He would not be born in royal state or comfort as the Son of David might be expected to be, because He was to save us by suffering and humility.
^ Whilst our Lord Jesus Christ was yet in the bosom of the Father, before He took our nature, He was free from all liability of suffering, and was under no call to suffer for men, except the importunate call of His own everlasting love ; yet after He took our nature, and became the man Jesus Christ, He actually stood Himself within the righteous liability of suffering, not indeed on account of any flaw in His spotless holiness, but as a participator of that flesh which lay under the sentence of sorrow and death ; and being now engulfed in the horrible pit along with all the others, He could only deliver them by being first delivered Himself, and thus opening a passage for them to follow Him by ; as a man who casts himself into an enclosed dungeon which has no outlet in order to save a number of others whom he sees immured there, and when he is in, forces a passage through the wall, by dashing himself against it, to the great injury of his person. His coming into the dungeon is a voluntary act, but after he is there, he is
' A. C. Welch.
8 NO ROOM
liable to the discomforts of the dungeon by necessity, until he breaks through.^
II.
No Room in the World.
1. What was true of the Lord's entrance upon life was true of all His later life also. There never was one amongst the sons of men who was so truly human as He; for in us humanity is marred and blurred by so much that is weak and low and base, and not truly human at all ; but He who was the most truly Man of all men was all His life a stranger among men : " He came unto his own, and his own received him not." It was not that He was in any sense a recluse, or that He shrank from human society; indeed, it was all the other way — He yearned for companionship. The very first act of His public life was to draw to His side a little company of friends who were like-minded with Himself, and they were His companions ever after. Within this circle there were some who were specially dear to Him; and when He was about to face the darker agony of life He always invited them to accompany Him, and threw Himself on their sympathy. He was at home at the wedding feast and in the house of Simon the Pharisee and at the table of Levi the publican, and many another ; indeed, when His enemies were casting about for some accusation against Him, they did not accuse Him of being inhuman like the ascetic John the Baptist, but called Him rather " a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." And yet, all His life He was alone; He was despised and rejected of men. He was occupied in "business" that — so men chose to think — they had no interest in ; and so — they had no room for Him. When He had preached at Nazareth, where He was brought up, they arose and thrust Him out of the city. At Gadara, when they saw the mighty works that He did on them that were diseased, they came and besought Him to depart out of their coasts. He passed through Samaria, and the Samaritans would not receive Him. Wherever He went He was a homeless wanderer. " The foxes have holes," He said, " and the birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of man hath not where