t big enough to make room for her.
What was she anyway?--a mere chattel; and what her child?--already
there were too many children; and the only course to adopt was to let
most of them die! And so at its dawn we can see what a mighty change
Christianity has made in the world. Though the mother and the Child
were shut out of the inn and consigned to the asses' stall, yet because
of that mother and Child womanhood is to-day honoured and childhood
most precious. To-day, in whatever land on which the shadow of the
Cross has fallen, there is heart-room and house-room for mother and
child.

I

As one reads the old beautiful story, this foot-note that explains how
the Founder of Christianity was born in a stable because 'there was no
room for them in the inn' stirs the mind with a wistful poignancy. The
book slips down on the knees and the imagination awakes. The essence
of nineteen centuries of Christian history is here. The web of all the
centuries is woven after the one pattern. Shut out at His birth, His
fate has been the same ever since. He came with the message of
humanity's renewal. He proclaimed the most revolutionary doctrine ever
preached to men--that the pariahs of humanity, publicans, sinners,
slaves, those ignorant of the law and therefore accursed, were all the
sons of God; and that only one law was requisite, that men should love
one another with a love that gleamed red with sacrificial blood. But
what have men done with this evangel? They have shut it out! It was
too beautiful for their gross hearts and their self-clouded eyes. It
was also very difficult. It required the changed heart and the
transfigured life. And that has always been most difficult--to
transmute the self-centred into the God-centred and all it means. So
men set themselves to circumvent that demand for the surrendered
heart--and they offered the surrendered brain. That is quite easy.
They formulated logical propositions setting forth that thus and thus
God acted, and they said--'Believe this and be saved, or disbelieve and
be damned!' Christianity that came into the world as spirit and life
became mere intellectual gymnastics! And with the name of the Lord of
Love on their lips Christians cheerfully burnt each other because their
definitions differed.... What an amazing fate to overtake the most
beautiful thing that ever was seen on the earth! ... A Borgia sits on
the throne of St. Peter; Calvin burns Servetus; the Jesu