The Commonplace Wonder of Bethlehem

To human sense, what took place at Bethlehem may well have seemed at the time commonplace enough. An infant was born under circumstances of hardship — was laid in a wayside stall. To those who do not look closely at what was passing, it might have occurred that a like event had happened scores of times before and would often be repeated.

Everybody then, depend upon it, did not hear the song of the angels or mark the bearing of the virgin mother or of her saintly spouse. The kingdom of God had entered into history, but, certainly, not with observation.

Nay, more, even among the worshippers of Christ the full meaning of His birth, as opening a new era in the ^history of the human race, was not at once, by any means, practically appreciated. For five centuries and a half, Christians still reckoned the years by the names of the old Roman consuls, or by the era of Diocletian, just like the pagans around them. It was in the year 541 of the Christian era that Dionysius the Little, a pious and learned person at Rome, first arranged the history of mankind around the most important event in its whole course— the birthday of Jesus Christ.

Christendom at once recognized the justice of this way of reckoning time; and the attempts to supersede it, such as that which was made in France during the first revolution, have never had a serious chance of success. But how often do you and I use the phrase, “The year of our Lord,” without reflecting that it proclaims the birth of Jesus Christ to be an event of such commanding importance that all else in human history, rightly understood, is merely relative to it — interesting only as it precedes or follows, as it leads up to or is derived from it.

And yet, as I have said, five centuries and a half of the Christian ages passed before this was practically recognized. And so it has been ever since; so it is at this hour. Real importance is one thing, apparent importance is another.