appeared Whose claims to the Messiahship have stood the test of investigation and of

time - impartial history can make only one answer. It points to Bethlehem and to

Nazareth. If the claims of Jesus have been rejected by the Jewish Nation, He has at least,

undoubtedly, fulfilled one part of the Mission prophetically assigned to the Messiah.

Whether or not He be the Lion of the tribe of Judah, to Him, assuredly, has been the

gathering of the nations, and the isles have waited for His law. Passing the narrow bounds

of obscure Judæa, and breaking down the walls of national prejudice and isolation, He

has made the sublimer teaching of the Old Testament the common possession of the

world, and founded a great Brotherhood, of which the God of Israel is the Father. He

alone also has exhibited a life, in which absolutely no fault could be found; and

promulgated a teaching, to which absolutely no exception can be taken. Admittedly, He

was the One perfect Man - the ideal of humanity, His doctrine the one absolute teaching.

The world has known none other, none equal. And the world has owned it, if not by the

testimony of words, yet by the evidence of facts. Springing from such a people; born,

living, and dying in circumstances, and using means, the most unlikely of such results -

the Man of Nazareth has, by universal consent, been the mightiest Factor in our world's

history: alike politically, socially, intellectually, and morally. If He be not the Messiah,

He has at least thus far done the Messiah's work. If He be not the Messiah, there has at

least been none other, before or after Him. If He be not the Messiah, the world has not,

and never can have, a Messiah.

To Bethlehem as the birthplace of Messiah, not only Old Testament prediction,1 but the

testimony of Rabbinic teaching, unhesitatingly pointed. Yet nothing could be imagined

more directly contrary to Jewish thoughts and feelings - and hence nothing less likely to

suggest itself to Jewish invention2 - than the circumstances which, according to the

Gospel- narrative, brought about the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. A counting of the

people, of Census; and that Census taken at the bidding of a heathen Emperor, and

executed by one so universally hated as Herod, would represent the ne plus ultra of all

that was most repugnant to Jewish feeling.3 If the account of the circumstances, which

brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, has no basis in fact, but is a legend invented to

locate the birth of the Nazarene in the royal City of David, it must be pronounced most

clumsily devised. There is absolutely nothing to account for its origination - either from

parallel events in the past, or from contemporary expectancy. Why then connect the birth

of their Messiah with what was most repugna nt to Israel, especially if, as the advocates of

the legendary hypothesis contend, it did not occur at a time when any Jewish Census was

taken, but ten years previously?