The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.  The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human brain are not the railway and telegraph after all.  The art of printing, which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and in its day was a great wonder.  Still farther back, hidden in the mists of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more useful and marvelous.  It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our modern magic machines than to part with these.

The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow the hills lying around their feet.  What modern preacher can compare in eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah?  Nature is ever full of new wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in the days of Abraham as they are to-day.  We are the heirs of the ages, but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not die.

Where must we go to find the greatest wonder?  Not to the scientist’s discoveries and the inventor’s cunning devices:  the greatest marvel is not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning.  On that morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the world.  The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time.  Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world.  Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath.  The coming of such a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out of a new star in the sky.

II.  Preparation for the Event

Near events may have remote causes.  The river that sweeps by us cannot be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills.  The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.