The Bible responds to this requirement.  Christianity is an historical religion.  The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement as “Once upon a time,” but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea.  The town is there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born.  The narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king.  History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of iniquity.  These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly unbeliever can plausibly dispute.  So the gospel sets its record in the rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of Judea.  Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem.  We are not, then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact.  This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not afraid of the geographer’s map and the historian’s pen.  The Christmas story is not another beautiful legend in the world’s gallery of myths, but is sober and solid reality; its story is history.  Our religion is truth, and we will worship at no other altar.

V. Simplicity of the Narrative

Though surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels of the gospels.  This event has inspired poets and painters and has been embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation.  Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy conception of the scene.  But the evangelists had no such purpose or thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is perfect art.  They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of skill or literary art.  Yet all the stylists and artists of the world stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme achievement.  No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their own eloquent and marvelous tale.  The inspired writers mixed no imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the trustworthiness of their narrative.  These men did not follow cunningly devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.

VI.  The Town of Bethlehem

The land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a spinal column.  About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur shoots off from the central range towards the east.  On the terminal bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem.  On the west it is shut in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into the plain.  Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and wheatfields wave in the valleys.  In the distant east, across the Dead Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.