Did I not always see you in the woman who, during the cold winter season, was compelled to go across the mountains far from home?  And so I will begin.

At that time the land of the Jews was under the dominion of the Romans.  The Roman Emperor wished to know how many Jews there were, and commanded that an enrolment of the people should be made in Judaea.  All the Jews were to go to the place of their birth, and there report themselves to the Imperial officer.  In the little town of Nazareth, in Galilee—­a mountainous district of Judaea—­there lived a carpenter.  He was an elderly man, and had married a young wife of whom a folk-song still sings—­

  “As beautifully white as milk,
  As marvellously soft as silk;
  A woman very fair to see,
  Yet full of deep humility.”

They were poor people, but pious and industrious and obedient.  No man in the wide world troubled about them, and yet had it not been for them the Roman Empire might not have fallen.  Years afterwards, indeed, it fell because of that carpenter.  People from all quarters of the globe dwelt in Galilee, even barbarians who had wandered there from the west and the north.  And it was often difficult to distinguish their descent.  Our carpenter was born in the south of Judaea, in the town of Bethlehem, which, in olden times, had been the native place of King David.  Joseph, the carpenter, was not unwilling to speak of that, and even to let it be known that he was of the house of David, the great king.  But yet he might well have thought it a finer thing to rise up from below than to come down from above.  And is it not so?  Does not man rise up from below, and God come down from high?  In his boyhood David was a shepherd; it is said that he slew the leader of the enemy with stones from his sling, and that was why he rose so high.  Now for that reason, and because Joseph, the carpenter, was glad to visit his native town once again, and to take his wife with him and show her the land of his youth, the enrolment of the people was right pleasing unto him.  So the two made their plans, and set out for Bethlehem.  It was three days’ journey and more, and they might well have complained.  If a workman to-day has not all that is of the best, he should think of Master Joseph, who always cared more for good work than good money.  They probably took a packet of food with them from home, and the bride was often obliged to rest by the way.  The path over the rocky mountains was difficult and tiring, and they had to pass through the suspected land of Samaria.  But Joseph never grumbled.  And at last they reached Judaea.  And when they came upon ancient monuments, he liked to stop, first in order to see how they were built, and then to ponder over the great men and great deeds of olden times.  They spent a night at a place called Bethel, and there Joseph dreamed that he saw a ladder before him, and that it reached from earth to heaven.  And Joseph