There were few places where he did find welcome:  generally there was no room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to expect it.  And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places where he wanted to be.

Jesus was not wanted in his own country:  Herod tried to leave no room for him there.  He was not wanted in his own town:  his neighbors tried to hurl him down a cliff to his death.  He was not wanted in his own church:  its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant fury and at last crucified him.  Even his own family found it hard to make room for him in their inner circle.  Small room was there in this evil world for this pure and lowly spirit.  Then why did he come to it?  Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it.  Small room do we still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin.  Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the world?  Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day than ever before, and this room is ever widening.

How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her babe!  Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out of which the cattle were fed.  How much shall we miss if we do not have room for Christ?  There is one world where there is room for Jesus and where he is wanted:  heaven.  And all who are like him shall find room with him in its many mansions.

X. Angel Ministry

Jerusalem and Rome knew nothing of this event.  The High Priest offered the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the coming of the true Sacrifice, and Caesar slept that night without a dream that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a worldwide kingdom.  Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew it.  There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and “angels seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the surface of the sea.”

Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration.  The Bible is full of angels.  They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come upon her.  No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling