Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone. VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near "Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled." This is the point at which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. Cæsar Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December and March, B.C. 5-4, that such a census was being taken in the province of Syria.