I repeat, are you indeed sure He was? I mean, with real happening of the strange things you have been told, that the Heavens opened near Him, showing their hosts, and that one of their stars stood still over His head? You are sure of that, you say? I am glad; and wish it were so with me; but I have been so puzzled lately by many matters that once seemed clear to me, that I seldom now feel sure of anything. Still seldomer, however, do I feel sure of the contrary of anything. That people say they saw it, may not prove that it was visible; but that I never saw it cannot prove that it was invisible: and this is a story which I more envy the people who believe on the weakest grounds, than who deny on the strongest. The people whom I envy not at all are those who imagine they believe it, and do not. For one of two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and without any manner of doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, or a dream full of meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly devised fable, but the record of an impression made, by some strange spiritual cause, on the minds of the human race, at the most critical period of their existence;--an impression which has produced, in past ages, the greatest effect on mankind ever yet achieved by an intellectual conception; and which is yet to guide, by the determination of its truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of ages to come. Will you give some little time therefore, to think of it with me to-day, being, as you tell me, sure of its truth? What, then, let me ask you, is its truth to you? The Child for whose birth you are rejoicing was born, you are told, to save His people from their sins; but I have never noticed that you were particularly conscious of any sins to be saved from. If I were to tax you with any one in particular--lying, or thieving, or the like--my belief is you would say directly I had no business to do anything of the kind. Nay, but, you may perhaps answer me--"That is because we have been saved from our sins; and we are making merry, because we are so perfectly good." Well; there would be some reason in such an answer. There is much goodness in you to be thankful for: far more than you know, or have learned to trust. Still, I don't believe you will tell me seriously that you eat your pudding and go to your pantomimes only to express your satisfaction that you are so very good. What is, or may be, this Nativity, to you, then, I repeat? Shall we consider, a little, what, at all events, it was to the people of its time; and so make ourselves more clear as to what it might be to us? We will read slowly. "And there were, in that country, shepherds, staying out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." Watching night and day, that means; not going home. The staying out in the field is the translation of a word from which a Greek nymph has her name Agraulos, "the stayer out in fields," of whom I shall have something to tell you, soon.