We have heard with our ears what is full of grace and worthy of acceptance: “Jesus Christ the Son of God is born in Bethlehem of Judah.” My soul hath been melted at this announcement; but my spirit in my breast is surging in haste to utter this joy and this exultation of your desire at the time appointed. Jesus is interpreted Savior. What so necessary to the fallen, what so desirable to the wretched, what so useful to the hopeless? Nay, elsewhere whence is salvation, whence even some slight hope of salvation, in the law of sin and the body of our death, in the evil of the present day and the place of our affliction, unless it were born to us anew and unlooked for? Thou perhaps desirest salvation; but the bitterness of the remedy, when thou thinkest alike of thy weakness and of thy illness, affrighteth thee. Fear thou not. Christ is very gentle, mild and of great mercy, anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, who receive, though not his very fulness, yet some of the fulness of his anointing. But lest thou, hearing his gentleness, shouldst undervalue the might of thy Savior, cometh his title, the Son of God. _In Vigilia Nativitatis Domini_, VI. 1; PL 183: 109. Now let us return unto Bethlehem, and let us see this word which is wrought, which the Lord hath wrought and hath shown to his people. House of bread it is by old rendering; good for us there to tarry. Where hath been the word of the Lord, naught shall fail of the bread which shall strengthen the heart, as saith the prophet: “Comfort thou me according unto thy word” (Psalm cxviii. 28). In every word from the mouth of God proceeding mankind liveth, liveth in Christ as Christ in him is living. _Ibid._ 10; PL 183: 114. Happy then forever are these our brethren, who now have been freed from the snare of those that hunted them, who from the tents (_tabernaculis_) of our campaigning to the halls where we shall be resting have made their passage, their fear of evil lifted, their hope singly and fully now established. This is the faithful, all the faithful body, greeted in “There shall no evil happen unto thee; neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling” (_tabernaculo_: Psalm xc. 10). _In Psal. Qui habitat_, XI. 2; PL 183: 225. 2. Balance and Rime Balance, beloved of occasional orators from Gorgias down,[42] is useful in sharpening the iterations and contrasts of preaching.