During the nineteen centuries that have elapsed since Jesus of Nazareth was born, art and music, eloquence and song, have expended their best talents in preserving forever to us some memories of the life and deeds of Him whose religion of love is winning the world. The treasures of intellectual genius have been lavished in the interpretation and promulgation of the faith that bears his name. At his shrine have worshipped the great and good of every land, and his name has penetrated to the uttermost ends of the earth. But in the brief record of his history that has come down to us, we read: "The common people heard him gladly"; and to these, his simple life, with its noble consecration and unselfish aims, appealed immeasurably more even than to the greatest and wisest of men. This is evident from a glance into the lore that has grown up among the folk regarding the birth, life, and death of the Christ. Those legends and beliefs alone concern us here which cluster round his childhood,--the tribute of the lowly and the unlearned to the great world-child, who was to usher in the Age of Gold, to him whom they deemed Son of God and Son of Man, divinely human, humanly divine. _Nature and the Christ-Birth._ The old heathen mythologies and the lore of the ruder races of our own day abound in tales of the strange and wonderful events that happened during the birth, passion, and death of their heroes and divinities. Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and the Isles of the Sea, bring us a vast store of folk-thought telling of the sympathy of Mother Nature with her children; how she mourned when they were sad or afflicted, rejoiced when they were fortunate and happy. And so has it been, in later ages and among more civilized peoples, with the great good who have made their influence felt in the world,--the poets, musicians, artists, seers, geniuses of every kind, who learned to read some of the secrets of the universe and declared them unto men. They were a part of Nature herself, and she heralded their coming graciously and wept over them when they died. This deep feeling of kinship with all Nature pervades the writings of many of our greatest poets, who "live not in themselves," but are become "a portion of that around them." In the beautiful words of Scott:-- "Call it not vain; they do not err Who say, that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies; Who say, tall cliff, and cavern lone, For the departed bard make moan; That mountains weep in crystal rill; That flowers in tears of balm distil; Through his loved groves the breezes sigh, And oaks, in deeper groan, reply; And rivers teach their rushing wave To murmur dirges round his grave."