The place where the inn stood is now occupied by an enormous pile of buildings, known as the “Church of the Nativity.” Down in the crypt of this church, reached by fifteen stone steps, and in the eastern wall of it, is a silver star, around which are the words: “_Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est_”--“Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.” One can not with indifference behold such a spot as this. To us it was a sacred and hallowed place, and we felt subdued and reverent while beholding the place where began the greatest life earth has ever contained. To the Christian, Bethlehem stands first among the holiest places on the face of the globe, and we were hushed into reverence by its sacred associations and charmed by its natural beauty. The “inn,” the scene of the nativity, stood on the crest of a hill that rapidly falls away to a valley seven hundred feet below. At its base is the “well” for the waters of which David so greatly longed. On the opposite side is a hill still more precipitous than the one on which Bethlehem stands. The little valley between the hills gradually opens out eastward, where once stood the wheatfields of Boaz, in which Ruth gleaned after the reapers. Just beyond this, scarcely a mile from the “city of David,” is the field where the shepherds were “keeping watch over their flock by night, when lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,” with this glad proclamation, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Then suddenly night was turned into day by the radiant brightness of a multitude of the heavenly host, filling earth and sky with their song: “Glory to God in the highest, Peace on earth, good-will to men.” The visit of the shepherds to the inn, the circumcision and presentation in the Temple, the visit and adoration of the wise men who saw His star in far off Persia, the cruel massacre of the children of Bethlehem by Herod, and the flight into Egypt, are rather scenes in the life of Christ than that of his mother, and are fully described in “THE CHRIST LIFTED UP.”