the bounds of feminine retirement. But this fails to take account of the aboriginal energy of spirit in that Jewish blood. Galilee was the intense heart of the most intense race ever known. This was moreover at Israel's crisal hour, her age-long martyrdom come to its coronation in one last stand against the enemy. It was the golden moment in history, the highest peak which the human spirit has climbed in its march across the centuries. If Mary had been the conventional, the starchly decorous creature which some would prefer her to have been, Christianity would never have been born. Her child was to be called upon to do a titan's work, and needed a mother whose spirit was likewise cast in the titan mould.

If the churches of the well-off and privileged class realized the social dynamite that is concealed in this hymn composed by The Carpenter's mother, they would expurgate it from their liturgies forthwith. The burst of insurrection rumbles through it like the interior fires of a volcano. It is prolific in Magna Chartas. It is a declaration of independence from every form of slavishness. My soul doth magnify the Lord;

For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.

His mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath showed strength with his arm;

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats.

And exalted them of low degree.

He hath filled the hungry with good things;

And the rich he hath sent empty away.

He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy. "The Marseillaise" of the ancient world! And this hymn of revolution, pulsing with hatred of oppressors and with fellow-feeling for all the oppressed ones of

earth, was composed and sung by Mary while she was carrying Jesus underneath her heart. Holy mother of God, from henceforth in very deed all generations shall call thee blessed.

And so it was that the days were accomplished; and she brought forth her first-born son and laid him in a manger. Manger! Jesus belongs to the proletariat by birthright. For this nativity in a cattle shed was typical of a life that was lived democratically throughout. In cities round about were Roman grandees, vassal kings, patrician magnates. Rich with the spoil of half a continent, they accounted the toiling masses to be but cattle - and housed them as cattle. He who was to arouse the masses to a demand for human rights was born in a stable side by side with oxen.

As his eyes blinked to the light of day, the future Carpenter saw in that Syrian village the Roman "System" now for the first time operating on a world scale. It was the occasion of the "tax" spoken of before, that booty which Rome was proceeding to lift from a defenceless peasantry. This Bethlehem event is sometimes referred to as a census. But the census was to serve as the basis of a poll tax which now was to be added to the other taxes that were on the backs of the people:

The simple rule, the good old plan,

That he should take who has the might,
And he shall keep who can.

Habitually near to the starvation line lived the peasantry of that time. The people in this particular province had already been bled to the verge by Herod, Rome's toady and vassal. This further spoliation, therefore,

meant bread out of many a mouth. The brigands on the Tiber, however, had thoughtfully provided for every emergency. There was a Roman law that a parent could sell his infant into slavery, if the money was needed to pay the tax. Some of the mothers in that Bethlehem crowd, therefore, must at that moment have been lifting up very sharp cries, because their babes had been sold to raise the necessary money.

The shepherds were a set upon whom the tax fell with an especially cruel pressure, for they were the poorest class in Palestine. They slept in the fields with their flocks. Their clothing was of the scantiest, their persons rude and unkempt because of the nature of their occupation, and their food supply at all times precarious. This poll tax, therefore, coming now on top of all the other booty which they were being periodically separated from, fell with crushing weight. It seriously reduced the number of sheep in their flocks, and meant short rations throughout the residue of the winter. Even in our own country, taxes are paid with begrudgment; from which one can judge the feelings wherewith the "tax" in the present instance was paid. For the enormous sums of money thus raised were to be sent out of the country— the impoverishment of those already poor for the enrichment of those already rich. Therefore we can readily credit the report that it was good tidings to the shepherds encamped on the plans outside Bethlehem, when they heard that a Deliverer was being born to them.

The tax was finally "accomplished." But only by the burning of villages and the slaughter of hundreds.

Rhapsodists have sought decorously to gild this Bethlehem picture:

"O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie!

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep,

The silent stars go by."

But those silent stars looked down on a scene that was anything but peaceful and idyllic. Poetry must be sought in other directions than the ecstatic. For the economic background thrusts insistently into view - refuses to remain glossed over. That Bethlehem town is far from "still" on the night in question. Nor is its slumber "deep and dreamless." A mood of interrogation is upon the people an angry, bitter, venomous mood. They are asking by what right this decree is issuing from the Tiber, "that all the world should be taxed." It is an interrogation that will not down. Groups of angry men, husbands and fathers, gather on the street corners, gesticulating in fashion that is ominous. Gatherings on street corners are bad for despotism in all ages. The Roman cohorts have learned an effective way to end gatherings on street corners; they employ this method The captain of the garrison near by issues an order. The soldiery of Rome and of her menial, Herod, are set in motion. They put an end to gatherings on the street corners. And the Syrian stars that night looked down upon corpses in the streets men who that morning were heads of families, but who made the mistake of asking questions. Daughters and young wives, now that their natural protectors are out of the way, become spoils of conquest for the soldiery. Even babes feel the Roman

now.

ferocity. The night is vocal with rage and anguish “lamentation and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

We are certified that Mary "pondered all these things in her heart." For the money that was being pillaged from this working-class population was to be forwarded to Italy to make a Roman holiday. And we may be sure that Mary knew something of Rome's idea as to what a holiday should be. She had been brought up in a cosmopolitan district. Galilee lay across the great trade routes of the world. Nazareth looked down upon the highway between the Mediterranean ports and Damascus. Caravans traversed that route, trafficking between Europe and Asia. Soldiers of all nations, merchants, proconsuls, legates, gilded nobles in their chairs of state with fifty outriders, travelled the highway and kept it a beaten thoroughfare. It was called "Galilee of the Nations," because so closely in touch with the world outside of Jewry. The Galileans took a passionate interest in public affairs. And in the exchange of news around the village well in Nazareth, morning and night, Mary heard tales of the extravagances in Rome, made possible by the spoil of a hundred provinces.

Life in the Imperial City was becoming one long holiday, even for the rabble, due to the now almost daily distribution of bread and the circus. This had been a stipulation in the concordat which we gazed at in the first chapter. In the time of the Gracchi the plebs had been a self-respecting if brutal folk- they had demanded their share of the commonwealth, and had waged long civil