XI. Angels and Shepherds


The Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful
news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in
startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there
had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it
and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An
angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall
he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the
glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and
call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and
then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that
holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that
prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come.
Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not
God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace
and administers his kingdom?

Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God's way more than
ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message:
God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most
startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the
birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the
gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where
there were more sheep than men to hear.