been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a
religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of
their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly
vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and
appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of
the Jews.

They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their
own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety
and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish
king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was
of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his
divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their
curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to
worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of
these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their
religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their
simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe.
Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science
and faith grew from more to more.

A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of
scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke
of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and
find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the
profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God
in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed
at the side of this manger.