break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
notes, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
whom he is well pleased."




XXI. The Light of the World


Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions
were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
human heart cried out that life

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.