At that time the land of the Jews was under the dominion of the Romans.
The Roman Emperor wished to know how many Jews there were, and
commanded that an enrolment of the people should be made in Judaea.
All the Jews were to go to the place of their birth, and there report
themselves to the Imperial officer. In the little town of Nazareth, in
Galilee--a mountainous district of Judaea--there lived a carpenter. He
was an elderly man, and had married a young wife of whom a folk-song
still sings--

"As beautifully white as milk,
As marvellously soft as silk;
A woman very fair to see,
Yet full of deep humility."

They were poor people, but pious and industrious and obedient. No man
in the wide world troubled about them, and yet had it not been for them
the Roman Empire might not have fallen. Years afterwards, indeed, it
fell because of that carpenter. People from all quarters of the globe
dwelt in Galilee, even barbarians who had wandered there from the west
and the north. And it was often difficult to distinguish their
descent. Our carpenter was born in the south of Judaea, in the town of
Bethlehem, which, in olden times, had been the native place of King
David. Joseph, the carpenter, was not unwilling to speak of that, and
even to let it be known that he was of the house of David, the great
king. But yet he might well have thought it a finer thing to rise up
from below than to come down from above. And is it not so? Does not
man rise up from below, and God come down from high? In his boyhood
David was a shepherd; it is said that he slew the leader of the enemy
with stones from his sling, and that was why he rose so high. Now for