Article December 19, 1931 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Glenn Frank, Samuel A. Eliot, Paul Walter

[From a Correspondent in the Times, London, England]

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes began a sermon preached before the king at Whitehall, on Christmas Day, 1610, by pointing out the significance of the fact that the angel who came to the shepherds with the news of Christ [Jesus'] birth first bade them "Fear not"! The same injunction was given to the father of the Baptist and to the mother of the Lord when an angel appeared to them. The shepherds were "sore afraid" when an angel of the Lord stood by them, "and the glory of the Lord shone round about them."

St. Luke's story of the nativity has an inspired artistry which no one can resist. Many have pictured the scene with supreme skill, but the evangelist is greater than all of them in the clear beauty of his simple and moving narrative. We must, so far as may be, consider what we are able to grasp of the reality to which his narrative witnesses. Angels have no bodies, and what the shepherds saw was a vision of one who framed no words of human speech. Yet someone came to them from the realms of the invisible world with tidings of the birth of him who was the Saviour and Lord....

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