Under the rule of Augustus the greatest event of the world’s spiritual
history occurred in Bethlehem of Judæa--the birth of Jesus Christ. This
really took place in the year 4 B.C., but the erroneous calculation has,
for the sake of convenience, been allowed to stand, and the chronology
passes from B.C. to A.D., when Augustus had held sway, according to the
wrong reckoning, for twenty-seven years.