There was a man who was called upon to write a Christmas article for a
great newspaper. He had been a newspaper man himself at one time and it
occurred to him, in all reverence, that if some modern daily publication
could, nearly 1900 years ago, have reported faithfully all it could
learn regarding the Birth in Bethlehem, there might now be fewer
doubters in the world. He imagined what a conscientious representative
of the Daily Augustinian, had such newspaper existed in Jerusalem, might
have written concerning what was the greatest happening in the story of
all mankind since the days of Moses and the Shepherd Kings.
Rarely has man worked harder than did this person, who, for a month or
so--he had studied it all years before--sought the certain details of
the historical story of the Christ. He re-read his Josephus; he sought
new sources of information, and called to his aid men who knew most
along the lines of the outstanding spokes of the main question. Then he
lost himself as a reporter of the Daily Augustinian, and this--headlines
and all--is what he wrote: