42 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



there happened, in the subsequent belief of millions 

 of mankind, an event for which all that had gone 

 before in the history of this planet is said to have 

 been a preparation. In the fulness of time the Om- 

 nipotent maker and ruler of a universe to which 

 no boundaries can be set by human thought, sent to 

 this earth-speck no less a person than His Eternal 

 Son. He was said to have been born, not by the 

 natural processes of generation, but to have been 

 incarnated in the womb of a virgin, retaining his 

 divine nature while subjecting it to human limita- 

 tions. This he had done that he might, as sinless 

 man, become an expiatory sacrifice to offended 

 deity, and to the requirements of divine justice, for 

 the sins which the human race had committed since 

 the transgression of Adam and Eve, or which men 

 yet to be born might commit. 



The " miraculous " birth of Jesus took place at 

 Nazareth in Galilee, in the reign of Caesar Augustus, 

 about 750 A. u. c., as the Romans reckoned time. 

 Tradition afterward fixed his birthday on the 25th 

 December, which, curiously enough, although, per- 

 haps, explaining the choice, was the day dedicated to 

 the sun-god Mithra, an Oriental deity to whom altars 

 had been raised and sacrifices performed, with rites 

 of baptisms of blood, in hospitable Rome. 



Jesus is said to have lived in the obscurity of his 

 native mountain village till his thirtieth year. Ex- 

 cept one doubtful story of his going to Jerusalem 

 with his parents when he was twelve years old, noth- 



