CHAPTER XXXIX 



THE PASTORAL CULT 



The most solemnly important scene in all history, 

 viewed from the Christian standpoint, was one where shep- 

 herds, afterwards aggrandised into shepherd-kings and 

 magi, having come from afar, did homage to the infant 

 in whom a large portion of mankind has seen the Saviour 

 of the World. No single event has been more besung, 

 more variously or more gloriously painted, more widely 

 or frequently or heartily celebrated. The " herald 

 angels " sang it in the sky ; children and " waits," con- 

 sisting of young men and maidens, still sing it on earth 

 on Christmas Eve, when the ground in Northern Europe 

 is white with snow, or when, at the Antipodes, if ever 

 the sacred dawn is there kept at all, it is kept to (or 

 rather by) the songs of birds and the gladness of all 

 nature in her richest summer attire. 



It was altogether fitting that one of the earliest stages 

 of human history — the first, indeed, after man has arisen 

 out of savagery — and perhaps the finest and peacefullest 

 of all, should be inseparably associated with human 

 redemption. Yet man had hardly needed to be re- 

 deemed had he begun — had it been possible for him 

 to begin — with the pastoral stage, or could he have 

 remained at that stage. It was not to be. Man had 

 been a savage and a barbarian, a trapper and a hunter, 

 before ever he was a shepherd, and in future times he 

 was to be a warrior, a conqueror, and an industrialist. 

 Out of this oasis in his history between two seas of 

 blood have been selected some of the richest imagery 



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