Thinking and dreaming over the reality of the first Christmas and how Jesus of Nazareth came to be born in Bethlehem, I was given this story. It does not claim to be a historical record. It is a picture drawn by imagination looking for the truth. But there is nothing here that is out of harmony with the Gospels, nothing that does not belong to the holy land and time when these things came to pass. I know the long trail between Galilee and Judea by foot and heart. Thus the story seems to me to be true. It is also a new story because it answers three natural questions that have never before been answered. It tries to tell the human side of a divine event. So I offer it to you, reader, in all sincerity; and to Him who is the Son of God and the Son of Man, in all adoration. Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was an American clergyman, educator, and author. He graduated from Princeton in 1873, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1874. He was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City (1883-99), professor of English literature at Princeton (1899-1923), and U.S. minister to the Netherlands (1913-16). Among his popular inspirational writings is the Christmas story The Other Wise Man (1896). As President Wilson's ambassador to the Netherlands from 1913, Van Dyke was a first-hand witness to the outbreak of World War I and its progress, and was a key player in the President's diplomatic efforts to keep the U.S. out of the conflict.

A Word to the Reader: Thinking a dreaming over the reality of the first Christmas and how Jesus of Nazareth came to be born in Bethlehem, I was given this story. It does not claim to be a historical record. It is a picture drawn by imagination looking for the truth. But there is nothing here that is out of harmony with the Gospels, nothing that does not belong to the holy land and time when these things came to pass. I know the long trail between Galilee and Judea by foot and heart. Thus the story seems to me true.

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