The Night Love Incarnate was Born Into the World

In all history there is probably not a more ghastly scene than that of Herod’s deathbed. In perverted ingenuity he devised a scheme to compel a national mourning when he died. He summoned the chief men of all the nations to Jerusalem and shut them up in the Hippodrome. He then charged his sister, Salome, and her husband that the moment the breath left his body the soldiers should be let loose among them and all should be slaughtered.

If ever evil was embodied in one man, it was in that corrupt mass that lay upon the royal bed and plotted death even when incarnate love was born into the world. From the couch of Herod pass for a moment to the cradle of Christ. A peasant couple from the hills of Galilee trudged along to the historic Bethlehem, the woman worn with long travel and pinched with the pain of approaching maternity. The road was not far from the palace fortress, and, perhaps, they saw the lights and heard the strains of music with which Herod’s servants sought to soothe his agony. It was late in the day ere they reached the “inn,” and all sleeping compartments were occupied. A place was found on the lower level used for the stabling of the cattle, and there on that night Jesus, the Christ, was born.

Such a contrast between the village khan and the palace fortress the world had never seen and can never see again. The Prince of Peace was among the beasts, and the beast was among the princes. The real King was in the stable, while the usurper was clad in purples. Only a few miles, as men measure space, separated the two; but, as God measures moral distance, a hole universe intervenes. Herod and Christ are at opposite poles. Infinity interposes between the selfishness that lived to slay and the self-sacrifice that died to save.

N. B. Hardeman
Hardeman’s Tabernacle Sermons
(Vol. 2. Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1971:53-54)

N. B. Hardeman (1874-1965) was founder of Freed-Hardeman University (Henderson, TN), and served as its President from 1925-1950. He was a great orator and preacher. William Jennings Bryan (3-time Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party) said of Hardeman: “N. B. Hardeman is an orator without peer.”