Uncle Jim's Bible Stories

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1916 Excerpt: ... IT is not a long story, this story of the first Christmas, and there are some things about it that are hard to understand, but the more we read and study the beautiful life of Jesus which began on that day, the better we can understand why He was born as the humblest child is born, and the easier it will be for us to grow like Him, and live and think and pray as He did. On the night before the first Christmas Day, a little company of shepherds were in the grassy fields below the village, or town of Bethlehem, watching their flocks and guarding them from the attacks of prowling animals. A great, strange star hung over the sleeping village perched upon the hills above them, and the yellow gleam of a lantern swinging before its entrance told where the khan, or inn, was to be found. The flocks so carefully tended were something more than common sheep. They were the flower of many flocks, chosen with great care and set apart for the sacrifices in the great Temple at Jerusalem, only six miles away. It is not unlikely that, as the guardians of the sacred flocks gazed over the very fields and hills where David the Shepherd boy had watched his father's flocks and protected them from wild beasts, ere he became the mighty King of Israel, they remembered the promise made by God to Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and to David himself, that a descendant of this warrior king should be the Messiah who would restore Israel to its place among the nations of the earth. Prophets and priests had proclaimed this promise to the Jews, as the children of Israel were then called, but prophets and priests and people believed that the promised Saviour would come as a King, and again make of them a great nation. To them it was beyond belief that the King of the Jews, as they loved to...