THE BUILDER December, 1927

The Birth

MANKIND has a curious habit of using tabu names for things of
religious import, and this is as true of the uncultured savage as
of civilized men; or perhaps the stress should be the other way
about, it is as characteristic of ourselves as it is of primitive
man. A few samples will suffice to show that this is true. A priest
seems much more exalted than an elder, which is all the term
properly means, and more so is a bishop than the simple overseer
who was chiefly charged with the finances, such as they were, of
the early Church. We speak of the font, which is but a spring or
fountain, and of the chalice when we mean a cup. But perhaps these
terms are too ecclesiastical to count. Then what of the Scriptures,
which are merely writings, or the Bible, which is simply the books?

A tendency so universal must surely have an equally comprehensive
source in human nature. Those things that are sacred or holy, that
mean most to us in our inner lives, are not easily or lightly
spoken of; and as language changes (as every living language is
constantly doing) conservatism clings to old names for holy things,
till at last they have become obsolete and we have forgotten
practically what they really mean. This instinctive tendency is in
itself a wholesome one, but it may easily lead to barren formalism,
to a complete divorce of religion from common things, and the
separation of those higher conceptions and ideals that alone make
our daily life and its drudgery and petty interests ultimately
worth while.

It is in this way that at the end of the year we celebrate the
festival of the Nativity, scarcely realizing that we are using a
word borrowed from another language that means simply "the birth;"
and birth is very much a matter of common life--a matter of stable
and byre, and hovel and slum, as well as of the palace and the
palatial modern hospital equipped with all the resources science
has placed at our disposal. Birth is a thing that concerns us all,
as much as meat and drink, and raiment, and houses and lands and
cold cash, and sleep and death. Whether we speak figurative]y of
the birth of events or ideas, or literally of living beings, of
souls clothed in flesh and blood, birth implies ever the relation
of parent and offspring, mother and babe.

Beginnings and endings--that is for the individual. Endings and
beginnings--so for life as a whole, which goes on from generation
to generation. Are the two separate, or are they but different
points of view ? Does the individual begin absolutely at birth and
end finally as such in death ? We do not know, at least not as we
know that two and one make three, or that day comes with the rising
of the sun. Whether there be an ultimate essential difference
between knowledge and belief is a question of philosophy, but
practically there is a plain distinction. We believe perhaps--or
perhaps not--but we do not know. Now, it seems, we may not know--
but we can believe.

Thus, it would seem, it has ever been. Prehistoric man buried his
dead with food and fire, weapons and ornaments. Why ? There is no
record to tell us what he thought or believed, but what he did
tells us silently that, perhaps, in some dim fashion he looked for
a new beginning after the end--a beginning anew. Mors janua vitae,
"death the gate of life," death is birth into new life. And this
was not only guessed at for man himself, but it was seen to be true
also of nature; and, confirmed by correspondences and analogies,
the guess grew into belief. To say the belief was first a guess is
to say nothing of its truth and validity. All discovery is born of
guesswork, surmise is confirmed by evidence, conjecture leads to
experiment, and so to knowledge, even of the most rigidly
scientific type. Man guessed, and then believed; perhaps in this
case without sufficient proof, that is a point each must determine
for himself, but at least it seems as if it were in some sort of
necessity.

In the midst of winter, when the warm pleasant days were gone like
a dream, and the sun retrograded further and further to the south,
and the nights grew longer and longer, it might well seem that the
end had come, the end of all things, the winter to be followed by
no springtime, the night never to be dispersed by another dawn. How
should man know? Even though summer they are dead, and of the dead
it is not necessary to had followed winter before within his memory
and that speak evil. They were part of the world against which of
his fathers, was that proof that it would continue so both Jew and
Christian bore testimony and they had to to do? It is not logical
proof and he did not know. be fought with any weapon at hand. But
looked at in What wonder if he resorted to magic to renew the life
the perspective of history, they were but stages--stages that was
necessary to his life, to bring it again to a new birth ? And when
the days did again begin to lengthen, visibly and palpably, and _
the sun to rise higher every day, it was little wonder that here
was set the beginning of the new year.

But countries and climates differ. In eastern lands and in the
south, the seasons are not the same as we know. It is the coming of
the rain that is so ardently desired, that causes the earth to
blossom and become fruitful. In the north it is the return of the
sun. Christmas, the birthday of the Lord, is a western feast, that
spread eastward. The heathen Angles and Saxons of Britain, so the
Venerable Bede tells us, kept the feast and called it modra niht,
the night of the mothers.

The Mothers! How strange--and yet is it ? We are reminded how all
over the ancient world, behind the pantheon of the gods of Olympus,
ranged in their ordered hierarchy, existed the worship of the
nameless Mothers. We hear of them in scattered references and stray
inscriptions, but no contemporary record has revealed the mystery
of the rites performed in their honor. In villages and obscure
cities they were worshipped, and here and there they emerged into
the light of day, and stood veiled and mysterious with the other
deities. Demeter at Eleusis, and Bona Dea, the good goddess, at
Rome. But of their rites none ventured openly to speak. In Asia was
the Mountain Mother, worshipped in caves and on rocky peaks--she
was one and many, here Cybele, there Artemis of the Ephesians, many
breasted and nurse of all life. Astarte, too, or Ashtoreth, as her
name appears in the Old Testament, the abomination of the Gentiles.
What are such as these to us ? Once they had living and powerful
cults. Carrying over the crude naivete of primitive thought into a
high culture they became, in their orgiastic rites, rather
incitements to evil than expressions of fundamental human needs.
The Prophets and the Apostolic fathers denounced them bitterly and
vehemently. But now they are dead, and of the dead it is not
necessary to speak evil. They were part of the world against which
both Jew and Christian bore testimony and they had to be fought
with any weapon at hand. But looked at in the perspective of
history, they were but stages - stages from which some were already
passing. Let us remember that any cult may deteriorate and decay,
even the highest, and that other forms of the worship of the
mothers were refined and spiritualized apart from Christianity. The
figures of Isis suckling the infant Horus, and Krishna in the arms
of Devadetta. Not wholly spiritualized indeed, nor in the minds of
all devotees. But it is not fair to judge possibility and trend by
the conservatism of peasants, whether in India or Egypt or modern
Europe, whether of heathen cult or Christian.

The early church was not interested in such things as
anniversaries. The first day of the week commemorated the
Resurrection; and the Passover in its Christian guise, became the
feast of Easter. Even in the second century and later the
remembrance of the Birth was not only deprecated but opposed. It
was of no importance; the Epiphany--the showing forth, the
revealing or exhibition--of Jesus as the Christ to Jew and to
Gentile in the persons of the shepherds and the wise men from the
East and to the multitude at Jordan where John baptized--this first
became a day of observance. The objection against the remembrance.
of the Nativity was that the birth-days of the Emperor, who was
also a god, were celebrated as a religious festival. Perhaps, too,
in the background lay an unexpressed fear of the parallel between
those dark veiled Mothers of mountain crag and rocky cleft, of the
wild maenads (who were matrons, not maids) and that gentle mother
who brought forth her first born in the stable at Bethlehem, and
laid Him in a manger "because there was no room for them in the
inn."

Beginnings and endings; endings and beginnings. The old Mothers
died; they faded into vague figures of folk-tale and folk-
observance, hags, witches, vampires, and their place was taken by
Mary, the mother of the Lord according to the flesh. Did they die?
Or have they survived in a new and more spiritual avatar? Or did
the Virgin inherit from them part and place, as the younger
generation ever does from the elder? That they were figures of myth
and mysterious ritual, while Mary was a young woman of Judah, of
the lineage of King David, who lived in the time of the Emperor
Augustus, makes no difference; many a real person has become a
figure of tradition and myth. Perhaps in some degree a mythology
grows up about every human being who is remembered. But in this
case the parallels between the child born to be savior, and
redeemer, and His mother, and those earlier mothers and their sons
that men had projected and externalized from their needs and
yearnings and their ideals and hopes, was too deep and too far-
reaching to be denied, and little by little the symbols of the old
came back, more or less changed and disguised, and attached
themselves to the central figures of the new faith.

It is surprising when we come to examine closely how little we are
definitely told in the Canonical Gospels on the subject when
compared with the wealth of detail supplied by legend. St. Matthew
tells us of the doubts of Joseph and how they were resolved by
anangel who appeared to him in a dream. He also tells of the magi
who had seen a star and had come from the east to worship the new-
born king. St Luke relates how the annunciation was made to the
Virgin Mary, and how it was that she and her husband came to
Bethlehem--because of a census ordered by the Roman government. And
how the night of the birth other angels told it to certain
shepherds. Meagre material, it would seem, to serve as foundation
for the superstructure erected upon it. The earliest
representations of the Birth are from the Catacombs; they are not
many. Here the mother is represented seated, with one, two or more
figures, representing the magi, offering gifts. She is clothed as
a Roman matron, while the men are in Phrygian dress. Phrygia was
hardly "the East" from Palestine, but it was far east of Italy, and
so it served. In the fresco, a reproduction of which is shown in
Fig. 6, there are two bearing gifts. In another fourth century
painting, from a tomb, there are four symmetrically disposed, two
on each side of the seated mother. St. Luke says nothing of the
number of wise men who followed the star, but he mentioned the
three gifts which very early took on symbolical import, gold,
frankincense and myrrh, and soon it was taken for granted that they
were three who bore them. It was supposed also that in their own
lands they were kings; and then the symbolism was carried further
and they were supposed to be of different racial stocks to
represent the better all nations and languages, and of different
ages to represent all states and stages of human life. In a fifth
century relief at Ravenna they have thus become three, but they are
still all young and in Phrygian cap, cloak and trousers.

In another relief, now in the Lateran Museum (Fig. 2), which is
probably fourth century, they are shown as three, but other details
have appeared. The mother is seated, the swaddled babe, absurdly
disproportionate in size, lies in the manger under a low shed roof
before which stand an ox and an ass. Between the crib and the
mother is a young man with a crooked staff who is probably one of
the shepherds. Behind th e three "easterners" is an elephantine
camel as a further label to designate who they are and whence they
came. Thus early did the two main types of representation of the
mother and the child appear. Perhaps one of the earliest of the
crib is a fresco from a tomb in the cemetery of San Sebastiano. It
is very crude, and shows the babe alone with the heads of an ox and
an ass seen over it. In a fragment of a sarcophagus of about the
year 340, the babe lies on what seems to be a low mound (perhaps a
pile of hay!), by it is a young man with a curved rod in his left
hand who seems to beckon others who approach. Then come the ox and
the ass, and then the first of what may have been several
shepherds. The first only remains, and the hands of another behind
him holding a branch of laurel. The mother does not appear in
either of these, and in this they are almost, if not quite unique.
And indeed, even here she may have been shown originally in the
parts of the work now lost.

Since the Renaissance, representations of the circumstances of the
Nativity have been of three points --the annunciation to the Virgin
by the Angel Gabriel --the vision of Joseph is rarely if ever
treated; the adoration of the shepherds in which the babe lies in
a manger, or naked on the ground; and last the homage of the three
kings, in which the mother seated holds the child in her arms.
Often the stable has by this disappeared, or become a palace, and
the Virgin is crownedand clothed in royal robes. But the quaint
wood-cut by Durer, shows stable, ox and ass, and the exotic camels.
Here the three kings are of different ages and races, the youngest
being a negro. In Fig. 5 by the same artist is the Nativity. One
elderly shepherd worships at a distance from the kneeling mother,
while Joseph draws water from the well. The buildings are half
ruinous and represent such a wayside hostelry as presumably might
have been found near Nuremburg in his day. But Durer was not
typical though he reproduced the type, even the dilapidated
buildings and the pitcher of water were traditional details with a
long history behind them, perhaps also the tree growing on the
ruined wall. In the beautiful picture by Tintoretto at San Rosso in
Venice, the mother seated on the hay in a loft above the stalls
where an ox is lying, lifts the covering from her babe lying beside
her to show it to the wondering shepherds and shepherdesses, while
the light from the opened heavens streams through the broken roof,
where the beams make three crosses, a dark foreboding of the
future.

In the painting of da Fabriano, now in Florence (Fig. 3), another
conception is seen. Joseph is asleep, the ox and the ass are lying
down. The mother alone adores the babe. In the distance the angel
is awaking the sleeping shepherds. The stable is here a cave, and
this was another traditional detail.

The ox and the ass were appropriate enough. The mother laid her
babe in a manger we are told. A manger implies a stable, a stable
implies the animals. But there were other reasons, or other
meanings. Two generations ago it would not have been necessary to
explain that every passage in the Old Testament that would bear it
was given a Messianic interpretation, was supposed to be prophetic.
Perhaps it was so, even when there is obvious contemporary meaning
enough. In Isaiah is that wonderful millennial passage in which
occurs the verse

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie
down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion and the fatling
together, and a little child shall lead them.

But it is in the first chapter that it is said

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel
doth not know, my people doth not consider.

So it seemed that even the ox and the ass came to adore the new-
born king, while the ruinous building signified the end of the old
dispensation, of the stiffnecked people who rejected their Lord.
But perhaps there was also a dim memory of sacred animals connected
with the Mother. Diana of the Ephesians suckled beasts as well as
men. We can never be sure when a tradition is wholly dead.

From the Renaissance onwards, artists observed more or less,
according as they broke the fetters of tradition, the unities of
time and space in their representations of the birth. But by the
eighth or ninth century a grouping had become stereotyped that
persisted even to the fourteenth century and later. Of this the two
reliefs shown in Figs. 1 and 7 are early and late examples. In them
the mother reclines in the center, beyond her is the babe lying in
the manger, behind that again stand the ox and the ass. Above are
angels, one of which on the right speaks to the shepherds, whose
sheep and goats, which again are made symbolic, occupy the lower
right-hand part of the group. Below on the left sits Joseph,
generally in an attitude of depression, and with an expression of
doubt and despondency. Under the mother are two women who are
engaged in washing the new-born babe. All these details constantly
reappear. Often enough the star is shown, sometimes the three kings
with their gifts, as in Fig. 7, where they are still in Phrygian
garb. In Fig. 1 this space is unusually occupied by the
annunciation. The dove is shown descending upon the veiled woman
who listens to the angel. There is another strange feature about
this relief of which no explanation has been given. The figure
which by all analogy should be Joseph has horns distinctly showing
on the head. By itself it might be taken that Joseph had been
replaced by Moses, who was often thus represented owing to a
mistranslated text in the Vulgate. The colossal Moses of Michael
Angelo is horned. But here we have more than horns, from under the
shrouding cloak appears a cloven foot. Was the doubt that Joseph
had felt concerning the chastity of his affianced bride here made
to symbolize the doubt and fear of the Adversary at the birth of
the Redeemer who was to destroy his kingdom? It is hard to say.

If Giovanni of Pisano had any such thought as this it is another
indication that with the growing feeling for historic unity this
traditional aspect of Joseph was felt to be incongruous with the
rejoicing at the birth. In the later groups of this type his
expression is changed, and later his attitude also, though for a
while he remains seated in his corner. But he is now made to look
at the mother and child with wonder and reverence and love.

The two nurses or midwives have no warrant in scripture, though
they constantly appear. Like the ox and the ass they seem
appropriate enough, but it is to be doubted if so persistent a
detail was derived merely from its congruity. It is probable that
they are taken from the Apocryphal gospels, in some of which two
midwives are made to give unwilling testimony to the virginity of
the mother. But the washing of the infant, wrought by Giovanni with
such loving care and truth to life, recalled another aspect of the
Epiphany-- the baptism at Jordan.

There were two other details that appeared very early, one of which
is well known, and the other has hardly ever been noticed, though
artist after artist put it in. The first is that the stable became
a cave. There are strange compromises in composition in order to
combine a rude or ruined building with a rocky cleft or grotto. But
often the building disappears entirely. Again we are haunted by the
parallel--the mountain mother, Bona Dea, worshipped in the form of
a stone-- the earth mother whose sacrifices were offered in a pit
--heroes whose mothers bore them in caves--Mithra who was born of
a rock, and whose rites were celebrated in caves.

But it is impossible to think that the cave of the Nativity derived
directly and consciously from this. Undoubtedly it was introduced
as a bit of realism, when pilgrimages to the Holy Land became
frequent and many knew as a fact that the birthplace at Bethlehem
was shown in a cave. Was there any genuine tradition of a real fact
here? Had it been locally handed down from generation to
generation? Again it is impossible to determine, all that can be
said is that caves are common in Palestine and that they have been,
and are, frequently used as stables and sheepfolds. Yet on the
other hand it is precisely in Asia Minor that the Mountain Mother
was supreme, and the mystic birth in a cave celebrated for unknown
ages.

The other detail is less persistent as it is less prominent; indeed
only by considering a series of such representations does its
presence make itself felt; and that is the tree. In Fig. 1 it does
not appear in the group, but is shown at the right in the form of
a geneological or Jesse tree--showing the ancestry of the Lord. In
many others it is, and probably the artist thought it no more, a
natural adjunct of the scene. Yet there it is again and again--
Durer puts it in. In very early representations its presence is
more obvious because of the work being more crude. In Fig. 3 is the
sapling against which the sleeping Joseph seems to lean. Fig. 7
seems at first sight to be exceptional for its period; in other
ivory carvings of the same type it occurs again and again, but
closer inspection shows on the winding ledge what is probably
intended for a budding bush or shrub. And finally, in that early
fragmentary relief mentioned above remain still the hands of a
figure holding a laurel branch, here conceived, doubtless, as the
sign of victory. But generally the Christian intended the tree of
life guarded in Paradise and now again made accessible to mankind,
or else that other tree which legend said grew from seed of its
fruit planted by Adam, out of which, in the fulfillment of the ages
the cross was constructed. But again, behind all this there is the
disturbing memory of the tree in the mother cult. The Asherah, and
the green trees on the mountain tops spoken of in prophetic
denunciations, the pine tree of Attys--but what need to go further.
Again the parallelism disproves nothing, only it sometimes causes
wonder whether true prophecy was found only in the pages of Holy
Writ.

The story that is so briefly and allusively told in the Gospel
clothes itself inevitably in images of our own experience. Tell it
to a child and it thinks at once of such things as it has seen--a
barn behind the house, with horse or cow stalls. And in the
experience of men at large traditional memory has so predominant a
place, that the details of old legends could not but creep in.
Barred out consciously at the door they came in unobserved by
cracks and crevices. The evangelists were interested chiefly in the
life and death of the Lord; at first, writing as they were for
those who even if they had not seen him with their own eyes may
have had converse with those who had, the birth was taken for
granted. But later came those who could not believe that the God-
head would have stooped to the material world, who held that His
body must have been an illusion, an appearance, or at least
composed of some higher and more spiritual substance, and that He
appeared suddenly, without parentage or human relationship; and
then it became necessary to insist that He came into the world as
every man. As He Himself said, men seek for signs and wonders, and
none are vouchsafed. Why should they be ? The miracles lie in the
facts, the common things, of daily life. Throughout the ages
mankind had looked for a child to be born--a child who should grow
in strength and wisdom, and go forward and do the things that his
fathers had not been able to do. And in the fullness of time the
child was born, who was to be Savior, the Christ, whose name was to
be Wonderful, the Prince of Peace. Thus through the centuries the
story has been repeated, and set forth in painting and sculpture,
as the artist was able. Hieroglyphics, picture writing, all of it,
on different levels. Mnemonics for each to clothe from his own
memories. The mother raising herself on her couch to look at the
wonderful baby in its manger cradle, still all her own; or adoring
in the stillness of the night while others sleep. Common events in
every life, repeated a thousand times every day in palace and
hovel, yet ever new and miraculous, could we but understand.

Birth is an initiation, a bringing to light, a revelation of hidden
mysteries. All rituals symbolize it, according to the cultural
level either crudely and with direct realism, or obscurely and with
refined allusions. To enter upon any new path is in a sense a new
birth, to take new responsibilities, to come into new
relationships, to learn new truths, to enter upon mysteries. But to
be reborn or twice born implies also death. Here again is a circle,
the turning wheel of life--or of the law. Death and birth--birth
and death. Wherever we make a beginning one follows on after the
other, and it matters little where we begin, at least so far as the
symbolism is concerned. Out of darkness into light. Out of the
light of day into the darkness of the tomb and thence to be reborn
to new life. There is initiation and initiation. Formally and
ritually into the knowledge of formal mysteries; really and
spiritually so far as we may--so far as we earnestly seek. The
Christian is baptized into the Way, the washing of water
symbolically represents the cleansing from sin, the entering on a
new life, a new search. It is an initiation ritually, it may be the
beginning of one in truth and reality. Initiation is a beginning,
in ire, to go, to enter in. So the Latin conceived it; but to the
Greek it was the end, telos, the completion, the consummation,
perfection; thus St. Paul wrote of those who were perfected,
initiated. And he set forth a yet deeper symbolism, that baptism
was a ritual death, shared with the Lord, in which the old was left
behind, and a new creature born. But he, like all teachers and
prophets, was concerned with the reality and not the form.

So the shepherds watching their flocks by night saw the heavens
opened and the glory of God, and heard the angelic choir singing--
"Peace on earth, good-will towards men." Or as the Vulgate has it,
"Peace on earth to men of good-will." To them comes that peace that
passeth understanding, that the world does not give nor can it
destroy. But other versions have another reading. Peace on earth,
content to mankind-- contentment--eudokia--satisfaction,
fulfillment--because a babe had been born and was lying in a
manger. And they rose up and came with haste and found Mary, the
mother and her child, he that was to come, the Desire of all
Nations.

