The Everlasting Man

Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.

Mythology had many sins; but it had not been wrong in being as carnal as the Incarnation

But in the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth

But while all have realised that it was a stable, not so many have realised that it was a cave

I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest

We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross

You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother; you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother

Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet

there will always be some savour of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby

the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars