No Room In The Inn

This is from an 1883 Gospel Advocate from around Christmas time. No author was named.

When our Lord was born, St. Luke tells us, the Virgin Mother wrapped the infant Savior in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger-cradle, "Because there was no room for them in the inn." This fact is significant. it was not by accident, but by divine foreordination that such was the case. Thus our heavenly Father would especially teach us that the fundamental law of the kingdom of Christ is to deny self, and, in the exercise of pure love, to serve others.

In the inn of Bethlehem we have a striking type of the heart of man, when wholly occupied with self, or filled with worldly cares and pleasures. In such a heart there is never any room for Jesus. The truth may come to it through the preaching or reading of the word of God, or the startling events of his providence, but only as Joseph and Mary came to the caravansary in the City of David, to be turned away to find a lodging-place elsewhere. Only in the humble heart that is emptied of self, and in which the cares and pleasures of this present life have but a secondary place, is Christ born and the true Christmas joy experienced.