CAN THE MESSIAH BE BORN IN WONDERLAND?

Forgotten Victorian author Margaret Gatty wrote a series of "Parables from Nature", that is, moral and religious stories based upon natural phenomena.

One of them, "The Deliverer", set before the birth of Christ, tells of humankind's hope for a messianic redeemer. While most people expect a royal palace to be his birthplace and courtiers or royals for parents, "the lovers of pleasure hoped for a Deliverer in scenes of earthly enjoyment":

The conquering spoken of is but the overcoming of all wish for strife; the rule in store, the sovereignty of love, suppressing all desires but that for universal joy.

Ah! surely, when the Deliverer came it would be to make all people happy alike, and pour a healing balsam into every wound! Then would all the old griefs be buried and forgotten, and the soothed minds of the contented trouble themselves no more with struggle.

Oh for the dawning of that morn when the world should resound once more to the songs of rejoicing which gladdened the golden age! Had not the Sybils so spoken, and had not the Poet so sung? Then should everyone sit under his own vine and his fig-tree, and poor and rich alike cease from the land, for all should be equal and all happy.

"But whence should such a Deliverer be looked for—where be expected to arise?—Ah! surely only in some happy spot of Nature, some valley peaceful and beautiful as that of Cashmere, among a race of pastoral simplicity; in some perfect household, where disturbance was never known, and one mind prevailed. Thence alone could come He who would cause the cruel swords of war to be turned into ploughshares, and spears into reapinghooks, and animate and inanimate Nature to join in one general song of joy.

So these looked to the lovely valleys and the quiet nooks of Nature for the magic spot where discord had never entered. But they, too, looked and waited in vain—yet looked and waited on as before, and called upon Nature herself to confirm their hopes."

They looked and waited in vain because the Lord "had chosen base things of the world, and things which are despised, that no flesh should glory in His presence." And the Earth remained in suffering and oppression because "not many wise men after the flesh" are called by the Lord. That's why, according to Mrs. Gatty, Jesus was born in midwinter:

"Thus, thus, thus—while Nature lay torpid and hopeless, and half the world was winter-wrapt in snow. Thus, thus, thus—with healing on His wings, but not the healing they sought for: not a deliverance from death or sorrow, not a freedom from toil or pain, not even a ransom from temptation and sin." And, to add more fuel to the fire, the village inn where he was born and near which his carpenter father came from was located in a warzone (something Gatty never came to mention!).

Mrs. Gatty was a devout Christian, while I am a pacifist, an epicurean (i.e., a "lover of pleasure"), and a freethinker. The idea of "the magic spot where discord had never entered", so dismissed by the author's realism and spirituality simultaneously, is tantalizing to people like me in spite of its lacking foundation; for the problem of pain was and is a riddle without an answer. I have later explored the ideas of "the magic spot where discord had never entered", "the golden age", and free will as both a blessing and a curse, in this post: http://al261200.blogspot.com.es/2013/09/freedom-communism-disturbance-and.html