The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 39.

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RETURN FROM EGYPT. PART 2

When Christ had reached his twelfth year, his parents, freed from apprehension on account of Herod, took him with them to Jerusalem. They departed in a body from Nazareth; and then, as they travelled along, the Hebrew pilgrims divided into small companies, according to age, sex, and family relationship or intimacy.

Around the Virgin were Mary of Cleophas, sister-in-law of Joseph; another Mary, designated in the gospel by the name of altera Maria; Salome, the wife of Zebedee, who came from Bethsaida with her sons and her husband ; Joanna, the wife of Chus, and a number of Nazarenes of her family connexions and neighbourhood. Joseph followed them at some distance, conversing gravely with Zebedee the fisherman, and the ancients of his tribe. Jesus walked amidst some young Galileans, whom the gospel, according to the genius of the Hebrew tongue, has called his brethren, and who were his near relatives. 1

Among this group of young men, who went before the rest, were distinguished the sons of Zebedee: James, impetuous as the lake of Tiberias on a stormy day; John, younger even than Jesus, whose sweet countenance, by the side of that of his brother, seemed to personify the lamb of Isaias, living in peace with the lion of Jordan. Next to the fishermen of Bethsaida, whom Jesus named later on Boanerges (sons of thunder), were the four sons of Alpheus; James, who was Bishop of Jerusalem, an austere and grave youth, with long flowing hair, a pale face, and a cold and mortified appearance. Proud of being devoted as a Nazarene, he gave himself airs of offensive superiority over him whom he then considered the son of the carpenter. The virtues and imperfections inherent in the soil were seen in his character; an unshaken firmness, inclinations upright and religions; hut at the same time a strong contempt for all that had not sprung from Abraham, and an excellent opinion of himself. Jude, Simon, and Jose, the other sons of Alpheus, were youths of rough, simple, and warlike appearance, already arrived at adolescence, and who looked upon the son of the humble Mary as their inferior in every way—a thing which they had a difficulty in shaking off afterwards, as we see in the gospel. 2 And what of Jesus ? Jesus pretended to nothing, neither to devotion, nor austerity, nor wisdom, nor knowledge, because he possessed the plenitude of all these things, and people usually affect what they have not.

To have seen him, simply attired as an Essenian, his long hair, of the colour of antique bronze, 3 parted over his dark forehead, and gracefully flowing over his shoulders, one would have taken him for David, at the moment when the prophet Samuel saw him come, little, timid, and in the dress of a simple shepherd, to receive the holy unction. There was, however, in the brown, soft eye of Christ, 4 something more than in the eye of his great ancestor, full as it was of poetry and inspiration; something penetrating and divine was discovered in it, which laid bare the thought and sounded the depths of the heart; but Jesus veiled at that time the brilliancy of his look, as Moses did his radiant brow when he came forth from the tabernacle. He walked along, conversing sensibly, but suiting his conversation to his age, with his young relatives according to the flesh, whom he intended to make his apostles; he discerned beneath their rude exterior, the weight and value of these rough diamonds, who were one day to shine with so great brilliancy, and he loved them in their future career. His expectations were not disappointed ; these men, who, like the rest of their nation, had had their dreams of gold and power in connection with the Messias, at his voice cast off all their prejudices, both national and religious, to adopt a doctrine calumniated, the principles and promises of which, like the maledictions of the old law, spoke of nothing but sufferings to be endured, and persecutions to be undergone. They bound themselves to him by chains so strong, that neither the princes of the earth, nor cold, nor nakedness, nor famine, nor the sword, could separate them from his love; they walked in his footsteps, trampling courageously on the thorns which the world strewed in their path, and suffering themselves to be treated like the refuse of the human race. They were not ashamed, either of the Son of man, or of his gospel, or of the foolishness of the cross! Why should they ? It is for impostors to blush, and the apostles never preached but from their own intimate conviction. These upright and guileless hearts gave to their testimony all that could render it credible and sacred among men; they abandoned everything, suffered everything, forgave everything, and sealed with their blood the gospel of their divine Master. 5

But at the time of which we are speaking, these heroic virtues were not even yet expanded, and these youthful Galileans little thought that they should one day give their lives in support of the divinity of their travelling companion. At the end of four days' journey, the pilgrims reached the Holy City, whither an immense concourse of foreign Jews flocked together. 6 The family of Joseph and Mary assembled to eat the paschal lamb, which the priests had the charge of immolating between the two vesper hours, 7 in the court of the temple; to this they added unleavened bread, wild lettuces, and whatever appertained to this ancient ceremony. The days of the feast being over, the relations of Christ assembled to return to their province. As they returned in the same order in which they had come, the holy couple did not at first perceive that Jesus was missing. Mary thought he was with Joseph, or with the two named James; Joseph, for his part, thought he was with his young relations, or with Mary. In the evening, the several companies assembled together, and the Blessed Virgin sought, but in vain, for Jesus in the crowd of travellers who arrived in succession at the caravansary; no one knew what had become of our Saviour. The grief of the two holy spouses was inexpressible. "The deposit of heaven, the Son of God! " muttered Joseph, sorrowfully. " My son! " said the poor young mother, with a voice drowned with tears. They sought him all night, they sought him all day, calling after him along the road, calling out his name in the woods, looking anxiously down the precipices, sometimes fearing for his life, sometimes for his liberty, and not knowing what they should do if he was lost. They re-entered Jerusalem, ran to all their friends, and weary with going about the quarters of that great city, they at last made their way into the temple. Underneath the portico, where the doctors of the law were, was a child, who delighted the ancients of Israel by the depth of his understanding, and the clearness of his answers to the most difficult questions; they gathered round him, and every one was in admiration at his precocious and miraculous wisdom. "It is either Daniel or an angel," they said, at a little distance from the afflicted Virgin. "It is Jesus! " said the young mother, pressing forward towards the place where the doctors were. Then, coming up to the Messias with the expression of extreme tenderness, which in a manner extinguished the last reflex of sorrow: " My son," she said, sweetly, " why hast thou done so to us ? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing! "

The child was effaced before the God; the answer was dry and mysterious. "How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Fathers business?" The holy couple kept silence; they did not at first understand the meaning of the answer of the Messias.

Jesus rose up and followed them to Nazareth; his perfect submission to their will speedily effaced this slight cloud. " And his mother kept all these words in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and age, and grace with God and man.

1 St. Epiphanius and St Bernard inform us that in these journeys, the men went in companies separate from the women, and that St Joseph and the Blessed Virgin were in different companies, which was the reason why they did not feel uneasy at first at the disappearance of Jesus, and did not perceive it till the evening, when all the travellers assembled together.—(See also Aelred, abbot of RievaL, Serm. seu Tractatus de Jesu duodeni, Dom intra oct. Epiph.)

2 S. John Chrysost., Serm. 44.

3 The rabbins have taken occasion from the colour of the hair of Jesus, to give way to malicious declamations against him ; but what is extraordinary is, that they utter against him precisely the same reproaches as they do against David. " He was red like Esau; he had his blood upon his head; the soul of Esau had passed into him.'' They have forgotten nothing but the evil eye with which they favoured the prophet king.

4 Niceph., Hist. Eccl., t. i. p. 125. His portrait of our Lord, traced after tradition, is the most authentic which has come down to us. The Rev. Mr. Walsh, the author of quite a recent book, devoted to rare or unpublished monuments of the first age of Christianity, has just called our attention to a very curious medal, known as early as the fifth century. The obverse represents the head of our Lord, seen in profile; the hair is parted after the manner of the Nazarites, smooth as far as the ears, and flowing over the shoulders: the beard thick, not long, but forked; the countenance handsome as well as tho bust, over which the tunic falls in graceful folds.

5 Pascal has said, "I willingly believe these histories, whose witnesses expose themselves to death."

6 The feast of the Passoyer collected together at Jerusalem as many as two million five hundred thousand persons.—(De Bello, lib. vii. c. 17.) Cestus, wanting to persuade Nero that the Jewish nation was not so contemptible as he believed it to be, had the people numbered by priests. At the feast of the Pasch, there were slain two hundred and fifty-six thousand six hundred lambs ; there was a lamb for each family.

7 That is, from noon or one o'clock till sunset.—(Basn., t. v. liv. vii. c. 2.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 38.

RETURN FROM EGYPT. PART 1.

How sorrowful is exile! and how sweet to breathe the air of our native land! The bread of the stranger, like that of the wicked, leaves grit in the mouth and bitterness in the heart; his streams tell not of the sports of our childhood; the song of his birds has no melodious notes; his scenes are destitute of that sweet and charming attraction possessed by the scenes of our own country! . . . .

What must have been the joy of the two holy spouses when they beheld again that land of Canaan, whose grand boundaries, soft outlines, universal harmony, and variety of aspects contrasted so happily and so strikingly with the monotonous splendours of Egypt! Here a population rustic and hardy, with a warlike turn, an open address, a worship grave and pure; there, slaves herded by castes, given to plunder, mingling with their worship infamous practices, and exhausting their resources to erect temples to the ox Apis, the crocodile, and the sea-onion! One must be profoundly religious, as Joseph and Mary were—one must love one's country as the Hebrews loved theirs, to understand the pious and sweet impressions which the two Galilean spouses felt at the sight of the land of Jehovah and their beautiful city of Nazareth.

After so long an absence, the Holy Family returned to their humble hearth, amidst the congratulations, the astonishment, the eager inquiries of their relations, who all vied with each other in entertaining them; but desolation and bitter reverses soon succeeded to all this joy. The deserted dwelling of the poor family was scarcely habitable: the roof, decayed and fallen-in in places, was ornamented here and there with long grass, and had afforded free entrance into the interior to the wintry blast and the beating rains of the equinoxes; 1 the lower apartment was cold, damp, and green; wild pigeons made their nests in the mysterious and hallowed cell where the Word was made flesh; brambles shot up their brown thorny garlands in the small court; everything, in fine, in that old dwelling, already gilded by ages, had assumed that ruinous and desolate appearance which fastens upon deserted edifices as the seal of the master's absence. It was necessary to set about these urgent repairs ; it was necessary to replace tools and furniture either unfit for use or altogether vanished; perhaps they had to repay a sum borrowed in Egypt to enable them to return. Then it was, no doubt, that they sold the paternal fields till the year of jubilee. Of all that Joseph and Mary possessed before their long journey, they had nothing left but the ruined house of Nazareth, the workshop of Joseph, and their own arms; but Jesus was there. Young as he was, Jesus took up the axe, and followed his aged father into the villages, where work was found for them; 2 his work, proportioned to his age and strength, was never wanting to aid his mother. Easy circumstances had long disappeared; but by dint of privations, working late and early, and good courage, they provided for absolute necessity. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph gave themselves up to hard labour, and He who could command legions of angels never asked of God, for himself or those belonging to him, anything but daily bread. The interior life of this happy family, who have been surnamed the terrestrial Trinity has not come to the knowledge of men: it is the course of water lost among the grass; it if? the holy of holies, with its cloud of perfumes and its double veil. Nevertheless, by studying minutely and examining one by one, and in all their aspects, the facts of the gospel, what we know leads us to surmise to a certain extent what we do not know; and the public life of Jesus Christ casts certain brilliant lights upon his hidden life, and that of the Blessed Virgin. We will endeavour to fill up this void with all that reserve, and all that conscientious application, which so grave a subject demands.

Jesus, in whom were hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, 3 had no need of being taught by men; therefore every supposition to the contrary is positively rejected by the Church. St. John also, in his gospel, informs us that the Jews in the time of Jesus Christ considered him as a young man without learning, 4 and the astonishment of the Nazarenes to see him so profoundly versed in sacred literature, sufficiently testifies that they had no knowledge of his having been, like St. Paul, educated at "the feet of a master." The Talmudists and the Jewish authors of the Toldos maintain, on the contrary, that a celebrated rabbin initiated Jesus in the mysteries of science and magic; but setting aside the second part of the assertion, which is absurd, and taking the matter only from a mere human point of view, as the rationalists do, this is evidently false, for two reasons. First, Jesus was neither a zealot, nor a man wedded to traditions; and we see, all through the gospel, that he strongly disapproved of the narrow-minded views, captious distinctions, and low subtleties of the doctors of the synagogue. Secondly, the rabbi Josue Perachia, whom they assign him as preceptor, had still to be born, since he flourished a century later.

To place Jesus in the midst of the rabbins as a scholar, would be as illogical as to attempt to support an oak by surrounding it with reeds. He did not teach like them, says the evangelist, 5 and this it is easy to conceive, for he derived his wisdom from himself; and his teaching, still taking it from a natural point of view, seems to flow from a soul most elevated, most pure, and upright, and from a mind so vast and so uniformly sound, that assuredly it had not been warped in the disputes of the schools.

Strauss admits that all the wisdom and science of the time would not have been able to form a man like Jesus Christ. " If," says he, " Jesus Christ had exhausted all the tuition of his time, it is no less true that none of those elements sufficed, even by a great deal, to cause a revolution in the world; and the leaven indispensable for so great a work, could have been derived only from the depths of his own

His eloquence, like his morality, was his own. It was not the emphatic exaggerations of the rabbins, nor the majestic, striking, and violently contrasted diction of the ancient prophets ; it was, as he himself said, a fountain of living water, reflecting in its course the birds of heaven, the harvests and the flowers of the fields This eloquence, perfectly simple, penetrated to the bottom of things, and was allied, without effort, to great thoughts. Each word was a precious seed of virtue; every instruction cast into the mysterious spaces of the future a long train of light, which was to grow insensibly, and extend to the perfect day of the regeneration of the world. Even those who have audaciously denied his miracles, have not been able to help acknowledging that his words were those of a God. 6

Jesus was endowed with a soul profound and meditative, which needed an ample space in which to extend itself. Confined during the day to manual labour, which absorbed all his time, he made up at night for his obscure fatigue, and became again lawgiver and prophet in presence of the starry heaven. Standing upon an elevated platform, whence could be seen the mountains and extensive woods of the land of Canaan, he poured forth his soul before the Author of nature, of whom he was the envoy, the Son, and the equal. These communings, all alone with God, in the silence of the night, and the desert, and in silent thought, were one of the habits of Jesus Christ; we find many examples of them in the gospel. The model of men, the Word incarnate, would, no doubt, teach his followers to separate the pure gold of prayer from the monstrous alloy of ostentation and hypocrisy which the Pharisees of his time were accustomed to mix up with it.

The Blessed Virgin, who was never importunate or exacting, made no sort of opposition to this retirement; she knew that Jesus then sounded the depths of the immeasurable abyss which opened beneath the feet of the human race, and that the redemption of the world would be the fruit of these silent meditations. Respecting the labours of that mighty mind which redoubled upon itself, and looking to the future glory which every moment brought nearer and nearer, Mary already saw the heavens opened, death vanquished, and the Messias rallying all nations beneath his standard. .... But on a sudden the prophecy of the aged man in the temple presented itself, dark as a funeral bier, at the end of this enchanted perspective; a cold chill ran through the veins of the poor mother, and her heart, in which the love of Jesus had so large a share, melted in infinite agony. A secret voice cried out to her, " There must be an expiation of blood I Christ must die ! " Then, humbly laying down the work to which she was condemned by her indigence, 7 the daughter of David came to look after her Son; she wanted to see him, to make sure, in a maternal embrace, that he was still there,—that he was still alive!

When he saw her, Jesus cast down his pensive eye, which had been fixed upon the stars; his youthful forehead, contracted by a thought as vast as the world, became again the smooth and shining forehead of the child. Then Mary, shutting up in her heart her sinister fears, advised repose after the long watch. It was necessary to recruit his strength for the following day; the walk would be fatiguing and the labour painful .... The Son of God followed his mortal mother in silence, for he loved her, and was subject to her.

An extraordinary incident, which overpowered the soul of the Blessed Virgin, marked the entrance of Jesus into the state of adolescence. Joseph and Mary, religious observers of the law of their fathers, went up "regularly every year to Jerusalem, at the time of the Passover. This journey, which they had performed stealthily, and lost in the crowd, as long as the son of the enemy of God had occupied the throne of the Maccabees, had become easier since the exile of Archelaus, and the occupation of the country by the Romans.

1 The time of rains in Judea, is that of the equinoxes, and especially of the autumnal equinox : it is also the season for storms, which are accompanied with violent showers, or hail.—(Volney, Voyage en Syrie.)

2 St. Justin, martyr (Dialog, cum Try phone), relates that Jesus Christ helped his father to make yokes and ploughs. And Godes-card, t. xiv. p. 436, Vie de la Sainte Vierge, says, " A very ancient author assures us, that in his time yokes were shown which our Saviour had made with his own hands."

3 S. Paul., Ep. ad Coloss. c. ii. v. 9.

4 S. John., c. vii. v. 15.

5 Matt. vii. 29.

6 "I own to you that the majesty of the Scriptures astonishes me," says Bousseau; "the sanctity of the gospel speaks to my heart. Look at the books of the philosophers, with all their pomp, how small they are by the side of this! Can it be that a "book at once so sublime and simple could be the work of men ? Can it be that he whose history it relates could be himself but a man P Is that the tone of an enthusiast, or of an ambitious sectarian P What meekness! what purity in his manners! what affecting gracefulness in his instructions! what sublimity in his maxims ! what profound wisdom in his discourses! . . . ."—(Emile, t. iii. p. 365.)

7 Tertullian, says, in the third century, that Mary earned her livelihood by working; and Celsus, in the second century, said that Mary was a woman who had lived by the work of her hands.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 37.

Chapter 13.

The Purification. Part 3.

Another optical illusion, which is often repeated in this dry and burning region, made travellers at a distance assume gigantic proportions. Arab horsemen, covered with their flowing cloaks striped brown and white, and armed with the djombie —a dagger with a curved blade, which all the dwellers of the desert wear in their girdles—appeared afar off as tall as towers, and seemed to be moving in the air. The Virgin started, and pressed Jesus more closely to her heart; but the placid countenance of Joseph calmed her fears, although she could not understand the phenomenon which gave rise to them. 1

At the approach of evening, the song of the camel-drivers ceased, 2 the leader of the caravan unfurled the flag which gives notice of the halt, and all the travellers assembled round this signal of order. An animated scene soon followed this halting-time. They unloaded the camels, who were kneeling at the feet of their masters, their burdens were piled up pyramidally; they set up a row of round stakes, to which the beasts of burden were to be tethered ; the rich travellers pitched their tents, and the leader of the caravan placed sentinels to give notice of the approach of the Bedouins, those pirates of the desert, who were, and are still, robbers like Ismael, and hospitable like Abraham. Every merchant, after taking his repast of dates and milk, composed himself to sleep in his tent of mohair till the rising of the moon. The slaves and the poor travellers, in which number were the Son of God, his divine Mother, and Joseph, sat upon a rush mat, spread upon the ground, without any roof but the sky, and felt the icy breeze of the night 3 upon their limbs, languid with heat, and worn out with fatigue. At times was heard a cry of alarm: it was the Arabs of the desert, prowling about the slumbering caravan ; disconcerted by the vigilance of the guards of the camp, they announced their departure by a volley of arrows, accompanied by the groans of the wounded. Then the Virgin, who had made a rampart with her body for her adored Son, raised up to heaven her eyes moist with tears, and her forehead pale with fear; she knew but too well that her Jesus was mortal as well as the least of the children of men !

When the moon diffused her white light over that shadowless and noiseless desert, where the breezes of the solitude found not a blade of grass to raise a sigh, they struck their tents, and the painful march began again, with all the inconveniences, sufferings, and terrors experienced the day before.

At length, they arrived at the extremity of this region of illusions and silence. Egypt, that ancient nursery of every light, and every species of idolatry, presented itself to the travellers, with its obelisks of rose granite, its temples with tops of polished steel, 4  its colossal pyramids, its villages resembling islands, and its providential river, bordered with reeds, and covered with vessels. This country appeared richer, more populous, and more commercial than Judea ; but it was the land of exile! on the other side of the desert was their own country! The hearts of the exiles of Israel had remained there.

After a journey of a hundred and forty leagues, 5 the fugitives reached Heliopolis, where their nation had founded a colony. In that city arose the temple of Jehovah, which Onias had built upon the plan of the holy house. The ornaments of this Egyptian temple were almost equal to those of the other; only, as a sign of inferiority, a massive lamp of gold, suspended from the ceiling supplied the place of the famous candlestick with seven branches at Jerusalem. At the gate of this city, the population of which was in great measure composed of Egyptians and idolatrous Arabs, was a majestic tree, of the mimosa species, to which the Arabs of the Yemen, established on the banks of the Nile, paid a kind of worship. 6 At the approach of the Holy Family, the fetiche tree slowly bent down its shady branches, as if to offer the salam to the young Master of nature, whom Mary carried in her arms ; 7 and, if we may believe the historian Palladius, at the moment when the divine travellers passed under the granite arches of the gate of Heliopolis, all the idols of a neighbouring temple fell on their faces to the ground. 8

Joseph and Mary only passed through the City of the Sun, and repaired to Matarieh, a beautiful village shaded by sycamores, where the only fountain of sweet water in Egypt is found. There, in a dwelling like a bee-hive, where the doves built their nests, the fugitive family reposed in peace, far away from Herod.

This cruel prince, after waiting in vain for the Magi in his palace at Jericho, his favourite residence, learned at length that they had repassed the frontiers of his kingdom, and that, without giving him an account of their mission, they were gone back to the country of the Persians. Pale already from the slow fever which consumed him, the King of the Jews became still paler with wrath. He was deceived at the very moment when he was delighted at the thought of his unequalled cleverness in deceiving others—deceived by these uncircumcised men, who, contrary to all expectation, had found out his tortuous and wily policy! If the Magi had not discovered the child to whom the star had conducted them, they would have told him so on their return.—They had then discovered his secret retirement, and this was somewhere in Bethlehem or its environs, since they had not carried their search any farther.—How was this dangerous child now to be distinguished from common children ?— There was but one last expedient left, one extreme measure to destroy him: this was to include him in one general massacre.—But the people!—At this thought the aged king mused for a moment; then a wild and scornful smile passed over his lips. The people dare nothing, said Herod to himself, against kings who dare everything!

" And sending, he killed all the men-children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men." 9

According to a number of grave authors, 10 who have tradition and probability on their side, the Holy Family remained seven years in Egypt. There are still found traces of their dwelling there: the spring where Mary used to wash the infant's linen; 11 the hill covered with bushes, where she dried it in the sun; the sycamore, in the shade of which she loved to sit with her Son upon her knees, 12 are still there after the lapse of eighteen centuries. The pilgrims of Europe and Asia knew the way to them, and the descendants of the nation of Pharaoh treat them with honour. To every spot some original legend of the olden time is attached, like the moss on the damp wall of a religious ruin. 13

At Nazareth, Mary had led an humble and laborious life, but at Heliopolis she beheld misery in all its aspects. It was necessary to find means of support,—a difficult thing out of one's own country, and among a people parcelled out in national and hereditary corporations, who were by no means fond of strangers. As they were poor, observes St. Basil, it is evident that they most have submitted to painful labour to procure the necessaries of life.—Alas! had they always even these ? " Oftentimes," says Ludolph of Saxony, " did the child Jesus ask his mother for bread, when she could give him nothing but her tears! "

Meanwhile, Herod had died of a horrible and nameless disease, after seeing himself devoured alive by the worms of the tomb. Dwelling to his last breath upon the joy that the people would feel at the news of his decease, he had with tears requested his sister Salome, a wicked woman, to have the flower of the Jewish nobility shot to death with arrows, whom he had imprisoned with this intention, that people might weep at his funeral whether they would or not. 14 He was carried to his castle of Herodion in a golden litter, covered with scarlet and precious stones. His sons and his army followed his bier with downcast looks, while the people, having the happiness of deliverance before their eyes, cast upon him as many maledictions as a cloud showers down drops of rain.

Admonished in a dream, by the angel of the Lord, of the death of the tyrant, Joseph returned with Mary and the child into the land of Israel; " but hearing that Archelaus reigned in Judea in the room of Herod, his father, he was afraid to go thither: and being warned in sleep, he turned aside into the quarters of Galilee."

1 "I had occasion," says Niebuhr, "to remark a phenomenon which struck me as very singular; but which, in time, became familiar to me. An Arab mounted on a camel, whom I saw coming from a distance, appeared to me as tall as a tower, and seemed to move in the air; yet he was marching on the sand like ourselves. This optical illusion proceeds from a stronger refraction of the atmosphere, in these arid regions loaded with vapours of a different nature from those which fill the air of temperate countries."— (Voyage en Arabie, t. i. p. 208.)

2 It is an almost universal custom in the East to enliven one another on the march, or at work, by singing. A Mussulman pilgrim has given a very picturesque description of the nocturnal march of a caravan of Mecca, by the light of lanterns fixed upon the camels, and to the measured singing of the camel-drivers.—(Voyage d'Abdoul Kerim.) The camel-drivers still sing songs peculiar to themselves in Syria and Egypt.—(Correspondance d'Orient, t. vi.)

3 Although the days are scorching in the desert at this season, the nights are very cold.—(Voln.; Sav.)

4 On the dome of the sanctuary of the principal temple of Hiliopolis was observed an immense mirror of polished steel, which reflected the rays of the luminary of heaven. There was a similar one on the top of the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the images of ships were reflected in it long before they appeared in the horizon.— (Correspondance d'Orient, t. v. ; Lettres de Savary.)

5 See Barad., t. i. c. 8.—The author of the Voyages de Jesus Christ reckons only a hundred leagues, but perhaps he takes no account of the windings of the roads.

6 The Arabs, who had gradually forgotten the God of Abraham, adored at that time a number of idols, each more monstrous than the other. "The date-tree," says Azraki, "was adored by the tribe of Khozua, and the Beni-Thekif worshipped a rock ; a large tree named zat arouat was adored by the Koreisch, &c." The Persians scornfully designated the Arabs by the title of " adorers of stones."

7 We are indebted to Sozomen for this event, which it requires some courage to reproduce in this age of mockery, and which, after all, is hardly a miracle. It is certain that there exists in Arabia a tree of the species of the sensitives and mimosas, which bends down its branches at the approach of man. Niebuhr, who is not suspected of credulity, found this tree in the Yemen, and the Arabs, who give it the name of tree of hospitality, hold it in such veneration that it is not lawful to pluck a leaf from it. If this mimosa, by a natural phenomenon, bends down its branches at the approach of man, much* more must it have had cause to lower them at the approach of the Son of God.

8 Palladius is not the only one who relates this miracle; the martyr Dorotheus, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, lira, Dionysius the Carthusian, Testatus, Ludolphus, Barradius, &c, attest it in like manner.

9 This gospel fact, which the school of Voltaire has called in question, is proved, not only by our sacred books, but also by the testimony of Jews and Pagans.—(Macrobius, lib. ari. c. 4, Do Saturnal.; Orig., Contra Celsum, lib. xi. c. 68; Toldos Huldr., pp. 12, 14, 20.)

10 See Trombel, in Vit. Deip.; Zachariam, in Diss, ad Hist. Eccl.; Anselm; Cantual; Euseb.; St. Thorn.

11 This fountain is still called the Fountain of Mary; an ancient tradition records that the Blessed Virgin bathed the infant Jesus in it. In the earliest times of Christianity, the faithful built a church in this place; later on, the Mussulmans constructed a mosque there, and the disciples of both creeds came to pray at the Fountain of Mary for the cure of their maladies; the fountain is still there; the pilgrimages continue, but no vestiges remain either of church or mosque.—(Savary, t. i. p. 122; Corresp. d'Or., t. vi. p. 3.)

12 "Not far from the mountain, I was taken into an enclosure planted with trees; a Mussulman who was our guide stopped us before a sycamore, and said to us, This is the tree of Jesus and Mary. Vanslab, rector of Fontainebleau, informs us that the old sycamore fell down from old age in 1058. The cordeliers of Cairo piously preserved in their sacristy the last remains of this tree; there remained in the garden only a stump, whence, no doubt, came the tree which we saw. General Kleber, after the victory of Heliopolis, would visit as a pilgrim the tree of the Holy Family: he had written his name on the bark of one of the branches: this name has since disappeared, effaced either by time or by some envious hand."—(Corresp. d'Or., t. vi. lettre 141.)

13 The following is one of those legends brought from the lands beyond the sea by one of our good old French barons, the Seigneur d'Englure: we give it with all the original grace of the good old time —" When our Lady, the Mother of God, had passed over the deserts, and when she came to this said place, she laid our Lord down upon the ground, and went about in search of water, but could find none; so she returned full of sorrow to her dear infant, who lay stretched upon the sand, who had dug into the ground with his heels, so that there sprung up a fountain of very good and sweet water. So our Lady was very glad of this, and thanked our Lord for it, and our Lady laid her dear infant down again, and washed the little clothes of our Lord in the water of this fountain, and then spread them out on the ground to dry; and from the water which ran off" these little clothes, as it dried up, there grew from each drop a shrub, which shrubs yield balsam, &c."

14 Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. xrii. c. 8.—The memory of Herod remained in such execration among the princes of the people and the priests, that they instituted a feast, which was celebrated on the 2oth of September, out of joy that he was dead. " There is a feast on the 7th of Chisleu," says the Jewish calendar," on account of the death of Herod; for he had hated the wise, and we rejoice before the Lord when the wicked depart out of this world."—(Basn., t. i. liv. ii. c. 8.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 36.

Chapter 13.

The Purification. Part 2.

The presence of the Messias, who inflamed the heart of the disciples at Emmaus, even before they had recognised their Master in the breaking of bread, beamed upon the soul of the Aaronites, as the ray of spring glistens on the eternal snows of Ararat. That solemn moment, which suspended the sacred concerts round the throne of God, and fixed the eyes of the heavenly host on a single point of the universe, that moment announced by Aggeus, when the glory of the second temple effaced that of the first, passed unperceived before the darkened eyes of the priests and doctors. None of them recognised " the pure and never sullied oblation" which Malachy had predicted. The desired of nations, He whose way had been prepared by angels, the great Redeemer so long promised and expected, was there bodily present, in his holy house, and no one thought to welcome him with palms, crying out upon the battlements of the temple and the roofs of Jerusalem, " Hosanna to the Son of David!" They knew well, says the gospel, how to prognosticate the approach of rain by the clouds which gathered in the west; they knew well how to foresee heat when the south wind blew; but these men, so skilful in drawing presages from the different aspects of the sky, did not see " that the fig-tree of Solomon was about to put forth its figs," 1 and the child of the people did not lead them to presage the God. 0 poverty, how excellent a disguise art thou, even for the divine nature! The true Christ was in the midst of his own; but he was poor, and his own received him not: therefore have they remained without a Saviour; for no Melech-Hamaschiak has come to justify their incredulous contempt for the divine Son of the Virgin, and they are on this account reduced to say, with cold and despairing rage, " Perish those who calculate the time of the Messias !" 2

Meanwhile the infant God, who had recognised as he passed through the streets of Jerusalem the sites of our redemption, counted his executioners in silence in this grave and glittering assemblage; among the choirs who sung to the harp hymns of praise to the Eternal, Christ distinguished the arrogant and malevolent voices which should cry out later on, " Crucify him ! crucify him!"

Race of Aaron, where art thou now ? The avenging breath of the Crucified has scattered thee like chaff in every part of the globe; absorbed in those masses which thou despisedest, the companions of thy exile no longer know thee! But at that time, little troubled about that future which was lowering over their heads, the Hebrew priests offered to the God who rejected them the chosen victims of the great and of the common people. One of them took the doves from Joseph, mounted the general ascent of the altar of holocausts, and offered to the Lord this poor and simple sacrifice.

"And after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord," says St. Luke, "they returned into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth." 3

Where shall they take the frugal repast, to recruit their strength ? 4

Tradition is silent as to a great part of this affecting and perilous journey. No doubt the holy travellers made long and painful marches across the mountains, taking advantage of the earliest hours of daylight, and often waiting, too, for the rising of the moon to proceed on their way. As long as they were passing through Galilee, the deep caverns which are sunk in it, caverns of unknown windings, where it is easy to hide from all observation, afforded them a place to stop and repose : but these dens with hollow sides had their dangers too; for numerous and predatory bands, who had long defied all the forces of the kingdom, and who were emboldened to reappear by the sickness of Herod, 5 chose them by preference for their places of security. The fear of penetrating unconsciously into one of these resorts of assassins must have made Joseph hesitate more than once at the sheltering openings of these isolated caverns.

At length, after a thousand inconveniences of every kind, the Holy Family had reached the environs of Jerusalem. Here precautions and uneasiness were multiplied by reason of the imminence of danger; the fugitives no longer dared to come near towns, nor even populous villages, where numbers of spies and informers had their eye upon strangers: 6 they followed the bed of torrents, dived into deserted roads, or the damp shade of woods, not daring to go far out of the way to renew their exhausted provisions, and suffering at once from fear, cold, and hunger They had passed by Anathoth, and were moving in the direction of Ramla, to descend into the plains of Syria. Anxious to get out of a dangerous neighbourhood, they had borrowed some hours of the night, when they saw some armed men issue forth from a dark ravine, who stopped their passage. He who appeared to be the chief of this troop of bandits came forward from the hostile group to inspect the travellers. Joseph and Mary had stopped, and looked at each other with alarm: Jesus was asleep. The robber, who had come to take blood and gold, looked with astonishment at this old man, unarmed, just like a patriarch of olden times; at this young woman, covered with a veil, who seemed anxious to hide her child from him in her heart, so closely did she press him painfully to her breast. " They are poor," said the robber to himself, " and travel by night, like fugitives!" He too, perhaps, had a son in the cradle; perhaps the atmosphere of meekness and mercy which surrounded Jesus and Mary acted upon this ferocious soul: he lowered the point of his lance, and holding out a friendly hand to Joseph, he offered him a lodging for the night in his fortress, suspended upon the corner of a rock, like the nests of birds of prey. This offer, honestly made, was accepted with holy confidence, and the roof of the robber afforded hospitality, on this occasion, as well as the tent of the Arab. 7 The next day, towards noon, the Holy family stopped at the extremity of a vast forest of palm-trees, nopals, and wild fig-trees, which extends at a short distance from Ramla; 8 a carpet of everlasting flowers, narcissuses, and anemones received the Sovereign of heaven and earth; the heats of summer ruled in the plain, and the warbling of birds, the perfume of plants, the tufted shade of fig-trees, and the distant bubbling of a spring, acted as a charm on the sleep of Christ. After a short rest, the moments of which were counted, the travellers proceeded on their journey. Their motive for moving towards Bethlehem is unknown; tradition has preserved the memory of their passing by it, and the Christians have erected an altar in the cave where Mary concealed her infant, 9 while Joseph went up to the town, either to inquire for the departure of a caravan, or to exchange the slow travelling beast which had carried the Blessed Virgin for a camel. Whatever was the motive which led Joseph and Mary to the crater of a volcano, there is no doubt that they stayed there but a few hours, and that they made haste to reach a maritime town of the Philisthines, to join the first caravan going to Egypt.

If we rely on the learned calculations of chronologists, who allow of no interval in this long journey, the holy pair must have found a caravan on the point of starting, on the coast of Syria. This is the more probable, as the vernal equinox was at hand, and every one would be anxious to anticipate the season when the simoom exercises its empire over the desert, and makes its sea of sand as treacherous as the waves themselves. 10 Excepting the mortal apprehension of the enraged pursuit of Herod, the second part of the journey of the Holy Family did not yield to the first in fatigue or suffering or even in danger. On quitting Gaza, the ruined towers of which resounded with the dying sound of the waves, the travellers beheld nothing before them but immense solitudes of sand, of a dreary aspect and frightful barrenness, ploughed up by the hot wind of the desert, and oppressed by a fiery sky. No vegetation, except a few thin patches of heath, growing here and there on the lonely plain; no water except the brackish spring where the Virgin and Joseph, who were weary, who were poor, and whom no one cared for, could not quench their thirst till after the rich merchants, their slaves, and camels had exhausted it, and there remained of this poor muddy water barely enough to fill the hollow of one's hand. The farther they went from the frontiers of Syria, the more did they feel thirst, and the springs were more scarce. At times, they discerned at a distance, in the middle of a boundless plain, a large blue clear lake, like the lake of Genesareth; the sky was reflected in its limpid waters, in which a solitary date-palm beheld its own image. A cry of joy hailed this discovery; they urged on the speed of the camels, and Mary raised her drooping head, like a rose of Jericho which foretells rain. 11 They were close upon this blessed lake, and already slaking their thirst in imagination; but, oh wretched fate ! a mocking demon transported the lake some leagues farther on, and left nothing in its place but parched-up sand ! 12

1 St. Luc, c. 12, v. 55 et. 56. et c. xxii. v. 29, 30.

2 Basn., liv. vi. c. 26. Talmud, 349.

3 We have followed the opinion of St Luke, St. John Chrysostom, and some other authorities, in making the Holy Family leave for Nazareth after the Purification. This is the only way to reconcile St. Matthew—who says nothing of the marvellous events of the Presentation in the temple—with St. Luke, who is silent on the massacre of the Innocents, and the flight into Egypt. " What then shall we say ? " says St. John Chrysostom, " that St. Luke calls this the time, describing that which preceded the descent into Egypt. For he did not lead them thither before the Purification, lest the law should be in any way infringed; but he waited till the Purification should be accomplished, and they should have returned to Nazareth, and then they were to go down into Egypt."—(Horn. ix. in St Matt)

4 S. Bonav., De Vita Christi.

5 These large armies, often two or three thousand strong, were commanded by experienced chiefs, who gave Herod and the Romans full occupation. Some had a political aim, and made, party war; others were only a mere collection of assassins, who carried long daggers under their cloaks, and killed those whom they wished to get rid of, even in the streets of Jerusalem.—(De Bello, lib. ii. c. 5.)

6 Herod, who brought espionage to perfection in the East, covered the great roads with spies in every part of Judea.—(Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. zv. o. 13.)

7 The site -where the local tradition has placed this scene, and where the ruins of the fortress of the banditti are still visible, continues to be very ill-famed. During the crusades, the Franks, to whom this tradition was familiar, had exalted the banditti chief to a feudal lord. "It is rare, however," says F. Nau, with amusing gravity, "that a lord of note becomes a highway robber." The crusaders were better versed in history than F. Nau. To this history, which seems authentic, has been added an embellishment, for which we cannot answer, asserting that the hospitable robber was the good thief in person.

8 The spot fixed by tradition as one of the resting-places of the Holy Family is very charming; the ruins of a monastery are still seen there.—(Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem, t. ii.)

9 This cave is called the Grotto of the Virgins  Milk, because it is supposed that some drops of milk of the Mother of God fell upon the rock, while she suckled the infant Jesus.

10 " The Arabs call the hot wind of the desert simoom, or poison: the impression it makes may be compared to that received from the mouth of a large oven when the bread is drawn. These winds prevail most frequently during the fifty days which comprise the equinoxes." (Volney, Voyage en Syrie.)

11 This rose, the cup of which opens and shuts according to the variations of the atmosphere, is consulted as a barometer by the Arabs.—(The Viscount Marcellus, in his Voyage en Orient, t ii.)

12 This is the phenomenon known by the name of mirage. During the expedition which the French made in Egypt in 1798, the soldiers, traversing the arid deserts of that burning country, parched with thirst, were often deceived by this cruel illusion. Every prominent object which offered itself to their eyes in the midst of these seas of sand, appeared to them surrounded with water: thus a hillock, which they perceived at a distance, seemed to them to rise out of the midst of a lake. Dying with want they ran towards it; but, when they arrived at the place itself, they discovered their mistake: the lake had fled, and appeared yet farther off to theirs eager eyes.—(See de Fellens, du Mirage. Art. 6.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 35.

Chapter 13.

The Purification. Part 1.

Forty days after the birth of our Saviour, the Virgin considered it her duty to repair to Jerusalem, to obey the precept of Leviticus, which prescribed the purification of mothers, and the ransom of the first-horn. Doubtless this law did not oblige Mary; for if she had been a mother for our Redeemer, she had remained a virgin for herself, and her conception without stain had been followed by a parturition without defilement: " but she submitted voluntarily, for an example to the world, to a penal law to which she was only so far subject," says Bossuet, "as her virginal maternity was unknown."

Poorly equipped, and lost in the crowd on their first appearance upon the dusty road of Ephrata, Joseph and Mary, who had not attracted any notice, had not either left behind them those long recollections which pass into tradition among nations. It was different on their return to Jerusalem; thanks, no doubt, to the miraculous recitals of the shepherds, and the • brilliant visit of the Magi. At some distance from Bethlehem, Mary rested beneath a turpentine-tree to give the breast to her divine Infant, and this tree, according to the common belief, had from that time a hidden virtue which effected, during sixteen centuries, a multitude of wonderful cures. This, at least, is related by the Christians of Asia and the Turks, to whom this tree was still, two centuries ago, an object of veneration and a term of pilgrimage. 1

After this halt, the memory of which is preserved, the holy spouses arrived at the tomb of Rachel, 2 where every Hebrew was bound to pray as be passed. This tumulus of primitive times, which was composed of twelve great stones eaten by moss, upon each of which was read the name of a tribe of Israel, had no epitaph but a white rose of Syria; sweet and frail emblem of the beauty of that young woman, who faded at the moment when she had just blossomed, like the flower spoken of by Job. As they stopped to say the prayer for the dead over the revered dust of one of the saints of their nation, the Virgin and Joseph little thought that the plaintive cries of the dove which the Scripture attributes to this fair Assyrian, would so soon be applicable; and that the mother of 'Joseph and Benjamin was the desolate type of mothers who would bewail, some days afterwards, upon the mountains of Judea, their children massacred instead of Jesus Christ.

On leaving the valley of Rephaim, whose old oaks overshadowed the grassy tombs of the giants of the race of Enac, the virgin perceived a tree of forbidding aspect, the sight of which afflicted her heart. It was a barren olive-tree, which spread its pale foliage to the breezes of the night, and the mournful noise of which resembled the moaning of some human being. As she passed under its melancholy branches, which no bird of heaven enlivened with its song, Mary felt that sensation of poisonous cold diffused by the fatal shade of the manchineel-tree. This tree, if the local tradition was not mistaken, was the "infamous" wood on which Christ was nailed.

At the very moment when Joseph and Mary made their way into the second inclosure, with the sides of silver for the ransom and the doves for sacrifice, a holy old man, named Simeon, 3 to whom it had been divinely revealed that he should not die till he had seen Christ the Lord, came into the portico by inspiration of the Spirit of God. At the sight of the Holy Family, the eye of the just man became inspired; discovering the King Messias beneath the poor swaddling-clothes of the people, he took him from the arms of his mother, lifted him on to his face, and began to contemplate him with emotion, while tears of joy rolled down his venerable cheeks. " Now," cried out the pious old man, raising up his streaming eyes to heaven, " now thou dost dismiss thy servant, 0 Lord, according to thy word, in peace; because my eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." As he finished these words, Simeon solemnly blessed the holy pair; and then addressing himself to Mary, after a mournful and grave silence, he added that this child, born for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel, would be a sign of contradiction to men, and that sorrow should pierce the soul of his mother like the sharp point of a sword.

By this unexpected light, which shed a sombre gleam over the great destiny of Christ, the ignominies, the sufferings, and agonies of the cross, were disclosed at once to the Blessed Virgin. The inauspicious words of Simeon, like a stormy wind, made her bend down her head, and her heart was painfully oppressed. 4 But Mary knew how to accept, without complaint and without murmur, all that came to her from God; her pale lips were placed upon this chalice of wormwood and gall; she drained it even to the dregs, and then said, sweetly, as she dried up her tears, " O Lord, thy will be done! " At that moment the daughter of Abraham was exalted above the head and father of her people; she, too, sacrificed her son upon the altar of the Lord, but she had the sad assurance that the sacrifice would be accepted,— and she was a mother !

She was still pondering in her mind these deep thoughts, when a prophetess came in, named Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser, who was far advanced in years. This holy widow departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving God night and day. At the sight of the divine Infant, she began to praise the Lord aloud, and to speak of him to those who looked for the redemption of Israel.

" Not only," says St. Ambrose on this subject, " does the generation of the Lord receive testimony from angels, and prophets, and shepherds, but also from the aged and the just. Every age, and both sexes, and the miracles of events attest it. A Virgin brings forth, one that was barren becomes a mother, the dumb speaks, Elizabeth prophesies, the Magian adores, he who is shut up in the womb leaps for joy, the widow proclaims, the just expects."

As the farthest court of the temple was forbidden to Mary, and as the infant, on account of his sex, was to be offered there to the Lord, Joseph himself carried him into the court of the first-born, asking himself at the same time whether the scenes which had taken place at the entrance of Jesus into the holy house would be renewed in the compartment of the Hebrew priests. But nothing discovered the infant God in this privileged part of the temple; everything there remained sad and frozen beneath the rising ray of the young Sun of justice. A priest unknown to Joseph received in a desultory manner from the rough hands of the man of the people, whom he regarded as the " offscouring of the world," 5 the timid birds ordained by the law, and did not even deign to honour Christ with a single look. The love of gold— that shameful idolatry, which hides its unacknowledged worship in the shade as long as it retains enough shame to blush —had changed into hard stone the narrow, egotistical, and malignant heart 6 of the princes of the synagogue. Leaving the monopoly of labour and privations to the simple Levites, whom they reduced to live upon herbs and dried figs, 7 they passed by the poor man stretched upon their marble thresholds, and the traveller wounded in the mountain pathway, turning their heads away with indifference ; in reality they loved neither God nor men. And with this does our Lord, who himself instituted a priesthood exclusively of charity, reproach them, with holy and piercing irony, in the parable of the Samaritan. Therefore, as Malachy had announced, " God cursed their benedictions," and turned away his face from their temple, which he was soon to deliver up to the sword and fire of the Romans.

1 This tree, under which Mary rested to give Jesus the breast, was destroyed during the century before the last, hut the memory of the place where it was is still preserved.

2 According to the Jewish doctors, Jacob buried his beloved wife on the road to Bethlehem, only because his prophetic knowledge led him to discover that a portion of his descendants would follow this road as captives of the Assyrians, and because he wished that Rachel might intercede for them to Jehovah, as they passed before her tomb. The Protestants have declaimed strongly against the Talmudists on account of this passage, which favours the intercession of the Virgin and of the saints. This tomb of Rachel was in such veneration, that all the Jews who passed by it made it a religious duty to engrave their names on one of the stones: these enormous stones were twelve in number.—(Talm. de Jer.) We know that the tears of Rachel, spoken of by Jeremias, were only a figure of the tears shed by the Jewish women after the massacre of the innocents.—(St. Matt. xi. 17,18.)

3 The Arabs give Simeon the title of Siddik (he who verifies), because he bore witness to the coming of the true Messias, in the person of Jesus, the son of Mary, whom all Mussulmans are obliged to receive as such.—'D'Herb., Biblioth. Orientale, t. iii. p. 266.)

4 "Mary, my sovereign," says St. Anselm on this subject, "I cannot believe that you could have lived a moment with such sorrow, had not God strengthened you, who gives life."

5 Prideaux, History of the Jews.

6 The Jewish doctors had then, and still have, a maxim which fills us with horror : they hold that he who does not nourish his hatred, and avenge himself, is unworthy of the name of rabbin. (Basn., liv. vi. c. 17.)

7 The luxury and avarice of the chief priests of Jerusalem were incredible. The pontiffs sent people into the country to take the tithes in the granaries, and appropriate them to themselves, which left the inferior priests to die of hunger. At the least remonstrance the miserable Levites were accused of revolt and insubordination, and delivered up to the Romans : the governor Felix alone cast forty of them into prison, out of complaisance to the doctors and princes of the synagogue.—(Josephus, Vita.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 34.

Chapter 12

ADORATION OF THE MAGI. PART 2

The day after these nocturnal wanderings was a day of mourning and punishments: none were spared. The executioner, after cutting off the heads of the highest, fell upon the lowest of the rabble. Thus on every side vows were made against the life of the prince; and each time that the report of his death was circulated, whether by chance or design, in the distant provinces, the people, greedily seizing the treacherous bait which flattered their hatred, hastened to light up bonfires in every direction, which Herod extinguished with blood.

Amidst these elements of civil discord,—when a fever of insurrection was sullenly working its way in the army, and revolt, like a ripe fruit, seemed to invite the hand of the seditious,—strangers of high bearing arrive at Jerusalem, who inquire without any mystery or circumlocution, for a new-born King of the Jews, whose star they have seen. Herod is astonished; he anxiously calls up his recollections; the predictions fatal to his dynasty which the Pharisees cause to be circulated—the oracles of the ancient seers—to which he has hitherto lent but a distracted and secondary attention, come to his remembrance. This warrior Messias, this prophet sprung from David, who is to carry his victorious ensigns from west to east, begins to give him vague disquietude; it is not the God who makes the aged king so full of thought, it is the prince. The more he thinks upon it, the more this mysterious event seems to him connected with one vast conspiracy tending to raise up a secret and rival power upon the ruins of his own. What then! did he pour out like water the illustrious blood of the Maccabees, without any concern for the beating hearts of his wife and children; did he crush beneath the iron wheels of his despotism all that offered any resistance; lose his soul, his honour, the rest of his nights, in which his bleeding victims troubled his dreams 1 . . . . and all this to what purpose ? —to smoothen the way to the throne for the family of David 2 ....This sceptre so dearly purchased,—this sceptre, still wet with the blood of his own relatives, will be then no more than a reed, sterile and accursed, which the blast of death shall break over his tomb ! .... He will have passed, like the meteor of a stormy night, over this land, whose ancient glory will brilliantly revive after him! .... And this people, who hated him with a hatred so strong, so deadly, so furious, that even his favours could do nothing towards assuaging it, how will they surround with their love and sympathy the offspring of their ancient kings ! And this last thought fell as bitter as wormwood upon the dark and desolate heart of the aged monarch; for in the midst of his acts of violence, he felt the want of being loved, a strange want certainly, but perfectly real in this exceptional being, who seemed made up of contrasts, and who had employed very noble qualities in the service of the most absorbing and most cruel passion which could lay waste the human soul—ambition !

"Be this child prince of the land or prophet of God," said Herod, after a pause, " he must die; ... . and die he shall, even though I were sure to extinguish with this feeble spark all the glories which our seers dream of for future times. Athalia, that clever woman, who knew how to reign, forgot only one infant in his cradle in the massacre of the royal family of Judah. That child deprived her of her throne and her life. I will take care to forget nothing. But where is this new-born king of the Jews concealed, who is proclaimed by the stars, and whom these insolent satraps come to seek at the very gates of my palace ? Can he be in reality the Shiloh foretold by Jacob ? These are perhaps mere reveries of the astrologers ? No matter, we must make sure." A few hours after, the doctors of the law and the chief priests, assembled in council under the presidency of Herod, heard this question, which appeared to them strange in the mouth of such a prince: " Do you know in what place the Messias should be born ? "

The answer, which was not expected, was unanimous: "In Bethlehem of Juda. " And the ancients of Israel, delighted to make the friend of the Romans uneasy, did not fail to add that, as the last of the weeks of Daniel was near its end, the time for the Messias was drawing near. These indications, little calculated to give security, were not sufficient for Herod, who wanted to know where to strike the blow: he resolved to interrogate the Magi, and to know, if possible, the precise time of the birth of the child, calculated by that of the appearance of the star. Too clever a politician to grant a public audience to the sages of Iran, which would have given consistency to a rumour which it was his interest to stifle, the king sent for them privately, and pressed them with questions as to the time of the star's appearing to them. "He inquires," says St. John Chrysostom, " not the time of the child, but of the star, lying in wait for his prey with great diligence." Informed of what he wished to know, the man of blood dismissed the strangers in an affable and gracious manner. " Go," said he, " to Bethlehem, and search diligently after the child, and when you have found him, bring me word again, that I also may come and adore him."

Now the Magi, like all superior men, like all the sons of meditation and science, were good, sincere, and little inclined to suspect evil. They understood arbitrary conduct and cruelty in a prince, they did not understand falsehood ; for the first thing that the kings of Persia taught their children was to tell the truth. Accordingly they believed the false words of the Idumean, and passing again beneath the elegant porticoes of this palace, which vied in magnificence with those of the great king, but which had not in the midst of its bronzes and arcades the golden bell of the suppliants, 3 they left the Betzetha, 4 struck their tents, and traversed a second time the holy city, to go to the presumed birthplace of the Messias. As they passed by the walls of the new amphitheatre, enriched with trophies,—the extraordinary decoration of which was an inexhaustible subject of sarcasms to the Pharisees,—they met King Herod, surrounded by a forest of Thracian and German lances, who was going in the direction of Jericho. 5

The Persians left Jerusalem by the gate of Damascus; then taking the left, they entered upon valleys  intersected with hills, which they were obliged to climb. They were about an hour's journey from the capital of Judea, and were watering their camels at a cistern, when a brilliant light appeared directly over them, and descended rapidly to them, like a falling star. " The star ! our star !" cried out the slaves, transported with joy. " The star!" repeated their masters, with the same rapture ; and being certain this time that they had entered on the right way, they resumed their journey with fresh ardour.

They were about to enter the city of David, when the star, lowering itself towards the south, stopped all at once over a cave, which had the appearance of being a rustic stable, and descending as low as possible in the air, rested, as it were, over the head of the infant God. The sight of this motionless star,—the softest rays of which fell in a luminous sheaf upon this cave hollowed out of the rock,—filled the Magi with great faith, and their faith indeed needed to be great to acknowledge the King Messias, in an infant destitute of everything, lodged in a poor place, laid in a manger, and whose mother, though beautiful and full of every grace, was evidently of a very obscure condition.

God, who would make the Jews ashamed of the hardness of their hearts, by setting before them the religious eagerness and the docile faith of infidels, permitted that the extraordinary humiliation of the Holy Family should not shake the firm belief of the Magi.

The worshippers of the sun, the Gentiles, whom the cross came to save, as well as the children of promise, made their way into the sorry abode of Christ with as much veneration as in their temples built over subterranean fires, where starry spheres revolved. 6 According to the custom of their people, they put some of the dust of that poor threshold on their foreheads, and after taking off their rich sandals, they adored the new-born Infant, as every son of the East at that time adored his gods and his masters. Then opening caskets of Odoriferous wood, which contained the presents intended for the Messias, they took out of them most pure gold, found in the environs of Ninive the Great, and perfumes which were exchanged for fruits and pearls with the Arabs of the Yemen. These mysterious gifts had nothing carnal about them, like the offerings of the Jews. The cradle of Him who came to abolish the sacrifices of the synagogue was not to be sprinkled with blood ; therefore the Magi did not sacrifice to him lambs without spot, nor white heifers; they presented him gold, as to a prince of the earth, myrrh, and frankincense, as to a God; 7 then, touching the earth with their foreheads before Mary, whom they found fair "as the moon, and humble as the flower of nenuphar" they invoked upon her the benedictions of God, and wished that " the hand of woe might never reach her."

This was the last scene of splendour in which the Blessed Virgin bore a part. The first period of her life, like a sweet dream of Ginnistan, had passed beneath roofs of cedar and gold, in the midst of sacred perfumes, melodious chants, the sound of lyres and harps; the second, full of wonders and mysteries, had placed her in correspondence with the inhabitants of heaven and the princes of Asia; the third was about to open under other auspices: it was the turn of persecutions, troubles, and indescribable sorrows.

And now the Magi, whom nothing retained in Judea, prepared to leave Bethlehem. They proposed, according to their promise, to go and find the king in his palace of Jericho, to tell him where the Messias was; but the angel of the Lord admonished them, in a dream, of the dark designs of that perfidious prince, and intimated to them the order to change their route. The children of Ormuzd returned their thanks to the " Master of the sun and of the morning star," gave the honour of this nocturnal revelation to their good genius, 8 and meriting by their perfect docility the gift of faith which they received later on, 9 instead of going along the sterile and dangerous borders of the accursed lake which reflects in its heavy and stagnant waters the shadows of the reprobate cities, they turned the heads of their camels towards the Great Sea, and imagined themselves in the plains planted with date-trees 10 and covered with roses, bathed by the Euphrates and the Bend-Emyr, while they were traversing the fine regions of Syria.

1 Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. v. c. 13.

2 We wonder at the alarm caused to Herod by an offshoot of the family of David; yet it was not only Herod that persecuted that noble family, out of hatred for its ancient rights and glorious expectations. Eusebius, after Hegesippus, relates that, after the conquest of Jerusalem, Vespasian commanded the posterity of David to be sought out and destroyed. Under Trajan, the persecution still continued. Finally, Domitian had two descendants of that illustrious race brought to Rome, whose grandfather was the apostle St Jude. The emperor, after interrogating them, learning that they possessed no more than thirty-nine acres of land, which they cultivated with their own hands, bent them back to their own country, being made easy as to their ambition by their poverty.

3 The kings of Persia administered justice in a manner quite patriarchal. They had above their heads a golden bell, and to this bell was attached a chain, the end of which hung outside of the palace. Every time that the bell rung, the officers of the prince left his apartments, and introduced before the great king the petitioners, who demanded justice of the prince himself, and the king rendered it to them on the spot with equity.—(Antar, translated from the Arabic by Terrick Hamilton.)

4 The quarter called Betzetha, or the new town, which Herod had joined to Jerusalem, was situated to the north of the temple: it included the lower pool, the probatical pool, and the palace of Herod.

5 We have followed the authors who maintain that Herod departed for Jericho, where he was for some time sick, at the time when the Magi journeyed to Bethlehem; this agrees every way with the account of the gospel; for if Herod had been at Jerusalem at the time when the Persians returned, they would probably have seen him before the admonition of the angel, who did not inform them of the designs of the king till the first night. The sickness of Herod, taking off his attention from the Magi and the infant, left the former at liberty to return peaceably into their country, and the Holy Family time to return by the road to Nazareth.

6 These spheres, composed of circles of gold, cut out like those of our armillary spheres, revolve brilliantly at the rising of the sun. They are still seen at Oulam, where the Ghebers have a temple.— (Rabbi Benjamin.)

7 Those verses of Juvencus, the most ancient of Christian poets whose works have come down to us, on the presents of the kingly Magi, have been justly praised:—
"Aurum, thus, myrrham, regique, Deoque, hominique Dona ferunt. ..."

8 Of Ormuzd, in Zend, ahuro-mazdao (the very learned king), and of Ahriman, in Zend, ahyro-maingus (the intelligent merchant), according to the Persian mythology, were born the good and evil genii to whom are attributed different functions in the universe, whether for the diffusion of good or the propagation of evil. One of these good genii, named Serosch, went round the earth every night to watch for the security of the servants of Ormuzd.—(See the Amschaspand-Named, and The Book of Kings of Firdousi.)

9 Very ancient authors affirm that the Magi received baptism from St. Thomas; it is thought that they suffered martyrdom in India, where they preached the gospel.

10 "The palm-trees of Babylonia," says Diodorus Siculus, "bear exquisite dates; they are half a foot long, some yellow, others red, and others of a purple colour, so that they are no less agreeable to the sight than to the taste. The trunk of the tree is of an astonishing height, and everywhere alike straight and smooth; but the head, or tuft, is not of the same form in all. Some palm-trees spread out their branches in a circle, and the fruit of some projects in bunches from the bark, which is open about midway; others hear their branches on one side only, and their weight bending them down towards the ground, gives them the figure of a lamp suspended; others, in fine, divide their branches into two portions, and let them fall to the right and to the left in perfect symmetry." (Diodorus, b. ii.) The following is the description of the banks of the Euphrates, by a poet anterior to Mahomet: " They saw populous towns, plains abounding in flowing streams, date-trees, and warbling birds, and sweet smelling flowers; and the country appeared like a blessing to enliven the sorrowing heart; and the camels were grazing and straying about the land; and they were of various colours, like the flowers of a garden."—(Antar, translated from the Arabic, by Terrick Hamilton.) —For the fields and gardens of roses so common in ancient Persia, see Firdousi, The Book of Kings.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 33.

Chapter 12

ADORATION OF THE MAGI. PART 1

In the course of the autumn which preceded the birth of Jesus Christ, certain Chaldean Magi, learned in the study of the courses of the stars, discovered a star of the first magnitude, which they recognised by its extraordinary motion and other no less certain signs, as that star of Jacob, long before predicted by Balaam, which was to arise in their horizon at the time of the parturition of the Virgin. According to the ancient traditions of Iran, collected by Abulfarage, Zoroaster —the restorer of the science of the Magi, a learned man, a great astronomer, and well versed, moreover, in the theology of the Hebrews 1 —announced under the first successor of Cyras, and a short time after the rebuilding of the temple, that a divine infant, called to change the face of the world, would be born of a virgin, pure and immaculate, in the most western region of Asia. He added that a star unknown to their heavens would signalise this remarkable event, and that on its appearance the Magi would themselves bring presents to this young king. Faithful and religious executors of the wishes of Zoroaster, three of the most illustrious wise men of Babylon, 2 had no sooner remarked the star, than they sounded the cymbals of departure. Leaving behind them the city of Seleucidae, with its elegant edifices of palm-tree wood, 3 and Babylon, where the wind of the desert, moaning over immense ruins, seemed to tell to these silent wrecks the sinister oracles of the son of Amos, they left the country of date-palms, and took the sandy road of Palestine. Before them, like the pillar of light which guided the fugitive cohorts of Israel to the desert shores of the Red Sea, moved forward the star of the Messias. This new star, free from those unchangeable laws which rule the starry spheres, had no regular motion proper to itself; sometimes it advanced at the head of the caravan, always following a straight line in the direction of the west; sometimes it remained stationary above the tents pitched for the night, and seemed gently poised on the bosom of the clouds, like an albatross asleep in fields of air: at daybreak it gave the signal for departure, as it had given the one to halt. 4

At length, the lofty towers of Jerusalem appeared in the distance in the midst of the bare and wild summits of her mountains; the camels and the mares were quenching their thirst at a cistern by the way-side, when the Magi uttered a cry of surprise and affright; the star had just hidden itself in the heights of the sky, like an intelligent creature aware of some impending danger. 5

As much disconcerted as the navigators of ancient times when a barrier of black clouds concealed from them the polar star, the Magi consulted together for a moment. What was the meaning of the sudden disappearance of their brilliant guide ? Were they then at the end of their long journey, and should they set up the tent of abode ? That the infant king whom they came to adore from the banks of the Tigris should be found at Jerusalem, was a thing both possible and probable. "The God of heaven" they thought, " does not prolong his miracles in vain; they cease when human agency suffices: this is all in right order. What if the star has left us ? We can very well, without its aid, find him whom we seek in the capital of his dominions. To discover the cradle of the young King Messias, we have only to enter the first street strewed with green boughs, perfumed with essence of roses, and carpeted with drapery of rich colours embroidered with gold; the sound of the harps of the Hebrews, their dances, and their songs of joy, will sufficiently indicate to us in what direction to proceed. 1 Then urging on their animals, they passed the gate of the enclosure, and entered the ancient Sion between two files of barbarian soldiers.

The aspect of Jerusalem was sad : its population, weakened , and silent, had no appearance of joy or festivity; groups only formed here and there, to see the travellers pass by, whom they recognised by their long white robes, fastened by magnificent oriental girdles, and their bazubends 6 enriched with precious stones, and, above all, by the manly beauty of their features, as satraps of the great king. As they went along, the oriental cavaliers, leaning down upon the necks of their dromedaries, asked some of the numerous spectators who crowded the way, where was the new-born King of the Jews, whose star they had seen in Babylon. The people of Jerusalem, looking at one another in amazement, knew not what to answer to this inquiry. .... A King of the Jews! . . . . What king? They knew none but Herod, whom they abhorred from the bottom of their souls, and who had no infant son. The Magi, astonished on their part that all whom they interrogated should protest their ignorance, and seeing moreover around them no signs of festivity, moved in consternation up the crowded street which led to the ancient palace of David, and pitched their tents in its ruinous and shaded courts.

Nevertheless, the appearance of these grandees of Persia, who travelled very rarely at that time in the mountains of Judea, their startling questions, which astonished and intimidated at the same time a people whom the vast system of espionage organised by Herod 7 held in fear, soon put into commotion the most seditious and restless city of the East. The name of King Messias, pronounced by the Pharisees, ever on the alert to make the aged monarch uneasy about the future fortunes of his house and the duration of his own power, fell among the curious groups like a spark upon thatch. The King Messias? It was emancipation! It was conquest! It was glory! It was the banner of Juda waving like a ruler over the vanquished world! The Persian satraps passed for the first astrologers in the world ; 8 they had, no doubt, read in the stars the birth of the Hebrew Goel. 9 The heir of the kings of Juda was about to reascend the great throne of his ancestors, and drive from it the race of the Herods, those half-Jem, who were the slaves of Borne! A low rumour, like that which precedes the tempests of the ocean, soon circulated in the houses, in the streets, on the public places; never had the Jews of Jerusalem felt less disposed to conform to the royal edict, which forbade them to meddle with any affairs but their own. 10 In vain did the fierce soldiers of Herod line the ramparts and platforms of the towers ; the people were strong; they had no more fear, and they conspired in the street. "All Jerusalem was troubled," says the gospel, and it was soon the tyrant's turn to be troubled also.

Herod at that time was living in his palace at Jerusalem, the gardens of which—full of flowers, stocked with rare birds, and intersected with clear streams, which lost themselves beneath the branches of an actual little forest 11 —could not avert his mind from the gloomy recollections and sinister anticipations which rendered life an annoyance to him. Informed by the chief of his spies of the arrival of the Magi, and of their strange discourses, his broad forehead, wrinkled with anxious thoughts, darkened like a stormy sky, and his uneasiness was visible to every one.

The trouble of the King of the Jews is easily understood and explained by his position. Herod was neither the anointed of the Lord, nor the choice of the people; a branch of laurel, gathered in the idolatrous precincts of the Capitol, formed his tributary crown,—a crown of vassalage, entwined with thorns, every leaf of which had been paid for with heaps of gold abstracted from the savings of the rich and the indigence of the poor. Hated by the rich, whose heads he cut off at the first suspicion—feared by his relatives, whose tombs he tragically filled up—the horror of the priests, whose privileges he had trampled under foot—detested by the people for his doubtful religion and his foreign extraction— he could only oppose his courtiers, his assassins, his artists, and the opulent but small sect of Herodians, who were fascinated with his magnificence, to the active, ardent, and openly declared hatred of the rest of the nation. Often was the friend of Caesar insulted to his face by his obstinate subjects: the Pharisees, an artful and powerful sect, had refused with insult and derision to take the oath of fidelity to him; the Essenians, whose courage in battle rendered them formidable, had followed the example of the Pharisees; and the young and ebullient disciples of the doctors of the law had recently thrown down in open day, with their vengeful axes, the golden eagle which he had placed above the gate of the temple to please the Romans.

On every side plots, secretly favoured by his nearest and dearest relatives, were contrived in the dark against his life, and he was very near falling, in the crowded theatre, beneath the poignards of certain young high-minded men, who thought to do a deed of virtue and patriotism, by ridding the earth of a prince who reigned like a madman. 12 Attributing this unusual daring to the contempt inspired by his old age, he exhausted all the secrets of art to appear young again. 13 He would fain have persuaded himself and others, that he was still that young and brilliant Herod who surpassed the greater part of the Hebrews in gymnastic exercises : Herod, the bold rider, the expert hunter, the handsome and disdainful monarch, who had despised the love of that celebrated Queen of Egypt for whom Anthony had lost the empire of the world. But, alas ! the silvery network which began to mix with the black hair of his sons, their impatience to reign, the spirit of revolt and mutiny which crept in among the people, and the insolence of the banditti who re-commenced their depredations in Galilee, made him understand but too well that his reign drew near its end. Tormented with suspicions, and distrustful even of his spies, he wandered about, sometimes at night alone and in disguise, in the streets and public places of his capital ; 14 there he heard with his own ears the mattered imprecations, the cruel reproaches, the bitter railleries which fell upon " the man without ancestors," the "Ascalonite," the "wild beast," who had killed his innocent wife,—a pearl of beauty, a model of honour,—and who had afterwards had his two sons by her strangled, those two princes so sad, so handsome, so brave, whom the people loved for the sake of the Asmonean heroes, their ancestors, and their unfortunate mother.

1 Some have made Zoroaster a disciple of Jeremias; but their times do not correspond; it is more probable that he was a disciple of Daniel.

2 Men are not agreed as to the country of the Magi; some make them come from the interior of Arabia Felix, others from India, which is not at all probable. The best authorities give them Persia for their country, and this opinion has seemed to us founded in truth. The name Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, which are attributed to the Magi, are Babylonian. In fact, Babylon, and after its destruction, Seleueia, situated at a short distance, were the abode of the most celebrated astronomers of antiquity. Finally, these cities are to the east of Jerusalem, and in twenty days' march one may travel from the borders of the Euphrates to Bethlehem, Origen, who was learned and well-informed, assures us that the Magi studied astrology. Drexelius ridicules Origen for this very unreasonably; which proves that he was little versed in the history of the East in olden times, where every astronomer was also an astrologer.

3 Strabo, lib. xvii.

4 St. Joan. Chrysost., Serm. 6 in S. Matt.—Chalcidius, a pagan philosopher, who lived at the end of the third century, makes mention of this star, and of the sages of the East whom it conducted to the cradle of Jesus Christ. St. Augustin, the doctor of doctors, speaks thus on this subject: " At his birth, he declared a new star, who, when put to death, darkened the old sun. What was that star which never appeared before among the stars, nor remained to he pointed out afterwards ? What was it but a magnificent tongue of the heavens— to declare the glory of God, to proclaim with unusual brightness the unheard-of parturition of the Virgin."—(Serm. cci., in Epiph. iii.)

5 This cistern, or well, situated on the road to Jerusalem, still bears the name of the Cistern of the three Kings, or of the Star, in memory of this event.

6 Bazubends, antique bracelets of diamonds, turquoises, and pearls, which the satraps wore above the elbow : the King of Persia and his sons still wear the bazubends.—(See Morier, Voyage en Perse et en Armenie.)

7 See Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. xv. c. 13.

8 The whole of the East at that time believed in astrology; and Philo informs us that the satraps of Persia passed for the first astrologers in the world.

9 Goel (Saviour), one of the names by which the Hebrews designated the Messias.

10 Herod had strictly forbidden the Jews to talk of affairs of state; they could not even meet together in family parties to make great feasts, according to custom. His spies, scattered about Jerusalem* and even over the high roads, immediately arrested those who disobeyed the king's edict; they were placed secretly, and sometimes n open day, in strongholds where they were severely punished.— (Josephus, Antiq. Jud., lib. xv. o. 13.)

11 Josephus, de Bello, lib. v. c. 13.

12 The people were so far from applauding the discovery of this conspiracy, and rejoicing at the safety of the king, that they seized the informer who had disclosed it, tore him in pieces, and had him eaten up by dogs.—(Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. xv. c. 11.)

13 Herod painted in order to look younger than he was, and had his hair and beard dyed black.—(Ibid., lib. xvi. c. 11.)

14 He often mixed at night, in disguise, with the populace, says Josephus, to know what opinion the people had of him, and he punished without mercy those who did not approve of what he did.— (Josephus, Ant. Jud., lib. xv. c. 13.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 32.

Chapter 11

BIRTH OF THE MESSIAS. PART 2.

He appeared all at once, like the sunbeam parting from the cloud, to the eyes of his astonished young mother, and came to take possession of the throne of his poverty, while all the angels of God, bending the knee before him, adored him under his human form. 1 This virginal parturition wad free from cries and pains; and not a single groan disturbed the sacred silence of that night full of prodigies and mysteries. Miraculously conceived, Jesus is born still more miraculously.

God prepared for the world a grand and novel spectacle, when he caused a poor king to be born. The palace which he destined for him was a deserted stable—a fit shelter for him who as he advanced in years was to say, " The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Moses, proscribed from his birth, had at least a cradle of rushes, when his sister, the youthful Mary, exposed him in the midst of the bulrushes and sacred lotus plants which dip their leaves in the Nile at the close of day; 2 but Jesus, the divine forsaken one, who came among us to suffer and die, had not even so much magnificence as this : he was laid in a manger, upon a handful of damp straw providentially forgotten by some camel-driver of Egypt or Syria, in haste to set out before daybreak. God had provided for the couch of his only Son, even as he provides for the nests of the birds of heaven.

It was necessary to cover this new Adam, whose members would have been starved by the cold air, and whom modesty and necessity alike required to be clothed. Mary made him out of her veil swaddling bands, with which she wrapped him up with her chaste hands; then was the God newly born adored by her and her holy spouse, as Joseph of old, the finest type of Jesus Christ, had been before by his father and mother.

St. Basil, entering into the mysteries of fervour and rapture which passed in the soul of the Virgin, exhibits her to us as if divided between the love of the mother and the adoration of the saint. "What should I call thee?" says she, addressing her Infant-God; " what should I call thee ? .... a mortal ? . . . . but I conceived thee by divine operation .... A God? .... but thou hast a human body. Ought I to come before thee with incense, or to offer thee my breast ? Ought I to lavish upon thee all the cares of a tender mother, or to serve thee with my forehead bowed down to the dust? 0 wonderful contrast! the heavens are thy abode, and I nurse thee on my knees! Thou art upon earth, and yet thou art not separated from the inhabitants of the celestial regions: the heavens are with

Thus were accomplished the grand oracles of Micheas and Isaias: —

" And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night-watches over their flock. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them: Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people; for this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall And the infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST; AND ON EARTH PEACE TO MEN OF GOOD WILL." 3

The marvellous vision had disappeared, the heavenly songs had ceased, and the shepherds, leaning forward upon their knotty staves, were still listening.
When the night breezes moaned alone in the valley, and there was only left in the sky a single white and shining spot, which might seem to be an angel, the shepherds consulted together, and " said one to another, Let us go over to Bethlehem, and let us see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord hath showed to us." Then taking in baskets such humble presents as their huts could supply, they made their way, by the bright light of the stars, to the little city of David. At the sight of the stable they felt, like the disciples at Emmaus, that their hearts were burning, and they said one to another, " Perhaps this is the place ;" for they knew that the divine Infant who was born unto them had not seen the light beneath a rich roof, and that he was not laid in a sumptuous cradle for a throne; the angel had made no such announcement. They approached then with faith, with hope, with love, towards the place where they well deserved to meet the promised Saviour, since they came to seek him there with upright intentions and pure souls.

Looking into the farthest recess of the cave, to ascertain whether they had really come to the end of their nocturnal pilgrimage, these men of good-will discovered Him who came to preach the gospel to the poor, and to abolish the malediction of slavery, under the humble form of a little infant quietly asleep in his manger.

The Virgin, bending over her new-born son, contemplated him with affecting humility and profound tenderness; above them, Joseph bent down his aged head before this adopted son, who was God; a mild ray of the moon shone upon this divine group, enclosed in the red recesses of the rock: without, everything reposed under a fine starlight night. 4

"Here must be the place," said the shepherds to each other; and prostrating with respect before the manger of the King of kings, they offered to the poor and new-born God the mite and the homage of the poor.

Then they proceeded to relate the apparition of the angels, their ravishing concerts, their words of hope, peace, and love. Joseph admired and wondered at this divine manifestation, and Mary, who heard in silence this simple narrative, laid up every word of it in her heart. When this duty was performed, and their mission ended, the shepherds retired, glorifying God, and spread abroad in the mountains the wonders of that sacred night. Those who heard them, struck with a long fit of amazement, said one to another, " Is it really possible ? Are we then in the time of Abraham, that angels should visit shepherds ? "

Perhaps it was these recitals, made in the evenings on the borders of the woods, or in the depths of the ravines, while the camels drank together at the solitary spring, which led a tribe of Arabs to consider Mary and the Infant as divinities. The sweet image of the Virgin holding her Son on her knees, was painted on one of the pillars of the Caaba, and solemnly placed in the number of the three hundred and sixty divinities of the three Arabias. In the time of Mahomet it was still to be seen, as the Arab historians attest. 5 After the massacre of the Holy Innocents, this brave tribe rose up to a man, uttered a long cry of vengeance, and without being overawed by numbers, attacked Herod's son, though he was a vassal and 'protege of the Romans. 6

This authentic anecdote, so curious and generally unknown, comes to the support of the supernatural fact recorded by St. Luke, a fact which the deriding philosophers of the school of Voltaire, and the adepts of pantheism,—if possible, still more pagan,—have not failed to banish to the rank of fables. The capricious devotion of these Arabs, who blended idolatry with the worship of the true God before the preaching of the gospel, can be accounted for only in connection with the knowledge of the miracles of the sacred night of the Nativity.

On the eighth day after his birth, the Son of God was circumcised, and named Jesus, in conformity with the order of his heavenly Father. He must have had a godfather, like all the Israelites, but we are completely ignorant upon whom that honour fell. As to the ceremony of the circumcision, which always took place under the auspices of Elias, who never failed, said the Hebrews, to assist at it invisibly, * it took place, according to St. Epiphanius, in the very cave in which Jesus was born, and St. Bernard presumes, with sufficient probability, that St. Joseph was the minister on the occasion

Men of the common people, docile to the summons of the angels, had come to adore the infant God in his poor manger, and share with him their black bread and the milk of their goats. A miracle of a higher character, and of much greater renown, conducted shortly after to the same cradle the first fruits of converted Gentiles: the shepherds of Judah had led the way; it was now the turn of sages and kings.

1 Heb. i. 6; Psalm xlvi. 7.

2 The lotus, which was consecrated to the sun, is a water-plant, the leaves of which dip into the Nile when the sun sets, and emerge from it when he rises. This plant has the virtue of lulling to sleep. They used to say to those who made long journeys that they had eaten of the lotus, that is, they had forgotten their country.—(Basn., Liv. ix. c. 15.)

3 In a very pleasant plain, situated a quarter of a league to the north of the town of Bethlehem, is found the village of the shepherds, and in the depth of the valley the celebrated field where these shepherds were tending their flocks during the night of the nativity. According to grave authors, both sacred and profane, the appearance of the angels to the shepherds is not the only prodigy which signalised the birth of the Infant-God. It is related, that during that sacred night, the vines of Engaddi blossomed, and that at Como the temple of Peace fell down on a sudden, and the oracles of the demons were silent for ever. The very birth of our Lord was a sentence of banishment for those pagan divinities who had been till then permitted to give oracles. Milton, in an admirable poetic vein, thus describes, in one of his earliest pieces of verse, the departure of those pretended divinities on the eve of the nativity:—

"The oracles are dumb.
No voice or hideous hum,
Buns through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

"In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint:
In urns and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.
"Peor and Baalim Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice "battered god of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with taper's holy shine;
The Lybec Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

"And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbal's ring,
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste."

4 "The Persians call Christmas night schebjaldai, night bright and luminous, by reason of the descent of the angels."—(D' Herbelot, Bibl. Orientale, t. ii. p. 294.)

5 "El Azraki adduces the ocular testimony of several respectable persons," says Burckhardt, " to prove a remarkable fact, of which, I believe, no mention has hitherto been made : it is that the figure of the Virgin Mary, with the young Aisa (Jesus) on her knees, was sculptured as a divinity upon one of the pillars nearest to the gate of Caaba."—(Burckhardt, Voyage en Arabie, t.i. p. 221.)

6 This particular circumstance, which confirms the account of the Arab historian, is found recorded in the Toldos, a Jewish book, very ancient, and written in a tone of furious animosity against Christianity. We see there that Herod the Great and his son had to sustain a war against the tribe of the desert, who adored the image of Jesus and Mary his mother. This tribe attempted to form alliances with several cities of Palestine, and particularly with that of Hai. Now, as the Jews themselves place this event in the lifetime of Herod, it must have been prompted by the massacre of the Innocents, as the aged king survived only one year the birth of our Saviour.