were shepherds watching their flocks in one of the pasture grounds, which may still be seen near Bethlehem. To them appeared

*

Shepherds see

angels.

a vision, and they believed that God told them not to fear, that there was born that day, in the city of David, Jesus, who was the Anointed Lord, the Messiah. That they might be assured, it was told them that they should find him in swaddling-clothes and lying in a manger, one of those exterior stalls usually attached to caravanserais. Immediately there burst upon the ears of the shepherds a chorus sung by multitudes of voices, saying, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will to men."

If it be inquired how this statement came into history, the answer is, that it is probable that Luke, when he came to writing the biography of his Master, ma le diligent search for all he could find of the early life of Jesus, and in that search received from the lips of one of the shepherds his simple account of the transaction. This sounds like the narrative of an eye-witness. It may not have literal accuracy, but it has been noticed how remarkably free it is from all materialism, how very pure and elevated is the statement of the transaction. It occurred as any wellbalanced mind might reasonably suppose it would, if the Great Father ever made any such communication to men.

The shepherds went to Bethlehem and found the place, the mother and the babe. Then they made known what they had heard in the plain, and returned rejoicing.

About a mile east of Bethlehem | lage of the Shepherds.

there is a little village called the Vil

Luke asserts that Mary's child was circumcised, according to the Levitical law, on the eighth day, and received the name of JESUS.

Circumcision of

Jesus.

The Mosaic law required the presentation to the Lord of every first-born male, but allowed children to be redeemed from exclusive devotion to religious pursuits by

Jesus presented

the payment of five shekels, which is about thirty in the temple.

American gold dollars. See Levit. xii. 24; Num

bers xviii. 15, 16. At the same time the parents were to offer a sacrifice of a pair of turtle-doves or young pigeons. (Leviticus xii. 8.) In this service consisted the legal purification of the mother. The rich offered a lamb; the poor gave pigeons. Mary had only doves to bring.

If this history had been written by an impostor he would have given a different turn to the story. These sacrifices imply sin. If Jesus be that Holy One from the birth, why were these offerings made? The straightforwardness of the story gives a general air of truthfulness to the whole narrative. There is no myth here. Mythical narratives elevate. This depresses. It places Jesus in the race of sinners. A writer of myths, as Neander suggests, would have brought in an angel to hinder Mary from submitting her child to a ceremony so unworthy his dignity.

But here there appears strikingly that mingling of humiliation and glory which marks all the main passages of the life of Jesus.

Amid the general spiritual declension of the Simeon and Anna.

Jews there existed a little band, not perhaps con

sociated so as to be called a society, but well known to one another, of those who made careful culture of the spiritual life, and who were waiting for some special revelation of mercy from Almighty God. Among these were two aged people, named Simeon and Anna, who looked earnestly for the coming of the Consoler of Israel. Simeon had received what he believed a divine intimation that he should not die before he had seen Jehovah's Anointed. Moved by special spiritual impulse he came into the temple the very day of Mary's purification, which was forty days after the circumcision of the child. There was something in the babe which responded to the cry of the soul of Simeon. In him he recognized the long-looked for Redeemer, and taking the child in his arms he broke into that rapture which the Christian Church has preserved under the name of the Nunc Dimittis:

"Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all the peoples; a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of Thy people Israel." (Luke ii. 29–32.)

Although Jesus never recognized Joseph as his father, Luke speaks of Joseph and Mary together as the parents of Jesus, as they naturally would generally be taken to be, and says that this display of rapture, upon the part of Simeon, caused Joseph and Mary to marvel. Although Mary knew of Jesus's miraculous birth, each new wonder would impress her with fresh awe. Perceiving this, Simeon said to Mary, "Behold, this is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign to be spoken against; and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also, that out of many hearts evil thoughts may be revealed."

In the words of Simeon we discover a feeling very much in advance of the general state of the Jewish mind. They display a softness, a hopefulness, and a liberality to which the hard Jewish heart of his day was generally a stranger. It contains the idea of development through struggle, a spread beyond the limits of Judaism, and a final triumph, which, while it should break up the exclusiveness of that ancient faith, should bestow upon it a greater glory than any of its anterior traditions.

There was also one Anna, "a prophetess," daughter of Pha nuel, of the tribe of Asher. In early womanhood she had mar ried. After seven years her husband died. She had been more

than fifty years a widow, and had devoted herself to the temple-service, not departing from the house of God, whom she served night and day with fasting and prayers. Coming in at this moment she joined Simeon's thanksgiving, and reported the case "to all that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." *

* Schleiermacher's conjecture that the narrative came indirectly from Anna seems plausible, seeing that she is more

minutely described than Simeon, while Simeon's words are reported and her's are not.

CHAPTER IV.

HIS FIRST YEARS.

In the course of the year following the birth of Jesus, there arrived in Jerusalem a company of men described as the “Wise men from the East." (Matt. ii. 1.) Who were they?

Matt. ii.; Visit of the Magi.

Matthew calls them μáyou. By this name Magi the Greeks denoted the priests of Persia, just as we now speak of the Brahmins of India. The Magi may have been a tribe, as Herodotus says they were. To them among the Persians, as to the Levites among the Jews, were intrusted all the public matters of religion. Their chiefs educated the prince; they were royal counsellors and judges; they kept sacred traditions, and were thought to be able in various ways to divine the future, especially by watching the stars and by interpreting dreams.

In the Roman Empire their name was generally assumed by magicians. The bad character of this class is clear from a decree of the Senate, which banished them from Rome in the year 16. Matthew used the term in its original, in its national and honorable sense. This is certain from Herod's honorable treatment of these Magi. For in the whole world there were only two classes of men who would have been at all safe in coming to the capital of so jealous and bloody a tyrant with the question, "Where is ho that is born King of the Jews?" even though, as was the case with these Magi, they were understood to be seeking not for a spiritual, but for a temporal lord; these two classes were citizens of Rome and subjects of the Parthian kings, and it would have been well that even such should have had more than a common claim to the protection of their governments.

The Parthians, a small but warlike tribe, had gotten the upper hand in Persia. They were haughty and fierce, and so wielded the military power of that country as to make it dreaded even by

the Romans. Herod's kingdom was exposed to their sudden inroads, and in his youth he had fled before them from Jerusalem. Against their anger his dependence even on the Roman power was no sufficient protection. In Babylonia, which was then a province of the Parthian Empire, was the city of Ctesiphon, on the river Tigris, one of several of the Parthian capitals. If these pilgrims came from Ctesiphon under a safe-conduct from the Parthian. king, or were Magi of his court, Herod would not have dared to touch a hair of their heads, and would have been driven to some such policy as that to which he did resort. His treatment of them, especially his calling together the Sanhedrim, a body of men who in their sacerdotal and learned character much resembled them, proves that these Magi were men of very high rank, though they were not kings, as they were commonly held to be in the Middle Ages. This tradition seems to have grown very naturally out of their reception at Herod's court; and it was probably right in making them three in number, for this seems to be indicated by their presents to the infant Jesus.

These Magi are described in our version as from "the East," and it is said they were in the East when they saw the Star. In the original the Greek word is the same in both places, but with such a difference in its form as would make the difference made in

English by prefixing to the former the word far, which thus means the Far East. In some of the later Books of Hebrew Scripture Babylonia is called the East, and Persia lies next beyond it and in the same line. History, geography, and Hebrew usage leave no reasonable doubt that these strangers were Persians, and saw the Star in Babylonia, then a Persian province.

Zoroaster, the famous Persian teacher of religion, who may have lived as far back as 1500 years before Christ, or not far from the time of Moses, was no idolater, and in the Bible the Persians are not classed with the heathen. Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, was predicted by Isaiah (xliv. 24; xlv. 1-6); by him the Temple of God in Jerusalem, which had been burned by the king of Babylon, was ordered to be rebuilt; and in his proclamation to that effect (Neh. i. 1-2) he acknowledges the God of the Persians and of the Hebrews to be the same Lord God of Heaven. Daniel was high in honor with this king; and the Magi had an idea of a Sosiosh, or Redeemer, to come, that in certain respects was strikingly like his. From the time of Cyrus there were ever many