X. The Flight into Egypt, and the Murder FESTIVAL DAY, THE TWENTY-EIGHTH OF DECEMBER. AND when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young Child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him. When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my Son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. St. Matthew ii. 13th to 19th verse. CHAPTER X. The festival of the Holy Innocents is the last of the three which immediately follow the Nativity of our blessed Lord; and the day seems to have been set apart by the Church with no reference to the time of the event, but in order to bring before us at once, in close connexion with the birthday of Jesus, the King of Martyrs, three classes of martyrs, including all who, in every age, have followed in His train: for first, upon St. Stephen's day, we have the example of the first Christian martyr, who, not in will only, but in deed, laid down his life, "saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" and upon St. John the Evangelist's day, we have the example of one whose willingness to lay down his life for the Lord we know, though he only of all the Apostles was not called to actual martyrdom; and last of all, we have, in the Holy Innocents, the example of those who were martyrs in deed, though not in will; the thought of whom has more than once comforted my heart, when I have looked upon a little suffering dying infant, "Teaching so well and silently How, at the shepherd's call, the lamb should die." And is it so, dear children, that none but those who, either in will or in deed, lay down their lives for Christ's sake, can follow in His steps? Yes, it is even so; and the more to impress this truth upon us, twice in the Gospel by St. Matthew, and in that by St. Luke, and once in both of the other Evangelists, we are warned that he that findeth, or in other words loveth his life, shall lose it, but "he that loseth his life shall find it ;" and "he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." Very solemn, but very encouraging, are the words that follow in the Gospel of St. John: "If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant be." Nor should this be a hard saying to us, who bear upon our foreheads the holy sign of the Cross only let us walk now, by the grace of God, in the path of self-denial and cross-bearing, and we shall find that as our day is, so shall our strength be. I know of a child who, at one time, having read a book about the sufferings of the early Christians, was greatly troubled by the thought that she could never have endured such cruel torments for Christ's sake; and there is a passage in the Bible (you will find it in Hebrews xi. 35th to 39th verse) which often made her heart beat, and her eyes fill with tears. But one day she saw a picture of a little child with a cross suited to his size; and the thought came into her mind, "I could carry such a cross as that ;" and then all at once she seemed helped to understand that God, who is very pitiful and of tender mercy, sends little crosses to little children, and will never send any cross, or call us to any trial, that He will not strengthen us to bear. And now to return to the story of the Holy Family, after the visit of the wise men from the East. Very different was the peaceful repose of the young Child, and Mary His mother, and of Joseph, in that lowly kouse at Bethlehem, from the troubled slumbers of Herod the Great, devising mischief upon his bed against the Lord's Christ but the jealous monarch in his palace, surrounded by his armed guards, was not so securely kept as was the little Babe whose life he sought; and vainly did he flatter himself that, by his feigned desire to become himself a worshipper of the Infant King, he had secured from the wise men such information as would enable him to fulfil his wicked purpose. According to some writers, Herod was at this time residing in Jericho, famed in those days for its precious balsam, which was much used in medicine. : At this place Herod had built a sumptuous palace, to which he is said to have retired to place himself under the care of physicians for the cure of the dreadful malady, which not long after put an end to his miserable life, in torments like those related of his grandson Herod, whom the angel of the Lord smote, "because he gave not God the glory and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost" (Acts xii. 23). Whether at Jericho, or at Jerusalem (where, also, he had built himself a palace on Mount Sion, which is said to have, in some respects, exceeded the temple itself in largeness and magnificence), Herod could not long be ignorant that the wise men, whose return he so anxiously awaited, had departed into their own country another way, for Jericho is only nineteen miles eastward of Jerusalem, six miles to the south of which is Bethlehem. It is likely therefore, that the departure of the wise men, and the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, took place the same night, immediately after their arrival. We are not told whether Herod sent after the wise men, but if he did so, the Holy Child was being carried in another direction, for Egypt lay to the south, and the wise men were journeying eastward. Perhaps as the Holy Fa 66 mily passed by Hebron, the house of the parents of St. John the Baptist, the morning rays were shining on its storied heights and groves of olivetrees; but the pilgrims might not tarry there. The desert was before them, where of old the outcast Hagar wandered with her son; the way by which the Ishmaelites carried Joseph down into Egypt," that great and terrible wilderness" in which the children of Israel wandered forty years, "wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought; where there was no water." But He who bare the Israelites of old in all the way that they went, as a man doth bear his son," was with the fugitives to direct their way, and to keep them as the apple of His eye. And yet it must have been no small trial of the faith of both Joseph and Mary, to leave the birthplace of our Lord, and to flee by night with the Holy Child (of whom such wondrous things were told them) into a strange land, far away from the temple of the Lord, and from all their kindred; and it was not, perhaps, without sorrow that they looked back at the vine-clad hills of the pleasant land, fading from their sight in the distance, and thought, how while strangers had journeyed from the East to worship the Infant King, His own people received Him not. Had they reasoned as we are so apt to do in our folly and unbelief, they might have been stumbled by the seeming strangeness of the way of God in thus sending His Son as a fugitive into the land of the heathen: but are not the ways of the Lord higher than our ways, and past finding |