"Or as Longfellow says again," exclaimed Hettie- That an army of phantoms, vast and wan, "Let her alone," I said, as Mr. Morse turned a look of mock reproof toward her; "she ripples over with waters from the Heliconian rill. In the soul there is an army of lusts' or 'phantoms.' These oppose our progress in the pilgrimage of life. If we have all God's gifts about us in their strength and fulness we are held to be able to go forth to war and are responsible; but if we have those gifts only in a weak and imperfect or halfformed condition we are held to be unable to go to war, and thus are not responsible. Hence, all over twenty years of age among the Israelites were held responsible, and perished in the wilderness, while those under twenty years of age were held irresponsible, and, being helpless, were admitted into the Promised Land." "If what you say be true, Mr. Romaine," said Lilian, "I want to know what is the use of the Gospel. If we can only get to heaven by fighting for it, I want to know what becomes of God's scheme of salvation." "I did not know, Lilian, that there was any 'scheming' in the onward flow of Divine Mercy and Heavenly Order. The use of the Gospel is, that through it Christ is the Captain of our salvation, and that it gives us the Sword of the Spirit, clothes us in the panoply of heaven, and infills us with strength for the battle. Not only are infants and immature youths saved, but so also are those who exercise their gifts and powers aright, and, becoming victors on earth, are ranked with the crowned and happy victors in heaven. In fact, none are lost excepting those who, by the abuse of their gifts, have so ingrained evil into their natures that it cannot be eradicated without destroying their entire being." The thought of the ghastly thing not far off us, and of the unhappy condition of the aged parents, had saddened our feelings and subdued our voices. It had even affected the appetites of Mr. Freeheart and Mr. Thomson, who, before I had finished the above remarks, had risen from the table and gone out. When Hettie, Willie, and I went into the kitchen we found them already there. Mr. Thomson, who, I scarcely thought, had listened to our conversation, was explaining, in the simplicity of his heart, and with a choking voice, to the parents of the "ungain" youth the Gospel according to Numbers which I had been endeavouring so imperfectly to preach. THE CHURCH QUARTERLY ON THE SPIRITUAL CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. N the January Number of the Church Quarterly there is a curious article on "The Spiritual Claims of the Church of England," the object of it being to prove that the Church of England is THE CHURCH. The writer states that 154 different religious bodies have certified their places of worship to the Registrar-General, all of which (except Jews and one or two more) lay claim to be Christians,-many allege themselves to be THE CHURCH. A plain man finds a difficulty to decide on these rival claims, and the purpose of this article is to lay down rules for his guidance. "No one is bound to inquire into every claim, to examine the belief and practice of each sect, before making a choice. . . . The first rule that common sense suggests is that very small societies, which sprang up only the other day, whose founder is still alive or but just dead, may be left out of the reckoning at the outset; not because they are small, new, and obscure, for that was once true of the whole Christian body, but because there have been millions of good Christians many hundreds of years before these societies were founded, and, therefore, it is quite certain that they were not wanted formerly, and very likely that they are not wanted now." We must confess that we cannot see the logicalness of this reasoning, since the same summary mode of dismissal might, with equal propriety, have been used when the whole Christian body was small, new, and obscure, or at the introduction of Christianity into new countries. From this general condemnation of new sects the writer exempts "such of them as say they have something new to tell us from God, some fresh revelation of His will (as a few do say), may fairly ask to have their titledeeds and proofs looked into." By the use of "the clearing processes" the writer reduces the number of sects entitled to be inquired into down to two groups-the Church of England, the Church of Rome, the Presbyterians, Baptists, Independents, or (as they now prefer to call themselves) Congregationalists, Moravians, Quakers, Methodists, and Unitarians in one group; and in the other," the Swedenborgians, Mormons, and Irvingites, who lay claim to at new message or revelation." Without noticing those remarkable differences between the Church of England and the other religious bodies in the country, which the writer admits do not prove that it is the Church of God in this country, we pass on to notice the reasons alleged for regarding the Church of England as THE CHURCH. How are the claims of the Church of England to be examined? "To the law and to the testimony, etc.," says the writer. The answer is a good one so far; but what follows. "In the first place, the Bible tells us plainly that God set up a visible Church with known officers and definite laws, and revealed it to the Jewish nation through the agency of Moses. . . . Out of this Jewish Church, as the germ, the Lord Jesus Christ formed His new Church of Christian believers." We have read in the Book of the Jewish Church being a type of the Christian, but never of its being its germ. The Christian Church is a distinct Church, founded on the Lord Jesus Christ and His teachings. The genius of the two Churches is not at all alike-the germ of Judaism was external obedience, the germ of Christianity is internal love. If, therefore, the spiritual claims of the Church of England are based upon the fact that she has been formed from the Jewish Church as a germ, she is NOT the new Church of Christian believers, notwithstanding that she is "visible," and "has her own officers." THE CHURCH "is one, and one only;" "has only one creed." "It is a sin to disobey this body." "Its doctrines, laws, and even customs, may not be departed from at any man's pleasure." It is very difficult for outsiders to recognize in these marks a description of the Church of England, which, though nominally one, is divided into three very distinct sections, possesses three creeds, whose officers are set at defiance, and whose laws and customs (if we may credit either the Church Times or the Rock) have been departed from to a very large and deplorable extent. Surely the Church of England has wholly forgotten the charge of the Apostle (quoted by the writer of the article as a mark of THE Church), "I beseech you, brethren, by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you." The High Church and the evangelical sections are far more separated from each other on important matters of doctrine than the great bulk of Dissenters are from each other; and the divisions in the Church are so notorious that the Archbishop of Canterbury characterized the actions of the extreme Ritualists as "a conspiracy against the doctrines, discipline, and practice of our Reformed Church." The statement concerning the 160 sects, "They have no unity of faith, for they contradict one another's teaching in every particular; their officers and ministers are rivals and competitors, not colleagues in the same service; their customs and traditions are unlike; they actually take pride in their divisions, instead of regarding them as sinful," is quite as true of the parties within the Church of England as of the sects outside her pale; and it is equally clear that this state of things "is not in the least degree like the sort of Christianity which our Lord set up and St. Paul preached." When the Rev. R. O. T. Thorpe objects to the Revs. R. R. Bristow and J. Going presenting candidates for confirmation at his Church on the ground, as stated in his explanatory letter to the Bishop of Rochester, that he could not be joined with them in any ministerial act, it is somewhat illogical to urge that Dissenters cannot belong to the Church of Christ because of their divisions, and that the Church of England is THE CHURCH because of her unity. 6 The The True Church, it is stated, may be known from counterfeits by the same marks as those which betokened the first converts made on the Day of Pentecost. "They were baptized, and they continued. stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayer."" Quakers do not baptize at all, and the Unitarians do not use the Scripture formula, therefore they are at once struck out of the list previously given. "Next, there must be agreement in the Apostles' doctrine, and this strikes out all sects which go outside the Bible, and have a private revelation of their own, like the Swedenborgians and Mormons, whose doctrine is in many respects new, and cannot be traced back for any long time. For it is quite clear that no doctrine which cannot be found in the Bible, nor in any book more than a hundred years old or so, can be part of the Apostles' doctrine, seeing that the last survivor of the Apostolic body died nearly 1800 years ago." From a previous extract it will be seen that the writer admitted that Swedenborgians "may fairly ask to have their title-deeds and proofs looked into," because we say we have something new to tell, whereas, in this last extract, the very fact that we say we have something new to tell is brought forward a sa sufficient bar to our claim to be considered a church. But the writer is evidently not altogether satisfied with having disposed of the Swedenborgians in such a summary manner, for he subsequently devotes "a very few words" to dispose of us again, as if he thought he would be more secure if "Thrice he routed all his foes, And thrice he slew the slain." “As regards the Swedenborgians, who avow themselves to be a New Church,' and therefore make no historical claims whatever, they have not even the quasi-miracles of Irvingism to produce on their behalf; besides which, they have departed far more widely from ancient Christian doctrine, being heterodox on the Trinity, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the Second Advent, in all which particulars, except the first, their tenets are new, while their view of the first is a reproduction of ancient Sabellianism. Much of Swedenborg's teaching is, no doubt, mere ingenious and innocuous speculation, by no means devoid of suggestiveness; but, so far as it claims to be a revelation, it is another gospel, and one which can adduce no testimony in its favour. And it entirely lacks the necessary tokens either of Divine approval or of general suitability to the spiritual needs of man. It has existed now for nearly 100 years, for just ninety as a separate organization, since its meetings for worship began in 1787; and yet its numbers only reach about 10,000 in all the world, almost exclusively confined (like the Irvingites) to a lower middle-class stratum of society. in England and America, thus being a mere class religion of a single race, not a Catholic faith for the whole world; nor does it exhibit the least vitality in growth, and must therefore be regarded as a complete failure." Before proceeding to examine these statements concerning the New Church, we would just make one or two observations on the contention of the writer concerning the Church of England. To us as outsiders there is always a great difficulty in determining what are the doctrine and practices of the Church of England. Are the Doctrines those laid down in the Prayer Book as a whole, or only those presented in the Thirty-Nine Articles? Are the practices those of the High Church Party, or those of the Low Church? Is the real Church of England the Church as by law established? However these questions may be answered, we find, as a matter of fact, very great divergence both in doctrine and practice. Upon many points doctrines are held which are vehemently protested against by one section, and maintained with great tenacity by another section. Indeed, her maintenance as a national Church depends upon the permission of a very great latitude in opinion and in ritual. Prosecutions for heresy and illegal practices are not unknown, and the greatest difficulty is often felt before the lawyers can determine the requirements and demands of the united (?) Church. "Most At page 294 it is spoken of as "The Church of God in this country;" at pp. 291-2 the writer says, foreign religious bodies in England, such as the Greek Church and the German Lutherans, which undertake to look after their own countrymen alone, and do not try to make converts here, may be practically left out of account;" and again, p. 308, "This Church, then, represents to all English citizens the original society set up on earth by our Lord Himself, not as being the whole of that society, but the particular portion of it which, in the course of Divine Providence, was permitted to root itself in, and spread over this land of England." From these extracts it would appear, when taken into connection with the general argument of the article, that THE CHURCH may be one thing in one country, and another thing in another country; and that though THE CHURCH in Germany, and THE CHURCH in Greece, and THE CHURCH in England, may be very different in doctrine and in ritual, we have no need to trouble our heads about that. Talk about new doctrines! Where in the Word can we find any such geographical or political divisions of the Church of Jesus Christ? Though we are told that "the plain fact, which people who talk in this way (i.e. about going straight to the Bible) do not understand, is that God most certainly did not intend people to pick and choose their religion for themselves out of the Bible," we prefer the truly catholic teaching of the Apostle Peter, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him." The logical end of the argument of the Church Quarterly is, that a German member of THE CHURCH in Germany, on being naturalized as a British subject, ceases to belong to THE CHURCH unless he joins the Church of England!! D. (To be continued.) T IS THE WORLD IMPROVING? THOUGHTS ON THE TIMES. O many observers things appear gloomy at home and abroad. If we look at home we can find distress, misery, crime, and want as plentiful and as grievous as ever. If we look abroad things seem worse and worse. There is war-bloody, remorseless, and vindictive, with unusual horrors in its train. Like the worst wars that have hitherto scourged the earth, this has on both sides a religious phase. Christianity and Mohammedanism are cutting each other's throats with an utter abandonment to the work, and the world stands round watching the fray with eager eyes and absorbing interest. Every variety of feeling is developed; from that which ruled the spectators in the gladiatorial contests of old Rome, to that of the mere politician, who takes interest in such struggles only so far as his theories or schemes for dynastic questions may be served or injured. Over the whole surface of this refractory planet we may readily find evidence of evil, wickedness, and sin. But are we hence to conclude that the world is getting worse? That Christianity is a name alone, and not a reality? Shall we strive to see in these events the fulfilments of prophecies which, if only thus worked out, would make the Word of God a mere mundane heap of predictions of no more value than Merlin's or Zadkiel's ? Or shall we not try to see rather the hope of better things to come -a promise and not a curse? The present age has a vast and most remarkable difference from any that has preceded it. There is almost as ready and quick a perception of what is doing in any part of the world to-day as an individual has of what is going on in any part of his own organism. In former days, on the contrary, we scarcely knew what was passing in our very midst so readily and truly as we now know the conditions and daily actions of the most distant affiliated or alien countries. This at once marks the difference between a state of health and a state of disease. Compared with the present, former ages were like the state of a paralytic whose limbs may be burnt or lopped off and he not know it by any quick sensation, whose members are in no way moved or directed by his will or intellect. To-day this is different. The heart of this country pulsates with generous throbs for the pain and suffering of other members of the cosmos. The brain of the nation thinks over the best means of checking or mitigating the sorrow, and is kept well informed by an increasingly healthy nerve system of the state of things all round. By our nerves of sensation and of volition we feel and we act at once while our eyes and ears gather their varied information wherever needed. As then the knowledge of evil is the first step to its cure, so the perception of all these things acts similarly, and, awakening a horror for its existence, sets us to work to stamp it out. War in itself is the outbirth of evil, which may exist unknown and fester more dangerously in secret, but brought into act works its own cure and clears the system. In days gone by war and crime and misery were really far more common, but we knew them then only when we were ourselves the sufferers. Our interest in the rest of the world was far less and of a more selfish kind. A tale of terror such as we have had so much of lately would under similar circumstances have been an old story before it reached us, and have affected us rather with the sensation of an exciting novel, dying off readily, than with the desire and power to make ourselves of use at once and effectually. We feel sure that the world is truly progressing in good, and these miseries will only serve to teach us how the better to avoid like ones in the future. We ought to be thankful to see the real genuine benevolence of thought and feeling evoked continually into active operation, whether it be for a famine in India, a war in Turkey, or sickness and poverty in our own more favoured country. DEATH OF THE POPE. N Thursday, February 7th, at fifty-seven minutes past four in the afternoon, Pope Pius IX. passed into the spiritual world at the age of eighty-five. He will be remembered as the last Sovereign Pontiff of Rome and the First Infallible Pope. As Bishop of Romagna and Cardinal Ferretti he was one of the most popular men in Italy; but he had not been long seated in the chair of St. Peter before it became evident that the system he represented was incompatible with that. sympathy with liberal ideas which he had formerly entertained. Driven from Rome by the Garibaldians, he was only recalled from exile by the success of the French arms at the storming of the holy city. From May 1850 to 1870 he only maintained the semblance of temporal power by the help of foreign military force; and when the French troops were withdrawn in 1870 Rome opened her gates to the King of Italy. Personally Pius IX. won the hearts of most of those with whom he came in contact by his kindly and sympathetic manners, though he clung with amazing tenacity to the cherished idea of Papal supremacy. In preparation for the election of his successor all the foreign cardinals have been summoned to Rome. The next Pope will have a difficult part to play, for the signs of the times plainly indicate that the pretensions of Rome can no longer be allowed by the nations of the earth. THE CHARING CROSS MAGAZINE ON HE Charing Cross Magazine for February contains a short paper by E. C. Clarke on "The Theological Teaching of Swedenborg." The writer says:"Emanuel Swedenborg was the most voluminous, not to say one of the greatest, of theological writers. Few, however, of those who profess to take an interest in theology are well acquainted with his numerous and ponderous works. Perhaps their very vastness has been an obstacle to some; but the chief reason why they have been so little read is that they were opposed to the religious thought of the day. Still, the number of those who read them increases every year, and their influence on religious thought is becoming appreciably greater. "We do not propose glancing at the whole of Swedenborg's works, but only at his last and crowning one, entitled 'The True Christian Religion.' This book contains fourteen chapters, the first of which treats of God the Creator, the second of the Lord the Redeemer, and the third of the Holy Spirit and Divine Operation. These three chapters, together with the memorabilia, extend over one hundred and eighty-three pages. The gist of their teaching is that there is one God in essence and in person, and that Jesus Christ is that God: that the Trinity is not a Trinity of persons, but of essentials, which make one God, as soul, body, and operation make one man. A Trinity of persons would be a Trinity of Gods, which is opposed to the Scripture statement 'The Lord our God is one Lord.' "We are unable to see how any one can differ from Swedenborg respecting the sole Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. For if there be but one God, which the Scriptures teach, and to which reason assents, and Jesus Christ be God, He must be the only God, the Almighty, the Creator, the I Am." Having given a brief summary of the remaining chapters of the book, the writer enumerates the five classes into which Swedenborg divides his readers, and concludes by transcribing his (Swedenborg's) rules of life, which he says were no mere paper rules." THE COMPANIONS OF OUR LORD. I. THE VIRGIN MARY. MONG the personal associates of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary naturally occupies the earliest, if not the foremost place. The indispensable instrument of the Incarnation, by whose maternal function Jehovah Himself assumed the human nature, she fills a position absolutely unique amongst women for the supreme dignity of its infinite uses. No doubt she was fitted for her destiny by special qualifications of character, and by the overruling control, from her earliest infancy, of the Divine Providence. For if the whole race of mankind needed the preaching of Elias, lest the coming of "the great and terrible day of the Lord" should smite the earth with a curse (Mal. iv. 5, 6); and if the mission of the Elias Baptist required that, throughout his life, he should be "filled with the Holy Spirit" (Luke i. 15); how much of preparation was essential for her who was to be mother of the Son of God! Yet of the details of this preparation we know nothing; for although tradition supplies a biography of her early years full of legendary fables, the inspired Word is entirely silent. That she was of the lineage of David seems an imperative inference, but is nowhere expressly stated; both the genealogies of Jesus (Matt. i. 1-17; Luke iii. 23-38) tracing His descent, not through the mother, His only actual human parent, but through her husband Joseph, His legal father. Still, the assertions, alike in prophecy, gospel, and epistles, that "Jesus Christ our Lord was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom. i. 3), are so clear and emphatic as to leave no doubt that through His mother He did really inherit the rights and characteristics of the royal house. And this conclusion is strengthened by the fact that when the angel announced her coming maternity, and declared that the Lord God should give unto her Son "the throne of His father David" (Luke i. 32), she, while fully comprehending that her conception would be miraculous, and without human intervention (ver. 34), raised no question as to this part of the message. Two reasons required that the Saviour should possess this lineage; the first spiritual and representative, the second literal and actual. As the ideal Jewish king and conqueror, David appropriately typified the Divine "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Rev. xix. 16), whose arm, mighty to save, should bring salvation (Isa. Ixiii. 1, 5); and according to the flesh he was therefore His most fit progenitor. But beyond this cause, which is based on the correspondence between things natural and spiritual, there was a positive necessity that Jehovah should assume a humanity possessing tendencies towards all those violent and disorderly passions of our fallen nature which characterized the house of David. For David was of the tribe of Judah, which sprang at its very fountain from a shameful incest (Gen. xxxviii.); and the records, both of the tribe in general and of its royal family in particular, include some of the saddest crimes which stain human history. Yet it was necessary, to the completeness of the Divine work of redemption, that Jehovah should take upon Himself a manhood inclined towards all these evils. That He might save mankind at its lowest, He assumed humanity at its lowest; the First became the Last (Isa. xliv. 6; Rev. i. 11), in order to redeem and rescue all. For the Humanity of Jesus, inheriting through the mother all the perverse dispositions of the basest human nature, lay open to temptation from the entire powers of darkness, and thus provided a battlefield on which to encounter the whole forces of hell. Hence the consoling and helpful truth, "We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. iv. 15); for "in that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Heb. ii. 18). Our Lord's inheritance, through Mary, of the proclivities to wrong concentrated in the race of David and of Judah, was thus essential to the completeness of His redeeming work. His human nature necessarily included these dispositions, or it could not have admitted a fulness of temptation; and without a full temptation His victory would have remained imperfect, and the promised deliverance "from our enemies and the hand of all that hate us" (Luke i. 71) could never be achieved.* Carefully distinguish, however, between the liability to wrong and actual guilt. There is no sin in the fact of an evil tendency, but only in a weak compliance. If manfully opposed, a frail inclination simply disciplines the character, and strengthens its power for goodness. Our Lord Jesus Christ always and perfectly resisted, and thus, while "in all points tempted like as we are," He remained entirely "without sin" (Heb iv. 15). And in a less degree the same appears true of the Virgin Mother. Though inheriting the characteristic qualities of the stock of David and Judah, and constituting the medium for their necessary transmission to the humanity assumed by Jehovah, we have every reason to regard her as free from their active influence and defilement. All that is recorded of her exhibits a meek mind and a pure heart, such as befit her important office in the history of the universe. But how grossly has the Church of Rome erred in affirming that the Virgin Mary was free from hereditary frailty! The dogma of her immaculate conception, ascribing to her not only a superhuman clearness from actual guilt, but a nature miraculously incapable of sin, is fatal to all just comprehension of the Lord's work of redemption. To conquer our spiritual enemies He needed to meet them face to face in the warfare of temptation; and to experience temptation a nature was required which lay open to the assaults of hell. So that to interpose between the Lord's Humanity and His significant pedigree from the stained race of David and Judah, a mother incompetent to transmit the heritage of a real human character, is to undermine at its very foundation the entire purpose and mode of Incarnation. That Mary became pure by the new birth of regeneration appears evident from everything we read of her gentle disposition and blameless conduct; but that, in its original state, her mental and spiritual constitution included susceptibilities to every evil, was a necessary condition for her exalted function. Besides her descent from the house of David, we learn *For the spiritual truths involved in the pedigrees of our Lord, see the Rev. W. Bruce's Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, pp. 1-13. respecting Mary that she had a sister with the same name as herself, who eventually became the wife of Cleophas, Clopas, or Alphæus (John xix. 25); and that she was related by marriage to Elisabeth "of the daughters of Aaron," wife of the priest Zacharias, and the mother of John the Baptist (Luke i. 5, 36). When first mentioned in the New Testament (Luke i. 26) she was living in the despised Galilean city of Nazareth (John i. 46); and, as the affianced bride of Joseph, she was probably spending the year interposed by Jewish custom between betrothal and marriage at the house of her parents, and in the comparative seclusion usual in such circumstances. Amid this season of quiet, then, so favourable to meditation, she heard the message for which through weary ages every daughter of Israel had been waiting; that from her should spring the Messiah who would repair the mischief of the Fall by bruising the serpent's head (Gen. iii. 15). The Angel Gabriel, sent from God, greeted her as "highly favoured" and "blessed among women," since, by the overshadowing power of the Highest, of her was to be born that Holy Thing which should be called the Son of God (Luke i. 26-35). To confirm this promised miracle, he told her that her cousin Elisabeth, "in her old age," was also about to become a mother; "for with God nothing shall be impossible" (vers. 36, 37). Mary's answer shows a beautifully meek submission: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (ver. 38). Her next act, however, implies a character of prompt and daring energy: she "arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste," a distance of more than eighty miles, "into a city of Juda; and entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth" (vers. 39, 40). Receiving from her kinswoman convincing proof of the truth of all that she had heard (vers. 41-45), she sang her grateful praises in that New Testament Psalm which the Church will always prize as one of its most precious songs; and which, founded according to the letter on the hymn of Hannah at the birth of Samuel (1 Sam. ii. 1-10), exhibits a mind richly stored with a knowledge of Scripture, and a heart profoundly sensitive to the Divine goodness (vers. 46-55). After staying with her cousin for about three months Mary returned to her home at Nazareth. Here her condition aroused in her betrothed husband inevitable suspicions, until, being instructed of the facts by the angel of the Lord, he took her to his own house (Matt. i. 18-25). Shortly afterwards, in obedience to a decree of Augustus Cæsar levying a general tax, Joseph and Mary, for the purpose of enrolment in the official census, travelled about seventy miles to their paternal city of David, Bethlehem, where, according to prophecy (Mic. v. 2), the Lord was born, and there being no room in the inn, was laid in a lowly manger (Luke ii. 1-7). With its usual, reticence as to the details on which a merely human author would enlarge most fully, the Word of God relates nothing of the Virgin Mother's emotions at this fulfilment of her hopes. Respecting the vision of the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, it is simply stated-but with what measureless significance !-that "Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke ii. 8-19). Fruitful indeed in food for meditation were the events of that wondrous infancy! When offering for her purification the pair of turtle-doves (ver. 24), which, from poverty, she was allowed to substitute for the lambrequired from wealthier worshippers (Lev. xii. 8), what exultation would stir within her at the benedictions of the aged Simeon and Anna! what solemn awe at the venerable prophet's warning to herself, "Yea, a sword For shall pierce through thine own soul also!" (Luke ii. 25-38). But as yet the griefs of the Man of Sorrows (Isa. liii. 3) had not begun to wring His mother's tender heart. Rather would she rejoice at the accumulating proofs of Messiahship which clustered round His cradle. besides the Jewish witness of the shepherds and of Simeon and Anna, the same testimony was borne by representatives of whatever was most august and purest in the Gentile world. "Wise men from the East," Persian magi, among whom lingered traditional remnants of the most ancient religion and philosophy that had existed upon earth, led by a miraculous star, came to Jerusalem, seeking "the King of the Jews," and, passing unnoticed the royal court of Herod the Great, offered their worship, and laid their tribute of "gold and frankincense and myrrh," at the feet of Mary's infant son (Matt. ii. 1-11). Biblical critics and astronomers have toiled, with much ingenuity and labour, to explain the star which guided these pilgrims on their journey. Literally, it seems to connect itself with Balaam's prophecy: "There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel" (Numb. xxiv. 17); and it is quite possible that some memory of this and other predictions survived in the distant East, which was Balaam's own country (Numb. xxii. 5). No doubt, however, a star was mentioned in his prophecy, and was actually employed in connection with the Incarnation, because it symbolizes a knowledge of truth, and of Him who, being the Truth itself (John xiv. 6), is described as "the Bright and Morning Star" (Rev. xxii. 16). And the failure of attempts to account, on principles of natural science, for the star seen by the wise men, is most likely due to the probability that it was not a natural creation at all, but a spiritual phenomenon, a star of the spiritual firmament, perceived by the magi with the eyes of their spiritual bodies, and rightly interpreted by them, according to their traditional acquaintance with its representative significance, as a type of the exalted knowledge of which they were in quest. But the visit of the wise men, while gladdening Mary's heart with its magnificent testimony to the nature and mission of her Babe, occasioned also her first maternal anxiety. For Herod, enraged and alarmed at the thought of any king of the Jews besides himself, that he might destroy his supposed rival in earliest infancy, "sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under” (Matt. ii. 16). Warned by a dream, therefore, Joseph "took the young Child and His mother by night, and departed into Egypt" (vers. 13, 14), the boundary of which, according to the divisions of the Roman provinces existing at the time, lay distant from Bethlehem about sixty miles. There the family remained until the death of Herod a few months later; when Joseph, fearing lest Archelaus should complete the murderous project of his cruel father, removed his household from Judæa to Galilee, and fixed his home at Mary's former city of Nazareth (vers. 19-23). And now occurs an interval of nearly twelve years, the record of which is condensed into the brief but suggestive statement, "The Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him " (Luke ii. 40). Our natural affections are ready to lament the silence of Scripture upon themes so interesting as the Lord's infancy and childhood. We would gladly know more of the tender particulars. in which He must have shared so closely the experiences of our common humanity: especially should we rejoice to sympathize with Mary's loving wonder as the character of Jesus gradually unfolded, and gave earnest of fulfilling the |