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J

THE

STAR OF THE WISE MEN:

A COMMENTABY

ON THE SECOND CHAPTER OF ST. MATTHEW.

BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, B.D.,
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD;
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON J
AND LATE HTJLSEAN LECTURER.

PHILADELPHIA:
H. HOOKER.-S. W. COR, OF EIGHTH AND CHESTNUT STS.
1850.

WM. S. YOUNG, PRINTER.

STAR OF THE WISE MEN,

The Birth of the Lord of Glory on earth had its
corresponding sign in the heavens. The natural limits
of an essay which should undertake to treat of that
sign, and of the events most intimately linked with
its appearing, 'are those, as will easily be perceived, of
the second chapter of St. Matthew; all the incidents of
which hang in closest connexion on the coming of the
Magi, and accomplish themselves, (with the inclusion,
indeed, according to one arrangement, of the presenta
tion in the temple, Luke ii. 22 — 38,) in a perfect and.
independent cycle. The chapter is thus singularly com
plete in itself, finding the infant Saviour at Bethlehem,
and leaving him at Nazareth, and constituting, if we
may reverently apply the word, an episode in the life of
our blessed Lord.
This episode it is my purpose to consider, and to
do so with something of the fulness which an essay
devoted exclusively to it would alone permit. There

4 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. |j«ATT. II. 1 .
is much in it, besides the ease with which it detaches
itself from the context, to invite to this its sepa
rate treatment. With the exception of the histories of
the passion and the resurrection, which, it is evident,
must strike yet deeper chords in the hearts of the
faithful, being facts of our redemption even more
central still, there is perhaps no passage in our Lord's
life, which has laid a stronger grasp, or set a deeper
impress on the mind, and heart, and imagination of
Christendom. One of the chief festivals of the church
—the Epiphany— has here its motive; and, another,
although not so chief a one — that of the Holy Inno
cents — roots itself in the events recorded here. What
a witness have we for its hold on the popular affections
and imagination in the vast body of legendary lore
which has clustered round it; in the innumerable
medieval mysteries which turn on the flight into
Egypt, the massacre of the Innocents, or the coming
of the three kings ; and in all else of poetry and paint
ing which has found its suggestion here. And this
deep and manifold interest and delight in this portion
of Holy Scripture which others have felt, has very
probably been sufficiently explained to each one of us,
by the manner in which we ourselves have recurred to
it again and again, with an interest ever new, with a
wonder ever growing, as we have more and more per
ceived how deep the mysteries of our faith which are
here, in simplest historic guise, presented to us.
Nor may I omit, as a further inducement which I
found to this making of it the subject of a separate
treatment, the fact that the difficulties which it presents

MATT. II. 1.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 5
are neither few nor inconsiderable. There are difficul
ties in its chronology ; in the harmonizing of this por
tion of sacred history with the history of the same, or
nearly the same period, as given in St. Luke ; in the
use and application of Old Testament prophecies ; in the
language under which natural phenomena are spoken
of; and perhaps in some other matters, although these
are certainly the chief. But while it must freelj' be
allowed that there are such, yet, at the same time, I
have been as far as possible from desiring to give an
apologetic character to this essay. There is so great a
reverence owing to the truth of God, — a reverence
which should make us reluctant, without extremest ne
cessity, to a putting it on the defensive, — the language
of apology is one fraught with so many perils, there is
so great a danger lest many of our readers may first
learn from our defence that what We defend has ever
been assailed, and lest, seeking to confirm the faith of
others, we may indeed give a shock to theirs, that
by no Christian writer should this language be lightly
or needlessly adopted. Something of such a tone a
treatise must occasionally possess, which has to do
with a portion of Holy Scripture that eminently has
been, and perhaps shall be yet more, like that Lord,
the dignities and dangers of whose infancy it records,
" a sign spoken against." Yet I have earnestly desired
that, in this respect, I should, at any rate, not run before
the needs of my readers.
The impression which the opening words of this
chapter, " Now when Jesus was born," leave on us, as
we read them in the original, (and the impression is

6 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1 .
retained in our English translation,) certainly is, that
the visit of the wise men, which the Evangelist is ahout
to record, found place very shortly after the birth of
Christ, and that it is St. Matthew's intention to place
the two events in this nearest relation of time. The
words do not absolutely compel us to accept such
a conclusion, if there were prevailing arguments on the
other side, or if the , embarrassments were too great
which would follow on the reception of this view of the
matter; but they certainly strongly suggest that it was
so. With only this observation for the present, the
question of the chronology of the whole chapter may be
reserved for a later and a single diseussion, and the
more natural time for this will be when we reach the
flight into Egypt, for then all will lie before us which
has in this respect to be arranged.
Exactly from what region these wise men came,
whose homage signalized the Saviour's birth, we are
not told. The question has been often debated, but the
language ofthe Evangelist — "wise men from the east,"1
— is too indefinite, and perhaps intentionally too in-
' The av*.rtMi, with 'yXiov, either understood, as here, or expressed,
as Rev. xvi. 12, and continually with, and without, it in the LXX., as
Josh. xii. 1 — 3, has theiW^m. for its complement, Matt. viii. 11 ; Luke
xiii. 29. Olshausen's foo-jKO 5 nowhere occurs. The words rest on the
same thought as our Orient and Occident, as the Morgen and Abend-
land of the Germans. If, indeed, "east" is derived, as some suggest,
from the Gothic, ust-an, surgere, it too contains the same allusion.
Both words, when used in this sense, appear almost always in the
plural; of which the most probable explanation lies in the fact, that
men contemplated these quarters as those of the continually recurring
sunrises and sunsets.

MATT. II. l.Q THE STAR Oi1 THE WISE MEN. 7
definite to justify any decision. Chrysostom, with most
others, either affirm, or seem always to take for granted,
that it was Persia; no doubt because Persia was the
natural home and haunt of the Magian religion. Yet
others have multiplied many arguments in favour of
Arabia, as, for instance, its greater nearness — a consi
deration which would have its weight with those
who believed that the star did not precede, but accom
panied, the Lord's birth, and that this visit of theirs
was on the twelfth day after the Nativity, since they
could scarcely have arrived from any region very
remote. They have farther urged, that the offered gifts
were eminently, and one of them, (tlie frankincense,)
exclusively, the product of that land; (Ezek. xxvii. 2;)
that the word of prophecy had expressly designated
" kings of Arabia and Sheba," as those that should
bring their gifts, "and had named two of these very gifts,
to the King and the King's Son.1 (Ps. lxxii. 10, 15;
Isa. Ix. 6.)
But although "from the East" must be left in its
indefiniteness, yet the "wise men'" themselves are not
so vaguely designated in the original as by this appella
tion in our Version ; one which yet is not to be found
1 This is the view taken by Justin Martyr, (oi onto 'Aqu-JZio-s /Attyoi,)
by Tertulhan, Con. Marcion., 1. 3, c. 13, who speaking of Arabia:
Cujus tunc virtutem Christus accepit, accipiendo insignia ejus, aurum
et odores; by Grotius; and others. But Arabia is rather to the south
than the east, of Judea; so that the queen of Sheba is, on our Lord's
lips, "the queen of the south." (Matt. xii. 42.) Pliny, too, (H. N.
xii. 30,) and others were certainly in error, making the frankincense to
be exclusively the product of Arabia.

8 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1.
fault with, as it would not have been easy, if possible,
to substitute a better word in its stead. They are
Magi. Of these, (that is, of the Magi proper,) the ear
liest mention is in Herodotus. They were, as from
him we learn, a tribe of the Medes, uniting, as the
Levites among the Jews, and the Chaldaeans among
the Assyrians, a common family descent, and the exclu
sive possession of all sacerdotal and ecclesiastical func
tions — a priest-caste.1 As such, they were the sole
possessors of all science and knowledge, and not merely
exercised most decisive influence in all private matters,
as prophets, as interpreters of dreams, but in political
affairs as well. The education of the king was in their
hands ; they filled his court, composed his council ; and
although they had not the government so directly in
their hands as the Egyptian hierarchy, yet they exer
cised the strongest influence thereon. In all liturgic
matters they were supreme ; they interpreted the holy
books, and, which brings them into more immediate
relation with the matter directly in hand, they observed
the stars, and read in them the future destinies of men.
The name Magian, then, in this its first sense, was a name
of highest dignity and honour.
But as it travelled westward, as it detached itself
more and more from its original birth-place and its
native soil, as it came to be applied, not to the members

1 There is, I believe, jio doubt concerning the derivation of the name,
that it is from mag or mog,=-priest, in the old Pehlevi. (See Hyde, Ue
Rei. Vet Pers., p. 377, and Creuzer, Symbolik, v. i. p. 187.) This is
the consenting statement of Porphyry, Apuleius, and all the ancients.

MATT. 11. I.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 9
of this sacerdotal Median caste, but in a secondary
sense to all those who, like them, cultivated secret and
mysterious arts, read the heavens, and calculated nati
vities,1 it gradually ceased to be this title of honour
which once it had been; and, though still remaining
more or less such, when applied to those who bore it
first, grew to have quite annther meaning attached to it,
when used about others.3 It followed here the fortune
of so many other woids in all languages, which having
had at first a nobler signification, came afterwards to
be used in a worse3 — that is, the thing deteriorated,
and drew after it of necessity a degradation of 'the
word which represented it. Thus was it in the present
instance, We can indeed easily understand that
nowhere would such a degeneracy and deterioration lie
nearer than in these arts. How quickly, and yet by
what imperceptible degrees, would they slip over into
1 By the same law and progress of thought, Canaanite, in more
places than one in Scripture (Job xii. 6; Prov. xxxi. 24) has quite lost
its gentile signification, and is merely equivalent to "merchant," being
so translated in our -Version. We know, too, how at Rome all astro
logers were called Chaldarans.
a Thus Jerome (in Dan. ii.:) Consuetudo et sermo communis magos
pro maleficis accipit ; qui aliter habentur apud gentem suam, eo quod
sint philosophi ChaldaBorum ; et ad artis hujus scientiam reges quoque
et principes ejusdem genu's omnia faciunt,
8 Thus xvqanoq, o-op/orijs, mathematicus, latro, brigand, Pfaffe,
villain. One example for many of the word in its more dishonourable
use the CEdipus Tyrannus supplies. The king addresses Teiresias the
prophet, whom he suspects Creon to have suborned with money, as —
ftayov . . . /Arjxiiv'ffaipov, AoMor a.yvexrip:
where Ellendt, on the word tix-yw, observes, Convicii instar est.

10 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. QttATT. II. 1.
fraud, trickery, and imposture, especially when they
ceased to be exercised by a responsible guide, but by
every man upon his own account.
Seeing that the word " Magian" is thus a middle term,
and of twofold use,1 the question has often presented
1 The wish which has been sometimes expressed, that our translators
had rendered throughout the same Greek word by the same English,
(and of course, where practicable, words different in the original by
different in the translation,) is shown, by the single example of this
word, to be one with which it would have been impossible entirely to
comply. Doubtless, if their attention had been more directed to this
point, they might have done, and it would have been to advantage in
many ways if they had done, more in this respect than actually they
have. In the occasional needless, and sometimes in their degree inju
rious, inconsistencies, which it would be idle to deny, we have probably
a consequence of the many minds and pens that were engaged in the
translation; though in the minute details it is difficult enough for even
the same person to be always consistent with himself; otherwise we
should scarcely have had Timothy and Timotheus, an English and a
LatffT form in one and the same chapter. (2 Cor. i. 1, 19.) But
acknowledging, as we must, such perfect consistency not to be very
easy of attainment, we may yet express our regret that distinctions such
as certainly exist, — for example, between ^gov/^os and 0-0905, xwrvtjt
and w;irTJ7s, try fitter and T«5a,r,and which might have been so easily
preserved, should yet have been in great part obliterated for the English
reader, as any one following up the matter with a Greek and an English
Concordance will find that they have. At the same time, this rule of
rendering the same word by the same cannot be of universal observance ;
inasmuch as oftentimes a word in one language will cover a much lar
ger space, will fill a far wider sphere of meaning, than any of its partial
equivalents in another. Thus, as Freund asks, what one German,
and we may equally ^ay, what one English, word would embrace all
the uses of the Latin cano? Or a word in one language may have a
duplicity of meaning, which no equivalent in another possesses; may
be able rapidly to change its front, to present itself now in a good sense,

MATT. II. 1.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 11
itself^ In which sense does St. Matthew use it? Is
the title given to these visiters of the cradle of the
infant Lord in its first and more honourable, or in its
second and ignobler, sense. Calling them Magi, does
the Evangelist mean to urge their wisdom, or their
magic 1 and is their coming a testimony and a foretaste
of the manner in which all the highest wisdom of this
world comes and does homage to Him, " who of God is
made unto us wisdom," "in whom are hidden all trea
sures of wisdom or knowledge ?" or is it a renouncing
of wicked arts in the person of the chief adepts thereof,
a parallel to that later burning of their magical books
on the part of the Ephesian converts, (Acts xix. 19,)
a manifest token of the dissolution of all sorceries and
charms before the simplicity of the Gospel ; and, more
generally, a preluding to the calling of great sinners,
the Matthews, the Zaccha?uses, and the like, to the know
ledge of Christ ?
In this last sense it has been understood by many;1
now in a bad, as none in another language can do. This is the case in
the present instance; and, being so, there was no choice but to render
fcayot here and at Acts xiii. 6, 8, by different words. Any word which
would have been appropriate here, would have been inappropriate there,
and vice versa.
1 Thus Ignatius (ad Ephes., u. 19) speaks of that Star as one o6ev
sXusto Ttittra (jc.tt.yna xxi war S£o-/.toc yqavitsTo xaKt*e, x. t. X. Cf. Ter
tullian, De Idololat, c. 9; Hilary, De Trin., 1. 4, § 38; and Origen,
Con. Cels., 1. 1, c. 60, who supposes that they guessed, from the failing
of their spells, that a mightier than the evil spirits whom they served
was bom. And Augustine, in a sermon for Epiphany, (Serm. 200:)
Manifestable est [Dominus] in ipsis cunabulis infantiaB suae his qui
prope, et his qui Ionge, erant; Judffiis in pastorum propinquitate, genti-

12 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1.
and they can urge that, so far as New Testament
usage may have weight, wherever else it or its deriva
tives are there used, they are used only in a bad sense^
and to express sorcerers and sorceries. (Acts viii. 9, 11 ;
xiii. 6, 8.) Yet, considering the tendencies of this
part of St. Matthew's narrative, and that he records
this advent of theirs evidently as one of the gleams of
glory which gild the lowly cradle of the new-born King;1
seeing, too, that they are expressly called wise men
"from the east," such as, in other words, belonged to
bus in magorum lpnginquitate. Illi ipso die quo natus est, isti ad eum
hodie advenisse creduntur: manifestatus ergo est nee illis doctis, nee
istis justis. Prsevalet namque imperiria in rusticitate pastorum, et im-
pietas in sacrilegiis magorum. Utrosque sibi lapis angularis applicuit,
quippe qui venit stulta mundi eligcre ut confunderent sapient.es, ct non
vocare justos sed peccatores, ut nullus magnus superbiret, nultus infi-
mus desperaret. Such, too, was a common view in the middle ages.
Thus Abelard (in Epiph. Dom., Sterm. 4 :) Bene magi primitias genti
um ad fidem primo tracti fuerunt,'ut qui maxime erroris tenuerant ma-
gisterium, ipsi post modum etiam suce conversipnis exemplo fidei face-
rent documentum. . . . Quis enim magos intantum detestandosesse
ignoret, ut non solum ipsos, sed etiam quemlibet ad eos declinantem, lex
interfici jubeaf! Aquinas in like manner (Sum Theol., pars 3% qu. 36,
art. 3:) Manifestatus est justis, Simeoni et Anns; et peccatoribus,
scilicet magis. Crashaw's fine hymn on the Epiphany rests throughout
on this supposition.
1 Bengel says very beautifully, on the angelic annunciation of the
Saviour's birth, (Luke ii. 9,) and the remark holds good also here,
though there it has a yet greater fitness: "In omni humiliatione Christi,
per decoram quandam protestationem cautum est glorias ejus divinse.
Hoc loco, per preeconium angeli; in circumcisione, per nomen Jesu;
in purificatipne, per testimonium Simeonis j in baptismo, per exceptio-
nem Baptists; in passione, modis Ionge plurimis." He might have
added Matt, xvii. 27.

MATT. II. 1.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 13
the original and nobler stock of the Magi, and not to
the later and degenerate off-sets, I cannot doubt that
the other is a truer view of his intention in giving to
these visiters exactly this appellation which he does.
"A greater than Solomon" was here; and these come,
not, indeed, " to hear his wisdom," as other ambassa
dors of the heathen world had come to hear the wisdom
of Solomon, (1 Kin. x. 2, 3, 24 ; 2 Chron. ix. 23 ;) not
this, for He, the Word, lay as yet without a word on his
mother's breast ; but still to acknowledge that He was
the very wisdom of God. St. Matthew would set forth
to us in them the highest human wisdom doing homage
to the wisdom of God; refusing to walk in sparks, of
its own kindling, when in his light it could see light;
but^ not so far as this word goes, confessing its own
perversity, nor any forbidden ways in which it had
been hitherto walking; and our translators have done
wisely and well, as South remarks, in the word which
they have selected, and in abstaining from using in this
place any term which would have involved reproach.
They, indeed, did but follow in this the earlier English
versions, Tyndal, Cranmer, and the Geneva, which
equally have "wise men;" (the Rhemish has "sages;")
though at Acts xiii. 6, 8, our version has rightly trans
lated the same word by " sorcerer."1
1 The word occurs four times in Theodotion's version of Daniel, (i.
20 ; ii. 2, 27; iv. 4,) and certainly with no dishonourable meaning at
tached to it. Comparing Dan. iv. 4 with the preceding verse, we see
that the t^ttym (=d,cb>n) were one division of the rcqoi. It is used
by Aquila (1 Sam. xxviii. 8, 9 ; Isai.xxix.4) as =nuif<; andbySym-
machus (Gen. xii. 8,) as = D'DBin = uroypz(*./*ttTii;.

14 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1.
The wise men, ftien, were not the professors of an
evil magic : but, on the other hand, we have as little
ground to account them kings, as the Romish church
has made it almost an article of faith that they were.
Maldonatus, who shows often a hardly suppressed
contempt for the untenable traditions of His own
church, yet here storms against some heretical inter
preters, who refused them this dignity; although he
himself ends with confessing that it is only a probable
opinion, and that by kings he means, not so much
rulers of empires as sheiks or emirs, ireguli, and not
reges. Doubtless at a very early date it began to be
usual to attribute to them these royal honours. The
passages that mainly contributed thereto, and that
served as the chief support for this opinion, were
Isai. Ix. 3: "And the Gentiles shaUcome to thy light,
and kings to the 'brightness" of thy rising," in combi
nation with Ps. lxxii. 10, 11: "The kings of Tar-
shish and of the isles shall bring presents; the kings of
Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall
fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him."
Thus Tertullian twice quotes this last passage, as
having its perfect fulfilment in the adoration of Christ
by these wise men from the east;1 while Hilary2 also
* Adv. Jud., c. 9; Con: Marcion., 1. 3, c. 13; with this explanation:
Nam et magos reges fere habuit Oriens.
* De Trin., 1. 4, § 38. Another Scripture of which he makes in
genious adaptation to this coming of the Magi, and which he finds ful
filled therein, is Isai. xiv. 14. "The labour of Egypt'' is the idolatry
which they renounced ; « the merchandise of Ethiopia ahd the Sabaa-
ans," the gifts which they offered.

MATT. II. l.J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 15
calls them princes, and quotes this last passage, without
apparently any doubt that it, as so many more, found
now its fulfilment. It needs not to observe how uni
versally this belief prevailed in the middle ages, so that
it gave to Epiphany one of the titles by which it was
most commonly designated, namely, the Feast of the
Three Kings, — nor how Christian art, poetry and paint
ing alike, were, and in part are still, penetrated with
it, — nor yet how innumerable are the legends which turn
on the kingly dignity of these august visiters.1
But not only was it made almost into an article of
faith that they were kings, but also their number,
about" which St. Matthew is silent, was determined.
In the Eastern Church, indeed, though chiefly among
the Nestorians, they were sometimes said to be twelve ;
but three was far more predominantly esteemed their
number. By and by their very names were known
— Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar f I believe Bede
is the first who acquaints us with these : and they were
considered severally to represent the three groups of
mankind; Melehior representing the family of Shem,

1 Festum trium regum, principum, dynastarum ; so in the Christian
hymn: Reges de Saba, veniunt,
Aurum, thus, myrrham offer uni:
And again : Natus est Rex glorise.
Ad quern reges ambulabant,
Aurum, myrrham, thus portabant.
* Yet 'these are not the only names they have borne ; for others see
Hebenstreit, De Magorum Nomine, Patria, et Statu Dissert., Jenae,
1709.

16 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1,
Gaspar of Ham, (generally, therefore, portrayed, in
Christian art, with the dark hues of a Moor or Ethio
pian,) and Balthazar of Japhet. I think it probable
that this contemplating of them as representatives of the
three races was rather an after-thought; and the more
immediate inducement to the counting them three, lay in
the threefold gifts which they offered.1
The relation is a very interesting one in which these
Magi of St. Matthew stand to the shepherds of St.
Luke, (ii. 8—18.) They may in many aspects be co
ordinated with one another ; for if those shepherds are
the first fruits of the Jewish nation doing homage to
their own King, exactly so are these wise men the first
fruits of the heathen world2 doing homage to that
King, who, in that He was " King of the Jews," was also
their King and the King of all. Their coming, and that
of the shepherds, to the same point, and to the same pre
sence, was the prophecy, with, indeed, its commencing
fulfilment, of Gentile and Jew, of them who were far
off and them who were near, that should meet in Christ,
as in the one corner-stone ; in whom both were one, in
whom they should lay aside their, oppositions and en
mities, and be knit as into a single body and building.
Here was already the pledge of the mystery whereof the

1 So Leo the Great, de Epiph., Serm. 1 . 4 — 7; and Abelard (Serm.
in Epiph., p. 771 :) Quot vero isti magi fuerint, ex numero trinte obla-
tionis ties eos fuisse multi suspicantur.
2 Aquinas (Summ. Theol., iii. 36, 8:) In magis apparuit sicut in
quodam prsesagio fides et devotio gentium veuientium a remotis ad
Christum.

MATT. II. 1-J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 17
apostle of the Gentiles afterwards more fully spoke.
(Ephes. ii. 17.1)
Nor is it uninstructive to compare the guidance by
which they and the shepherds, respectively, are brought
to the presence of the new-born King. The shepherds,
as of Jewish extraction, are guided by an angel ; but
the wise men, as Gentiles, by a star — those by revela
tion, which was familiar to them ; these by nature, with
the aspects of which they were familiar; but thus, whe
ther by an angel or a star, in either case the words of
the Psalmist were fulfilled, and "the heavens declared
the glory of God."a There was a fitness, too, in the
' A fanciful application was often made in the early Church of the
prophecy of Isai. i. 3. The Jew and Gentile who recognised the dignity
ofthe occupant of that manger, were severally the ox and the ass, that
know their owner and their master's crib. Thus Augustine (Serm.
375 :) In eis ccepit bos agnoscere possessorem suum, et asinus praesepe
domini sui_ . . . Bos de Judseis, asinus de gentibus : ambo ad unum
praesepe venerunt, et verbi cibaria invenerunt. So, too, the words of
the Christmas hymn, Cognovit bos et asinus
Quod puer erat Dominus,
make probably allusion to this, as well as to the legend that the dumb
animals did obeisance to, and after their fashion worshipped, the infant
Lord. ' Gregory the Great (Horn. 10 in Evang.:) Qufflrendum nobis est,
quidnam sit qudd, Redemptore nam, pastoribus in Judasa angelus ap-
paruit, et ad adorandum hunc ab oriente magos non angelus sed Stella per-
duxit? Quia videlicet Judaeis tanquam ratione utentibus, rationale
animal, id est angelus, prsedicare debuit: Gentiles vero, quia uti ratione
nesciebant, ad cognoscendum Dominum non per vocem, sed per signa
perducuntur. Unde etiam per Paulum dicitur: Prophetiae fidelibus
datoe sunt, noiwnfidelibus ; signa autem infidelibus, non fidelibus.
2

18 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1.
fact of the shepherds, who were the representatives of
the Jews, of them therefore that were near, .making
their appearance on the very day of the Nativity, while
the wise men, who, like the whole Gentile world, came
from afar, certainly did not appear till a much later day
-^how much later we may presently inquire.'
Nor should we fail to observe, that while there
would have been a certain fitness in the use of any
natural helps, whereby to beckon and invite these
children of nature into -the7 kingdom of grace, yet was
there an especial fitness in this one which it pleased
God to use; for these watchers of the heavens a star;
and if we are to suppose that the foolishness of astro
logy mingled itself with their speculations, this would
only be anothei proof ol that grace of God, whereby
He uses oftentimes even men's errors to deliver them
out of error into the kingdom of the truth. On the
star for the star-gazers, and 6n the other similar dealings
of God's grace, Donne has beautifully said : " God
speaks in such forms and such phrases as may most
work upon them to whom He speaks. Of David, that
was a shepherd before, God says He took him to feed
his people, To those Magi of the East who were given
to the study of the stars, God gave a Star to be their

1 Thus Augustine in a sermon on Epiphany (Serm. 204:) Quia
ergo Pax venerat eis qui erant longe, et Pax eis qui erant prope, pas-
tores Israelitas tanquam prope inventi, eo die quo natus est Christus, ad
eum venerunt, viderunt et exsultaverunt : Magi autem Gentiles, tan
quam longe inventi, tot diebus interpositis ab illo quo natus est,, hodie
pervenerunt, invenerunt, adoraverunt. <$

MATT. II. l.J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 19
guide to Christ at Bethlehem. To those who followed
him to Capernaum for meat, Christ took occasion by that
to preach to them of the spiritual food of their souls.
To the Samaritan woman whom he found at the well,
he preached of the water of life. Beloved, Christ puts
no man out of his way, (for sinful courses are no ways,
but continual deviations,) to go to heaven. Christ
makes heaven all things to all men, that he might gain
all." The remarkable symmetry which the two comings,
that of the shepherds and the Magi, contemplated in
this relation to one another, present — the manner in
which they serve mutually as the complement each of
the other, would of itself render suspicious any inter
pretation of the last, by which these harmonies and
this symmetry would be disturbed or lost. There is,
however, such a theory about it : for there have been,
at different times, those who have seen in these Magi
the representatives, not of the Gentiles, but of the ten
tribes. But not to urge that the entire traditional
interpretation of the Church is against this view, nor
yet that this visit of theirs is thus robbed in great
part of that deeper significance which now it has, this
scheme proceeds on the assumption, that the distinc
tion between the ten tribes and the two survived the
exile, — that the former still enjoyed a separate corporate
existence; whereas all evidence goes to prove that, in
the exile, the distinction, which had been mainly poli
tical, and of which, as being such, the motives existed
no longer, was broken down. In their common distress,
they and the two tribes returned, as far as it was then

20 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. TJWATT. II. 1 .
possible, into national and ecclesiastical fellowship with
one another ; and although, when permission to return
into their own land" was jgiven, it naturally befell that
many more of Judah and ''Benjamin and Levi availed
themselves of it than of those carried away more than
a century before them, yet to these there attached
themselves not a few out of the ten tribes. The per
mission is explicitly to all the nation; (Ezra i. 3.)
Those who return contemplate themselves as repre
senting, not a section of the nation, but the whole;
they "offered for a sin-offering for all Israel twelve
he-goats." (Ezra vi. 17; viii. 35.) St. Paul speaks of
the nation existing in his day as "our twelve tribes ;"
(Acts xxvi. 7;) and the word expresses yet more
strongly in the original the unbroken unity ofthe
twelve.1 St. James also, addressing himself to such
portions of the nation as dwelt beyond the limits of the
Holy Land, does not assume that the ten tribes had
disappeared beyond the range of vision, and had been
altogether lost sight of, or that they stood on any dif
ferent footing from the two, but embraces all alike in a
common salutation, which is addressed " to the twelve
tribes in dispersion." (i. 1.)
If, against this evidence, any should yet affirm that
the ten tribes maintained a separate existence, and had
not reunited with their brethren, in this case the ap
pellation " King of the Jews," under which these visiters
ask for the new-born Child, would of itself be quite de-

1 To SuSnaftiwi 'ljftmv = to iaSixaaxiriirqttv tou 'Irjaijx, Clem.
Rom., Ep. I.e. 31,

MATT. II. I.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 21
cisive that they were not delegates from them. Ambas
sadors of theirs would never have given the question at
issue between themselves and the two tribes so altogether
against themselves as in this question it is done ; or,
at least, would certainly have never asked for the new
born King in language which implied that He did not
belong by nearest right to themselves as well as to the
Jews.1 They would have asked for him as "King of
Israel,'" which they would have known was at once the
theocratic name, (John i. 50 ; xii. 13 ;) and that which
included all members of the ^a^ix.a<pvXt,t as having
their equal share in Him; and not as " King of the
Jews,'' thus bringing forward a single tribe, and that
the rival one, as though it represented and embraced
the whole nation. The question as it now stands, the
title, " King of the Jews," most natural on the lips
of a Gentile, who would take the nation as he ac
tually found it, and with very slightest knowledge of
its antecedent history, (thus see Matt, xxvii. 11,29,
37, and compare ver. 42 of the same chapter,) would
have been quite unsuitable in the mouth of any actual
member of the nation : least of all would it have been
used by them whom the very name, so far as it went,
excluded from having part and lot in this King. To
have used it would have involved the same contra-

1 It needs not to observe that 'Uvittim (=Dlliv) was a name de
rived from lnvSas, the patriarch Judah; see Josephus, Antt., xi. 5, 4 ;
who is not, however, quite correct in saying that it first sprung up after
the return from Babylon ; rather it seems to have come into use, and
would naturally have done so, after the carrying away of the ten tribes
into captivity. (Jen xxxii. 12; xxxiv. 9; xxxviii. 19; xl. 11 ; xtiii.9.)

22 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. 11. 2.
diction, the same denial on their jpart of their own
position, as would our giving to Romanists the title of
Catholics. Thus much in regard of these Magi, who and what they
were. No doubt when they came to Jerusalem, saying
"Where is He that is born King of the Jews?" they had
taken for granted' that the royal Child would have been
born in the royal city, and that they should find Him there.
For not as yet was revealed to them that mysterious
law which, running through all events of the kingdom
of God, repeated itself in this— that law, according to
which the weak things of the world are ever chosen to
confound the things that are mighty ,-^lowly Bethlehem
before haughty Jerusalem, — even as this little planet of
ours before far vaster worlds, as the sphere in which the
great mystery of redemption should be accomplished.
Jerusalem indeed shall have the guilt of the Lord's
death, but Bethlehem the glory of his birth. And as
they looked to find him in the royal city, so, it would
seem, as well in the royal palace. There, probably,
their first inquiries were made; and thus it may have
come to pass that the tidings of their coming, and of
the question with which they came, so quickly reached
the ears of the usurper that now sat upon David's
throne. But on what grounds do they rest their confident
expectation that this King was born ? " For we have
seen his Star in the Fast." That the great events of
this world were not without their corresponding appear
ances in the heavenly world, appearances which mani
fested themselves especially in the stars, was a wide-

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 23
spread conviction of antiquity, which possessed its
truth, however often it may have been drawn down
into the service of superstition and error. In the
life of the Redeemer the presentiment which found its
utterance in this belief, won first its full reality and
truth. Its partial truth it already had : for we cannot
set to the account of accident or imagination all those
remarkable coincidences between heaven and earth, all
those testimonies which the signs and tokens of heaven
have so often yielded, and men taken note of, that the
great of this world do not come or go without warning.
This, indeed, is but one aspect of that sympathy, so
deep and so earnest, which we may trace as every where
existing between nature and man. The former is not
to the latter as a dead horse under a living rider, but
one thought, one life, one purpose, proceeding indeed
from the higher to the lower, animates them both. At
no time does nature put on a careless, unmeaning
face, when aught that intimately concerns her foster-
child man is being done, nor make as though this was
nothing unto her. On the contrary, her history runs
parallel, and is subordinate, to his, — the great moments in
the life of nature concurring with the great moments
in the life of man, and therefore most of all with the
great crises of the kingdom of God, which concerns him
the nearest of all. Thus, during all those hours that
the Son of God fiung upon the cross, there was dark
ness over the whole earth; nature shuddered to her
very centre, at the moment when he expired -r (Matt.
xxvii. 45, 51, 52;) for it was her King, as well as
man's, that died. And not otherwise we conclude

24 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [JHATT. II. 2.
that the coming of the Son of Man to judgment will
be coincident and connected with a great organic
transformation of this natural world on which we live.
Its hidden fires shall break forth ; it shall be no longer
a fit dwelling-place for man as he now is: the natural
and the spiritual iEon shall have come simultaneously to
their close.
But this subordination of natural to spiritual epochs,
these tokens of nature's sympathy with man, are
not limited, any more than are his destinies, merely to
the planet which he actually inhabits. The great
shaking of the nations, the fear and the perplexity1
which shall go before that day of Christ's second
coming, shall be accompanied with like signs of dis
tress in the heavenly World ; " The powers," not of
earth only, but "of the heavens shall be shaken;"
(Matt. xxiv. .29;) there shall be some great perturba
tion and derangement of the fixed laws by which the
celestial bodies have hitherto been holden each in its
appointed orbit and place. Every where in that
planetary system of which this earth is the heart and
moral centre, there shall be troubled echoes of the
great discords of humanity. The sickness of fear
which overspreads the faces of men shall spread dark
ness also over the lights of heaven. (Matt. xxiv. 29;
cf. Isai. xiii. 9, 10; xxiv. 20,^3; xxxiv. 4; Ezek.
xxxii. 7, 8; Joel ii. 30,31 ; Hag. ii. 7.) And as then
it will be in the heaven, so already has it been, — though
indeed with a difference. For if these distressful signs
in the firmament of our heaven shall be fit prognostics
of " the great and terrible day of the Lord," it be-

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 25
seemed Him with quite another sign to fore-announce
that other coming, which should be only with glad
tidings of great joy to all people. That new thing
upon earth was more fitly fore-announced by the calm
and silent splendour of a new Star in the heaven — a
Star, as we may well believe, larger, lovelier, and
brighter than any of the hosts of heaven; even as He of
whom it told was so far fairer than all the angels of God
from whom, or children of men to whom, He came.
This very symbol of the star, which had its partial
fitness when regarded as the herald of any great and
glorious birth among men, how entire a fitness did it
now possess, shining out in the heaven as heaven's
natural evangelist of the highest and holiest birth in
time. Himself " the bright and morning Star," (Rev.
xxii. 16; cf. ii. 28,) He found in this symbol that which,
better than any other among the works of his own
hands, was adapted to set forth, however weakly even
it could do it, his unsullied purity', his transcendent
brightness,1 his infinite exaltation above all the tumults

1 We have many allusions to the surpassing brightness of this Star.
Thus Ignatius (Ad Ephes. c 19;) nwc cm itpxverjaSii [o Kvpios] rmg
aiiaaij 'Ao-rijq tv ovpttva eka/Aiptv virep Ttavrcts rove atrrtqat, xect to
yois avrov avtv.\aX-qTov til, *at ^evio-ftov 7rat.pu%w rj xaLivortjg avrov.
Ta de Xoina 7ravrtt aa-rox, ttpa. tj\ioo xat asxtjvrj c^opof sverero tw
ttdjtqr avtos & ijr ua-ep|?«?,xcuy Tw <?»; avrov vneq natra. In the choir
which the sun and moon and stars form around this brightest one, we have
a manifest blending of elements drawn from Joseph's dream (Gen. xxxvii.
9) with the narration of the Evangelist; perhaps an unconscious re
miniscence of that on the part of Ignatius. Thus, too, in the apocry
phal Protcvangelium Jacobi,\ 21, the Magians reply to Herod:

26 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. QMATT. II. 2.
and confusions of this earth of ours. For, to quote the
words of South: " There are spots (they say) not .in the
moon only, but also in the face of the sun itself: but
this Star was of a greater and more unblemished lustre;.
for not the least spot was ever discovered in it, though
malice and envy itself were the perspectives through
which most of the world beheld it. And as it is the
privilege of the celestial luminaries to receive no tinc
ture, suillage, or defilement from the most noisome
sinks and dung-hills here below, but to maintain a
pure, untainted, virgin light, in spite of all their ex
halations ; so our Saviour„shined in the world with such
an invincible light of holiness, as suffered nothing ofthe
corrupt manners and depraved converse of men to rub
the least filth or pollution upon Him."1
TZifoptv Uo-rtQa 7ia/*f*eyt(lii, Xitfixjjavra ev tois aarpois rovrots xai
a/iSXutovra avrov? tou tfanav. (Thilo, Codex Jlpocryphus, p. 257;
see also p. 390.) And Prudentius, in his noble twelfth Cathemerinon :
Hsec stella, qua; solis rotam
Vincit decore ac lumine,
Venisse terris nunciat
Cum came terrestri Deum.
En Persici ex orbis sinu,
Sol unde sumit januam,
Cernunt periti interpretes
Regale vexillu m magi :
Quod ut refulsit, ceteri
Cessere signorum globi,
Nee pulcher est ausus suam
Conferre formam lucifer.
1 From thejexquisitely beautiful conclusion of a sermon on this text:
"I am the Root and Offspring of David, and the bright and morning
Star."-South's Sermons, 1727, v. 3, p. 281—292.

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 27
That men should have anticipated this symbol, and
snatched at it before, is nothing strange. If they had
not so done, this would have been almost of itself an
argument that it did not possess that highest fitness
which indeed it does. Coming as did the Son of God
in the end of time, it lay in the necessity of things that
these signs and symbols, with indeed much that lay
yet nearer to the heart of the truth, should have been
in a measure pre-occupied by others, that what was
truly given in Him — the glory which, in all its fulness,
arrayed his person, and centred in it — should have
been in some small measure actually lent, or should
have been imagined to have been lent, to others that
went before Him.1 Thus to take but a single, yet an
illustrious example. The heathen religions boasted of
their virgin-born, as of Buddha and Zoroaster, as of
Pythagoras and Plato. It much concerns us to deter
mine in what relation and connexion we will put their
legend and our history ; whether we will use the truth
to show that the falsehood was not all falsehood, and
for the detecting the golden grains of a true anticipa-
1 Wetstein (in be.) has a rich collection of passages gathered from
the heathen antiquity, which put the appearance of a star, comet, or
other celestial phenomenon, in relation with the birth of some illustri
ous personage. One may suffice (Justin Hist, 37, 2 :) Hujus [Mith-
ridatis] futuram magnitudinem etiam ccelestia ostenta prsedixerant.
Nam eo quo genitus est anno, et quo regnare primum csepit, stella
cometes per utrumque tempus LXX. diebus ita luxit, ut ccelum omne
conflagrare videretur. — The star which was believed to have announced
Julius Caesar's heavenly birth, his adoption among the gods, is well
known. (Suetonius, Cajsar, 88; Virgil, Eel., 9. 47; Pliny, H. N, 1.
2, c. 23.)

28 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 2.
tion which lay concealed amid all its dross ; or whether
we will suffer the falsehoods to cast a slight and sus
picion Upon the truth, as though that was but the
crowning falsehood of them all. In the present position
of the controversy with infidelity we cannot, let these
parallels alone if we would, — even if we were willing to
forego the precious witness for the glory and truth of
the Christian Faith which they contain. We cannot
ignore them; if they are not for us, they will be used
against us. But they are for us; since we may justly
ask, — and it is no playing with imperfect analogies, for
the question may be' transferred from tbe natural to the
spiritual world, — Are the parhelia, however numerous,
to be. accepted as evidence that all is optical illusion,
that there is no such true body of light as the sun after
all ; or rather, does not the very fact of their delusively
painting the horizon, tell of and announce a sun, which
is surely travelling up from behind?
In the present case, this Star I conceive, as so many
ancients1 and moderns have done, to have been a new
star* in the heavens. Such would most fitly have

1 Thus Eusebius (Demonst. Evang., 1. 8:) Sim xat ov ovvrfitig
ovSs tiov noXXaV xttt yvioqifcwv n;, aXla Tis xstiros xai vio; ao-Tijo
enKpmus t» pia> trri/aiov 'iwov *w<ttijooS t&tjXov xctraKafi.ll/a.troe rt»
navrixoo-fiaijOS rjv 6 Xpttrrot rov 0tov, ftiyac xat not ao-Ti$, ov rt\i
uxova trvppoXixas o <fovei; tot« roisftttyou snetptpsro. And Augustine
(Con. Faust, 1. 2, c. 5 :) Novo Virginis partu novum sidus apparuit :
non ex ilKs erat hsec stellis, quse ab initio creaturae itinerum suorum or-
dinem sub creatoris lege custodiunt. Cf. Ambrose, Exp. in Luc., 1. 2,
<.-. 48; Origen, Con. Cels,l. 1, c. 58.
3 Some, as is well known, have supposed it to have been, not so

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 29
announced a new thing, that a virgin should conceive,
that God should be with us. And I cannot but think
that the language of the wise men implies as much,
whose attention certainly no other signal in the heaven
would have been at all so well fitted to arouse. It
would be no sufficient objection, even if it could be
clearly shown that the appearance of such new stars was
altogether unheard of, and without precedent. For
that which this Star announced was new, and without
precedent as well. But it is, in fact, very far from so
being. Not only does there manifest itself a tendency
in the more luminous nebulae of the starry heaven, as
Herschel has so gloriously described, to consolidate
and mass themselves into spheres, such as should take
their place by entire right among the heavenly bodies ;
not only are there even now stars thus in process of

much a single star, as a constellation. But certainly the word with
which it is designated by St. Matthew lends no support to this view, but
rather excludes it Throughout the chapter it is botijo, and not arrqov.
These words differ from one another in the same way as steila and sidus
(=»iiot,) in Latin ; Stern and Gestrin, in German ; star and con
stellation, in English; the first being one of the single luminaries of
the sky, the second, like Orion or the Pleiades, a group or complex of
stars. The further distinction which exists in the Latin between steila
and astrum, that Stella is one of the common multitude of the heavenly
host, astrum one of its brighter luminaries, come not here into account.
But while cwrijo and atrrqov, steila and sidus, may be thus distin
guished, it must at the same time be acknowledged that, even by the
best writers, alike in Greek and in Latin, the distinction is often ne
glected, although much oftener in making ao-Tqov and sidus to stand for
some single star than the converse. (Doderlein's Synonyme, v, 4, p.
409.)

30 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. £MATT. II. 2.
formation, but we possess authentic records of the
sudden appearance of such stars, and those of the very
first magnitude, shining out with a brightness and
brilliancy almost unknown to the habitual denizens of
the sky— stars which, after a longer or shorter period,
have again gradually gone out, or suddenly left their
•places ; so that no trace has ever been discovered of them
since. More than once such stars have excited no
small amount of attention and admiration.1 Among
the more illustrious in modern times is the star called
Tycho Brahe's, he having first given an astronomical
report about it. Nor will it, I think, be without
interest, nor alien to the matter in hand, to offer here
a few notices of this stranger in the heaven, the stages
of whose brief, and, at first, so glorious existence, have
found more than one careful chronicler.3 It shone out
suddenly in Cassiopeia on the night of Nov. 11, 1572.
At the beginning it surpassed in apparent size all the
fixed stars, even those of the first magnitude, and thus
even Sirius and the Lyre. Indeed, it somewhat ex
ceeded even the planet Jupiter, which was then ap
proaching the earth, and larger than usual, so that it
came very near to the splendour of Venus, when nearest
to the earth, and at its fullest and brightest. For a season,
almost through the whole of November, it retained, well
nigh without diminution, this, its majestic fulness of light,

1 This had not missed the attention of the ancient astronomers.
Thus Pliny (H. N., 1. 2. c. 22:) In ipso ccelo stellee repente nascuntur.
• Von Littrow, Die Wunder der Himmels, p. 227; Pfaff, Der
Mensch und die Sterne.

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 31
so that it was distinctly seen by many whose vision was
acute, in the day-time even at mid-day itself — which, with
the exception of Venus, is the case with no other star ;
and in the night-time, if the clouds were not too thick, it
shone through them, while the other stars remained
obscured. Yet this superiority of size it did not retain'
through its whole duration ; but by gradual defect it be
came smaller, till it vanished altogether. And in the
same manner as in the course of its existence it changed
its visible bulk by a progressive diminution ; even so it
did not throughout display the same innate complexion
of light which it showed at its birth. At the begin
ning, while in magnitude it rivalled Venus and Jupiter,
its light was white, clear-shining, of a mild and gracious
aspect, like that of these two beneficent planets. After
wards, this splendid appearance was altered through a
certain yellowish tinge, until, early in the spring of 1573,
it degenerated into a red, like that of Mars or Aldebaran.
Toward the end of the spring, and notably in May,
it assumed a gray colour, running into a leaden blue,
such as shows itself in Saturn. This colour it retained
almost to the last, only that ever as it approached its
end, the light it gave was duller, dimmer, and more
troubled. In its twinkling it did not resemble the
planets ; it had this in common with the fixed stars. It
finally seemed to go out in March, 1574, sixteen months
after it was first seen ; nor have there been any the
slightest traces of it discovered since.
Keppler's star, which appeared thirty-two years
later, in 1604, excited perhaps even more attention,
from its magnitude, the remarkable character as well

32 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 2.
as brilliancy of its light, the period of its appearing,
and the significant position among the chiefest planets
which it occupied in the heavens. These last circum
stances were the occasion of some deeply interesting
speculations on the part of Keppler, the great astro
nomer, who bestowed on this star peculiar attention,
and published two or three works in regard of it.
He observed that its appearance occurred simul
taneously with, and in the immediate neighbourhood
of, a remarkable conjunction of the planets Saturn,
Jupiter, and Mars, in the sign of the Fish, such a con
junction as, occurring at rarest intervals, must yet have
occurred as regarded the first two planets in 747, and all
three in 748, a. u. c, in years that is, either of them
very likely to have been, and one which most probably
was, the true Annus Domini. This was a conjunction,
the anticipation of which must needs have held all
astronomers in eager suspense then as it did in his
own days; and thus he was induced to conjecture that
such a star might then also have shown itself in
exactly the same quarter of the sky, when it could
not have failed to arouse the profoundest attention of
such learned watchers of the heavens as we have a
right to assume these Magi to have been.1

1 I do not of course pretend to be able, in the very slightest de
gree, to estimate the worth of these speculations of Keppler's, but 1
would not pass them altogether by, seeing that modem astronomers and
chronologists recur with no little interest to them. Munter, the learned
Danish bishop, in his little book, Der Stern der Weisen, (Copenhagen,
1827,) was the first to call renewed attention to them; whom Meier,
(Handb. der Chronol., 2. 339 seq.,,) and Wieseler, (Chronol. Sy-

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 33
But, with all this, there still remains the question,
what were the connecting links between seeing a star,
and concluding that a " King of the Jews " was born ?
And this brings us at once to the consideration of
nopse, pp. 62 seq.) follow. Certainly Keppler so tells his tale,
that even one who is altogether a layman in these matters may yet
find pleasure in following him ; as when he is setting forth the im
portant position which his star occupied among the heavenly bodies, as
compared with the earlier of Tycho Brahe (De Stella Nova ; Pragas,
1606, p. 125:) Praecipua vero et consideratione dighissima dissimilitudo
fuit in loco et tempore. Ilia enim extra limites Zodiaci fulsit, in sidere
Cassiopeia;, loco ccsli infrequent!, nee ullis planetarum accessionibus
nobilitato : haec stationem sibi elegit proxime viam regiam solis, luna;,
ceterorumque planetarum; sicutab omnibus planetis salutaretur; Satur-
no vero paene corporaliter jungeretur. Illam etsi clarae aliquot stellae in
Cassiopeia secundae magnitudinis circumstabant, vulgares tamen illse
fuerunt, et de promiscuo fixarum numero, nulla proprii motus nobilitate
insignes: haec nostra vero in medium trium superiorum planetarum sese
ingessit, Jove et Marte satellitibus anteambulonibus, Satumo stipatore
pedissequo usa .... Ilia vulgare et ignobilo tempus invasit, nulla, pecu-
liari nota insigne ; heec inciditin eum precise annum, quem astrologi
universi Trigoni ignei principio, eventurisque prodigiis coelestibus,
diligentissimis praemonitionibus designarant ;  in eum praecise
coeli locum, ad quem omnium astrologorum oculi congressum Jovis et
Martis exspectantes, dirigebantur. Itaque prior ilia mundo non pras-
monito supervenit, et velut improvisus hostis, occupatis urbis mceniis,
prius in foro comparuit, quam cives expeditionem ejus fama percepis-
sent; nostra vero vulgo expectata a longo tempore, cum multa. solenni-
tate et triumphali pompa ad diem constitutum est ingressa; more prae-
potentis alicujus monarchal, qui metropolim regni invisurus, prasmissis
longe antea metatoribus, loca comitatui designat.
I have already alluded to the surpassing brightness which so many
ascribed, and, as I cannot doubt, rightly, to that Star, the symbol of Him
who was Himself "the brightness of his Father's glory," Himself" the
bright and morning Star." It may be worth while to quote one or
o

34 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. f_MATT. II. 2.
another question, and one which has much divided
interpreters — namely, whether this Star of the wise
men stands in any relation to the Star which Balaam
in spirit saw, the Star which should come out of Jacob,
and of which he foretold; (Num. xxiv. 17 ;) and if so,
in what? Was there now a fulfilment of that pro
phecy? Nay more, did the Magi, speaking of '? his
Star," allude to such a prophecy,— which must in that
case have been committed to writing, and thus have
survived in the East? Did they mean to affirm that
now at length that mysterious word, which another
wise man from the East, and one, like themselves,
beyond the pale of the elect nation, one, therefore,
whose spiritual successors1 they were, had spoken, was
fulfilled? If so, we have the connexion at once.
two out of many passages, in which Keppler tries to tell out something
of the impression which the extraordinary brilliancy of this star made
on himself and oh others that beheld it. It may help us a little to re
alize the wonder and admiration with which that flaming standard in
the heavens must have been watched by those eastern sages, and by all
whose eyes had been drawn toward it Thus, in a work published in the
yeaT subsequent to its disappearance (De Vero Anno Nat. Christi, 1606,
p. 3;) Quisquis es qui portentum stupendum oculis tuis non aspexisti,
facem imaginare ubi flagrantissimam luminis purissimi, ventis validissi-
mis agltatam et quassatam ; talis erat vibratio luminis, talis flammarum
ebullilio, talis scintillatio ignivoma rapidissima. Compare De Stella
JJovst, 1606: De specie stellae convenit omnibus, fuisse stellisfixis si-
mjllimam, radiis undequaque ut fixarum emicantibus, scintillatione cla-
ri^sima, coruscatione sen vibratione tam rapida, ut negaverint quidam
sibi dum viverent, unquam quicquam in ccelo visum esse aeque pernici
.rnotu, ut ipsi loquebantur.
1 Jerorne : Balaam, cujus successpres erant. On the significant posi-
tiqri of Balaarn, as he in whom " set the sun of prophecy in the horizon

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 35
Many in old time have asserted both — namely, that
this Star did in the intentions of God stand in such a
connexion, as the fulfilment of that foregoing word ; and
also that these inquirers from the East, among whom
the prophecy of Balaam had survived independently of
Scripture, meant, in those words of theirs, " We have
seen his Star," speaking ofit as one well known, to allude
to, and themselves to affirm, such a connexion; so that
their "We have seen" is the complement of his "I
shall see."1 Thus Origen ;3 Jerome also, and many
more among the ancients.3 In modern times, the rela-

of the Gentile world," and on the many probabilities that his prophecies,
especially those at Shittim, were reduced to writing among the Moabites
and the Midianites, I would refer the reader to Bisbop Horsley's most
interesting Dissertation, " On the Prophecies of the Messiah dispersed
among the heathen." Sermons, 1829, v. 2, pp. 297 — 312.
' Ambrose (in Luc, 1. 2, c. 48 :) Die stellam vidit in spiritu, isti vide-
runt oculis. Calov: Quam vidisse Bileam in posteris suis dici potest,
nempe in magis ex oriente ad praesepe Domini perductis.
2 Con. Cels., L 1, e. 60; and in his thirteenth Sermon on Numbers,
which has come down to us only in a Latin translation : Si enim a
Mose prophetiae ejus [Balaami] sacris inserta? sunt voluminibus, quanto
magis descriptae sunt ab iis, qui habitabant tunc Mesopotamiam, apud
quos magnificus habebatur Balaam, quosque artis ejus constat fuisse
discipulosl Ex illo denique fertur magorum gens et instituto in parti-
bus Orientis vigere; qui descripta habentes apud se omnia, qua? prophe-
taverat Balaam, etiam hoc habuerunt scriptum, quod orietur Stella ex
Jacob, et exsurget homo ex Israel. Haec scripta habebant magi apud
semet ipsos, et ideo, quando natus est Jesus, agnoverunt stellam, et in-
tellexerunt adimpleri prophetiam.
3 Theophylact detects, for instance, but with no great probability, as
it appears to me, in the avariraKxiv of Heb. vii. 14, an allusion to the
AiciriXu aa-rpov t| \axu!i : Saying, 2i,«>'?j ;j Ksiis ro Ar&rnzKzt, xai it
TwcTou Baxaa^ 7rg8(p;irBtac KyyQ'te-a.

36 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [_MATT. II. 2.
tion has been denied by most,1 but has been re-af
firmed, with great ingenuity by Hengstenberg. His
line of argument is this; starting with and taking for
granted, as indeed is admitted by all, that one of St.
Matthew's chief purposes in his Gospel was to show how
the New Testament rooted it,self in the Old, was. the
perfect flower which unfolded itself out of that "stalk
and stem, he urges that in these first two chapters es
pecially, it was the Evangelist's purpose to. bring out
the fulfilment of prophecy in Him whom the Church
had acknowledged as the Christ. St. Matthew is not
writing in any sense an Eoangelium lnfantim ; which,
in a certain sense, St. Luke may be affirmed to have
done: and the difficulties in harmonizing the two nar
ratives arise in good part from the assumption that he
is, that he has the same intention as St. Luke has ; while,
indeed, quite anotherj law guides his selection of the facts
which he records. He does not write, but he assumes,
the history. His facts are only and exclusively those in
which he can bring out marked fulfilments of Old Testa
ment prophecies, and only so much of them as is neces
sary for this. "That it might be fulfilled" expressed
or understood, runs through the whole of these two chap
ters—expressed, I say, or understood; for while often
expressed, (as i. 22; ii. 15, 17, 23; ) so also not seldom
understood. Writing as he does for Hebrew converts,
who were familiar with the Old Testament, who had
lived and moved in it from their childhood, who had
drawn it in with their mother's milk — to whom, there-
' See Spanheim, Dub. Fivang., v. 2. p. 369.

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 37
fore, the slightest hint would be sufficient, — he does not
always count it necessary to refer in as many words to
the type or prophecy which now was fulfilled ; being the
rather confident that they would not miss it, and would
be only the better pleased at having something left to
themselves, some claim made upon their own mental ac
tivity. As such intimations and implicit allusions, he
note's the mention of the gifts, whereof two, the gold and
the frankincense, had been expressly named in one of
the passages, to which he believes Matthew would here
send back his readers, Ps. lxxii. 10; Isai. Ix. 6, or once
more, the angel's word to Joseph, " They are dead who
sought the young Child- s life," words which, to one
that understood, would at once place the fortunes of this
Child in mysterious relation with the fortunes ofthe for
mer great deliverer of Israel ; (Exod. iv. 19 ;) a subject
on which there will be occasion to say something more
presently. If this, then, is St. Matthew's law of selection, and
Hengstenberg maintains with great ingenuity, and, in
the main, success, that it does hold good in every
other circumstance and incident mentioned in these
chapters, so that nothing is told except in its bearing,
and for the sake of its bearing, on some prophetic word
or event that went before, how inconceivable it is that
there should be one exception to this, and that one
the so prominent fact of the Star ; that it, and it alone,
should hold on to nothing which preceded. But if it
does involve an allusion to any Old Testament fact
or prophecy, it must needs be to that of Balaam, since
there is no other that the Evangelist could possibly

38 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [[MATT. II. 2.
have had in his eye. Only in that single passage does
the Messiah stand in any relation to, or appear in any
way symbolized by, a star. But that in that passage
he does so, that the Star there is no other than Christ
Himself, is plain from his claiming of this very title as
his own, in some of the last words of the New Testa
ment: "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the
bright and morning Star." (Rev. xxii. 16.)'
That the Jews understood that prophecy of Balaam
to refer to the Christ, they gave fearful witness. The
false Christ who, under Adrian, took up arms for the
last terrible struggle with Rome, gave himself out as
the Messiah whom Balaam had foretold ; and assumed
the name of Barchochab, or the Son of the Star, for
the purpose of placing himself in nearer connexion
with that prophecy; which we know from cotemporary
Jewish writings, that the famous Rabbi Akiba inter
preted with reference to him.2 It is certainly re
markable as well, that the Jew who supplied Celsus
with his account of the coming of the Magi, — Chaldaeans
he calls them, but evidently his account is drawn from
St. Matthew, — should have dropped all mention of the
Star as the motive of their coming ; they were, he says,
moved3 to come, but he does not say how. This omis-

1 Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. 1. 2, § 45,) brings the three passages, Num.
xxiv. 17 ; Matt. ii. 2, and Rev. xxii. 16, into relation with another: Ubi
Christus, et Stella est: ipse enim est Stella splendida et matutina. Sua
igitur ipse luce se signat.
* Eusebius, H. E., 1. 14, c. 6.
3 Kivij^trrat- (Origen, Con. Cels., I. 1 , c 58.)

MATT. II. 2.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 39
sion may be otherwise explained, but it looks as if his
inducement to keep back the Star altogether, was a fear
lest its mention might put the Child of Bethlehem into
too close a relation with a recognised Messianic prophecy
of the Old Testament. Such instances of a bad con
science in their controversy with Christians are suffi
ciently frequent among the Jews.
Whether this explanation of the matter be the right
one or not, no one, I think, should finally reject it,
without having read Horsley's Dissertation, to which
reference has been already made, and weighed the ar
guments therein brought forward. But granting it mis
taken, and that these wise men were not by these an
cient oracles taught what was the meaning of that glorious
signal in the heavens, yet the time being what it was,
and they being what they were, how little would have
been sufficient to instruct them in its meaning. It
was a time when, if we may slightly alter the Apostle's
words, "the earnest expectation of the creature waited
for the manifestation of the Son of God:" it was the
world's great emptiness which, in the purposes of the
eternal Wisdom, preceded, as a negative preparation,
the great fulness that was coming; the time of an infi
nite longing, that prepared men for the infinite gift.
Nor do we need the testimony of the two remarkable
and often-cited passages from Suetonius and from
Tacitus, to prove that at this time of expectation, as
well as somewhat later, the eyes of men were espe
cially directed toward Judaea, and toward Jerusalem,
unconsciously felt, as it was, lo be the spiritual me-

40 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 2.
tropolis, not of Judaea only, but of the East and of the
world.1 And then, if the times were thus times of a solemn
and breathless expectation, these men who' came;
were men in whom, more than in most, as their
coming and their inquiries show, the longing of the
time had concentrated itself; they were eminently
"men of desires."* And if they were such, and Christ
the true magnet of hearts, drawing them to Himself by
an invisible but mighty potency, how little strange,
how natural rather, and easy, that, by guidances which
we do not know, by little indications which, insufficient
for most, would yet have been sufficient for them, by
secret illuminations of their minds, which made that
tongue of the heavens to speak a language which they
could understand, they should have found their way to

1 Only some feeling of the kind would explain Pliny's words ( H.
N., 1. 5, c. 15 :) Hierosolyma, longe clarissima urbium Orientis, non
Judaea modo; for in outward splendour it must have fallen behind
many. 3 The striking phrase, "man of desires," belongs to the Vulgate trans
lation of Daniel, and is given by the angel to the prophet himself, (vir
desideriorum es: Dan. ix. 23.) The manner in which the Magi were,
or were held to be, these " men of desires," ever on the watch for tokens
and glimpses of a divine character and presence in men, comes remarka
bly out in the incident mentioned by Seneca, of some that happened to
be at Athens at the time of Plato's decease, and who were so impressed
with his having fulfilled to a day his 81st year, — i, &, 9 >< 9, the most
perfect number of all — that they offered sacrifices to him, as to one more
than man (Ep. 58:) ldeo Magi, qui forte Athenis erant, immolaverunt
defuncto, amplioris fuisse sortis quam humana? rati, -quia consummasset
perfectiesimum numerum, quem novem novies muUiptiaata componunt.

MATT. II. 3.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 41
Jerusalem first, and then to the very place where the
young Child, the fulfiller of the world's hopes, was laid.1
Instead, then, of making difficulties as to how they
connected the Star and the King of the Jews, how they
found their way so far with nothing but that Star to
beckon them on, it will be more profilable for us to see
in their finding of Christ, and in the Jews' failing to
find Him, — while yet these last had so many helps, and
they so few, — proofs and examples of a truth to which
every day a witness is being borne — namely, how little
is sufficient to draw disposed and believing hearts to
Christ, how much is insufficient to draw them that are
otherwise. Prophets speak and accomplish nothing in
these : the beckoning of a silent star is effectual with
those.2 But this inquiry of the wise men, this word of theirs
about a " King of the Jews," was to some a word of
fear. The tidings of their coming ran like an electric
shock through the palace of the usurping Idumaean.
Herod " was troubled." When we remember the recent
agitations at Jerusalem through the refusal of the
Pharisees, to the number of six thousand, to take the
oath of allegiance to him,3 with their prophecy of the

1 Augustine very beautifully (Serm. 203 :) Illi magi primi ex gentibus
Christum Dominum cognoverunt, et nondum ejus sermone commoti,
stellam sibi apparentem, et pro infante Verbo visibiliter loquentem, velut
linguam cceli, secuti sunt. Leo the Great (Serm. 30, c. 1:) Dedit ergo
aspicientibus intellectum, qui praestitit signum ; et quod fecit intelligi, fecit
inquiri, et se inveniendum obtulit requisitus. Cf. Serm. 32, c. 2.
2 Maximus (Horn. 5, de Epiph. .) Apud Judsos propheta loquitur,
nee auditur ; apud gentes steila silet et suadrt.
1 Josephus, Ant., 17, 3, 1.

42 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 3.
divinely-intended transfer of the kingdom from him
and his race to a favourite of their own, we can easily
understand how much less a thing would have been suf-
ficient to terrify him than this announcement of the Star
and of the King ;' as these will also help to explain the
bloody precautions which presently he took., "He was
troubled" for "the wicked fear where no fear is," even
as in one sense there was none even for him : for this
King that was born was candidate for quite another
crown than any which Herod would have cared to wear.
(Matt, xxvii. 29.) But though not exactly in the shape
that he imagined, in another sense there was most truly
fear: the King of righteousness was born, and the whole
kingdom of unrighteousness felt itself already tottering
to its base.3 And thus it came to pass that not Herod
only "was troubled," but "all Jerusalem with Aim."?

* Mutantem regna cometen.
a Augustine exclaims on this trouble of Herod, and with manifest al
lusion to the fox-like character which the Saviour attributes to Herod's
son, (Luke xiii. 32,) a character coming out abundantly in Herod's own
devices for bringing the young Child into his power (Serm. 375:) Natus
est cceli Leo, et turbata est terrena vulpecula: and again, with one of his
well-loved antitheses (Serm. 206:) Quid erit tribunal Judican tis, quando
superbos reges cunae terrebant Infantis"
3 Since 'UqotroKvfia is always a neuter plural in the New Testament,
(it« 'legos.) and never a fem. sing,, (for Matt. iii. 5, cannot be justly
brought as an exception,) the irao-tt here must be a constructjo ad sen-
sum, referring to a noKit latent in the city's appellation. In Josephus,
Strabo, and all other profane writers, is it equally a neuter plural ; for
the one decisive exception, Hierosohjmam in Tacitus, (Hist., 5. 2,) which
is as contrary to his own otherwise uniform use as to that of others, is
rejected from the text by both his latest editors, Orelli and Ritter. On

MATT. II. 4.] THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 43
To say, as some have done, that he was troubled with
fear, and Jerusalem with joy, is very unnatural. Jeru
salem shared in his trouble and fear — not, indeed, the
Jerusalem of Simeon and of Anna, and of the little
company that watched and waited for the consolation of
Israel ; (Luke ii. 25 — -38 :) they lifted up their heads ; but
the Jerusalem of the Scribes and Pharisees, the misusers
of spiritual, as Herod of worldly, powers. True it is
that these may presently have forgotten their fears, and
persuaded themselves that it was but a false alarm after
all; yet for a moment they, too, were troubled; for little
as they had in common with Herod, yet they had this
in common — namely, an equal enmity to the truth, an
equal interest in the upholding of that kingdom of un
righteousness and wrong, which they all felt must go to
the ground so soon as the kingdom of this King of truth
was set up. (Isai. xxxii. 1 — 8; Ps. lxxii.)
The question which Herod lays before the Sanhedrim,
"Where Christ should be born," shows plainly that,
strange as probably he was to the Scriptures of the pro
phets, he yet understood this much, that " Christ" and

the word itself, and its relation to the more Hebrew liqovtrttxruj., the
former observes : Hac forma ad vocem iiq's a Graecis detorta, ut sig-
nificaret "urbs sacra vel tempi urn Solymorum," [Tac. Hist. 5. 2,] pri
mus usus esse videtur Heca tre us Abderita apud Joseph. Con. Ap. 1.
22 ; reperitur etiam in libro Tobias et secundo Maccabeeorum ; apud cite-
ros LXX. est 'UqovraKrji. It is characteristic of the more Greek
colouring of St John's Gospel, and the more Hebrew of his Apocalypse^
that written more ev ro i, this sv nvtufiari, that in the Gospel he should
use always the Greek form, in the Apocalypse always the Hebrew.
(See Bengel's Gnomon, in Apoc. 21. 2.)

44 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. JJHATT. II. 5, 6.
"King of the Jews" were equivalent and convertible
terms. "And they said unto him, In Bethlehem ofJu-
dsea,for thus it is written by the prophet, Jlnd thou
Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among
the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come a Gover
nor, that shall rule my people Israel." On comparing
this prophecy, as cited here, with the original text of
Micah, there appears at first sight more than one re
markable discrepancy between the two. In the pro
phecy as first delivered, Bethlehem is addressed as " lit
tle among the thousands of Judah;" in Matthew, as'
" not the least among the princes of Juda .•" nor is Je
rome's solution, that we have here an intentional inac
curacy on the part of St. Matthew, although not his own,
but that of the Scribes and Pharisees, which he yet re
tains, thus silently taxing them with their negligent hand
ling of Scripture, worthy of any acceptation. The ex
planation must be sought elsewhere.
On the Substitution of "princes" for " thousands,"
there will be something presently to say; but passing
that by for the present, there certainly at first seems more
than a variation, even a contradiction, between the "little"
ofthe prophet, and the "not the least" of the Evangelist.
But, in truth, the latter does but blend into a single phrase
two statements which the former had made. Small and
not small, is what the prophet, too, would say; seeming
little, and yet being great. If we take in his whole state
ment in this second verse, it will be seen that he is con
trasting the outward insignificance of Bethlehem with the
mighty events which should there occur, and which should
give it a place in the world's history, and in the Church's

MATT. 11. 5, 6-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 45
affections, for ever. "Thou art small, and yet not
small ; for this thy smallness shall not hinder, but
that He shall go forth from thee, whose goings forth
have been also from of old, from everlasting." The
Evangelist, overleaping the steps of the process by
which the prophet had reached his result, grasps at, and
makes that final result his own — namely, that this little
should yet not be little; since from it, small as it appeared,
there should yet go forth a Prince,1 no mere head of
a family or a tribe, but He that should feed, (for I see
not why we should have dropped this word,) the whole
Israel of God.
But we have also to account for a substitution of
"princes" in St. Matthew, for the " thousands" of Micah.
This will best be done by considering, first, what the

1 There is so evident an intention on the part of St Matthew to al
lude in the 'tjyov/tttvog to the vyifioveq who have just gone before, the
word is so plainly chosen for the sake of its like sound and like deriva
tion, (it was ag^wv in the Septuagint,) that it would have been better,
1 thinkj if our translators had again used "Prince" instead of " Governor."
Plainly, if they could have found two slightly differing words of the
same stem, this would have been best of all. " Prince is further prefera
ble to "Governor" inasmuch as that expresses leadership, (in the Vulgate,
dux; Tindal, Cranmer, fhe Geneva, captain) and so gives back the
thought of the originals in a way that this does not. This is the only
place in the New Testament where ?jyou,uin'o; is used of our Lord. It
is once beside used in the same absolute sense— of Joseph, a ruler in
Egypt, (Acts vii. 10,) and the church rulers are ijyovfievoi, Heb. xiii.
ter. In the later Greek of Herodian, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, it is
common enough for governors of provinces, captains in war; so also in
the Septuagint, being especially frequent in the son of Sirach, ix. 17 ;

46 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN.fjffATT. II. 5. 6.
"thousands" were. It may, I think, certainly be shown
that they were that intermediate division between the
tribe ahd the household ; which goes more commonly,
iii the historic books of the Old Testament, by the name
of the " family." We observe that the twelve tribes of
which the Jewish nation consisted, were made up each
of a certain number of " families," these " families" be
ing again composed of a certain number of " households."
The two passages which are most distinct upon this mat
ter, and which throw most light on it, are Josh. vii. 14
— 18; and 1 Sam. x. 19 — 21.1 In the last of these
passages the "families" of ver. 21, are plainly the "thou
sands" of ver. 19 ; and the words are interchangeably
used. The " thousand,^ there is every reason to believe,
originally consisted, like the German and Anglo-Saxon
"hundred," of a certain number of the "households;"
and, as the word indicates, of a thousand households or
heads of families, more or fewer, grouped together ; doubt
less, according to considerations more or less distinct of
kindred and of common descent : the territorial divisions,
(not of the tribes, but of these subdivisions within the
tribes,) being secondary to, and resting on, the personal.
But, in the nature of things, this secondary wouldcome
by degrees to be the primary ; for as it would be mani
festly impossible perpetually to readjust the territorial

1 To avoid confusion, it may just be needful to observe, that the
" family" in these and similar passages does not in the least correspond
to the Latin familia, which would rather represent the " household,"
but much more nearly to the Roman gens, or to one of the Athenian
&l]f*Ol.

MATT. II. 5,6.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 47
divisions, so that each of them should always contain the
same number of households as at the first, these would
be left as they were ; while the number of households
they contained might become many fewer or many more
than the name implied; and thus there could be "little"
thousands, as Bethlehem, or great ones. Some would rise,
others fall, in importance. Thus Gideon, when he would
fain put back the angel's summons that he should go and
deliver Israel, speaks of his "family," (gota;, LXX.,)
which he entirely distinguishes from his " father's house "
as "poor in Manasseh." (Judg. vi. 15.) Exactly in
the same way, the Anglo-Saxon " hundreds" gradually
came to embrace, some fewer, some a far greater number
of households, than the name implied; and the name it
self, like the smaller one of the tithing, ended with pos
sessing, as it does now, a merely local significance. We
have the "thousand" exactly used in the sense of a cer
tain district, 1 Sam. xxiii. 23. But as there were phy-
larchs, or heads of tribes, so there were chiliarchs, or
heads of thousands. (Exod. xviii. 25.) These would
represent their " thousands ;" and St. Matthew here be
holds the " thousands" of which Micah spoke, as thus
represented or gathered up in these "princes." The
prince whose thousand was least in importance would be
himself least, for all his importance, as prince, would be
derived from it.
The "thousand," then, of which Bethlehem was the
chief town, and that which gave to the entire thousand
its name, was "little among the thousands of Judah."
All history confirms the statement. Bethlehem was in
early times a place of so small account, that it is omitted

48 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 5, 6.
in the. long catalogue ofthe cities of Judah, Josh. xv. 21
— 62.' Even as "the city of David," (Luke ii. 11 ; 1
Sam. xvi. 1,) the birth-place of the best and greatest of
Israel's kings, it yet acquired no political importance.
Rehoboam, indeed, fortified it and made it one of his
cities of defence after the division of the kingdoms.
(2 Chron. ii. 6.) Yet in Micah's time it was, as we see,
of no account, and at John vii. 42, it is a xa^rj, and not
a nious, with which title, however, Josephus sometimes
honours it, though elsewhere he calls it a ^uptcw.3 It .
is often called Bethlehem- Judah, as at Judg. xvii. 7, 8;
1 Sam. xvii. 12, and in St, Matthew's citation of Micah,
to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in the tribe of
Zebulon. (Josh. xxix. 15.) The word stands here as a
substitute for the Ephratah of Micah, v. 2, which served
the same purpose of designating more closely the Beth
lehem to which the prophecy referred"and the promise
was made, (Gen. xxxv. 19;. 1 Sam. xvii. 12,) but which
name had now probably become obsolete. There was,
then, an evident motive for the substitution of "Juda"
for Ephratah, bringing out, as that does more distinctly,
and even to those unacquainted with the antiquities of
the land, that in this birth another prophecy and another
just expectation of those that waited for the Messiah
was fulfilled, namely, that He should be born of the
tribe of Judah, (Gen. xlix. 10,) a circumstance on

' In the Septuagint, indeed, (cod. Alexand.) is inserted after v. 60,
with some other omitted places.
3 Antt, 1, 5, c. 3, § 8.

MATT. II. 5, 6-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 49
which we find the sacred writers afterwards laying stress.
(Heb. vii. 14; Rev. v. 5.)
And now, when this prophecy found its accomplish
ment at length, Bethlehem indeed became that which
its name had promised from the first, "the house of
bread;"1 for He who had been always the bread of
angels, and who, in his Incarnation, became also the
bread of men, found his earliest earthly habitation
there. Now was Ephratah truly the "fruit-bearing
field," for He that was the Branch of righteousness,
(Jer. xxxiii. 10,) the Man whose name was The Branch,
(Zech. vi. 12,) had sprung up within its borders.
Hitherto these names had but indicated the fulness of
earthly blessing, the rich abundance of the fruits of the
field which that region yielded; but now their deeper
meaning comes out. All that this double appellation
(the nomen el omen) had silently prophesied so long,
was realized at length. We have too many of these
significant names, Golgotha, and Cedron, and Geth
semane, and others, to have the right to suppose them
merely accidental.
From this answer of the Sanhedrim, which at once
designates Bethlehem as the place where Christ should
be born, it is plain that at that time the Jews had no
question concerning the application of the prophecy of
Micah to the Messiah ; as neither did they doubt that
its purpose was to point out the place of his birth. It
would have been indeed strange, when every thing else

1 nrvV mo = domus panis. Tirinus: Ita coctus est panis angelorum,
ut etiam hominum usibus fieret accommodus.

50 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 5,6.
was so definite, the tribe from which he should spring;
(Gen. xlix. 10;) and not the tribe only, but the family;
(2 Sam. xxiii. 5 ;) the time Of his appearing ; (Dan. ix.
26;) the region which should first rejoice in the light
of his presence; (Isai. ix. 1 — 2; cf. Matt. iv. 13;) and
so much besides, that there should have been here a
gap, and no intimation given of the place of his birth.
But that Christ should be born at Bethlehem was
among the Jews at this time, (John vii. 42,) and long
after, an undoubted article of faith. As yet they had
no motive to do violence to the plain meaning and
intention of their own Scriptures which so affirmed.
Subsequently it was otherwise. The fulfilment of the
prophecy in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and its
non-fulfilment in any other who laid claim to be' the
Messiah, was so plain, that they were tempted to betake
themselves to various shifts for evading the force of the
argument, which the Christians derived from the meeting
of this and all other of the fore-announced signs and
tokens of the Messiah in his person, whom they recog
nised as such, with their absence from every one beside.
It is true that they could not all at once shift their ground,
and take up a new position; that the earlier Rabbis were
obliged to content themselves with some such evasion, as
that Messiah had indeed been born at Bethlehem ; but
on account of the sins of Israel had been again with
drawn from the sight of men. Yet that their eyes still
turned in expectation toward this city, as that from which
the Governor of Israel should come forth, is plain from
the edict of Adrian, published after the insurrection of

MATT. II. 5, 6-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 51
Barchochab, which forbade any Jew to reside at Jerusa
lem or Bethlehem.1
The later Jewish Rabbis had another way of dealing
with this prophecy. Neither did they deny that the
words of Micah had reference to Messiah, and the place
of his birth ; (for Chrysostom's assertion that some Jews ,
explained these words as having been fulfilled in Zerub-
babel, seems probably a mistake of his : a Christian in
terpreter, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the anticipator in so
much of the modern rationalism, had the honour of first
proposing this interpretation ;) but they affirmed that it
referred only mediately to Messiah's birth place, and
had its fulfilment, inasmuch as David, the progenitor of
Christ, was born at Bethlehem.2 Christ, they said, was
born there, when David was. But, indeed, this helpless
embarrassment of the Jews in regard of this and each
other of the prophecies relating to the Messiah, this inabi
lity of theirs to makeany thing of them, justifies abundantly
the image which has likened Old Testament prophecy
and New Testament fulfilment to the lower and upper
millstones, fitting into one another, and which between
them grind the bread-corn. But what so useless as one
of these stones apart from the other? The Jews in their
refusal to accept the New Testament fulfilment, are as
those who should possess only one of these millstones,

1 To this edict Tertullian alludes in his argument with the Jew, Adv.
Jud., c. 13; and see also Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 2. pp. 527 — 531.
a Huet (Dem. Evang. p. 393) remarks well on this subterfuge of
theirs : Id si accipimus, jam ergo multiplex nobis patria erit,totque na-
tales terras numerabimus, quot loci majoribus nostris oitum dederunt.

52 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 5, 6.
that is, the lower ; but who, having cast aside the other,
can make no use of the one which they retain. ' They
are utterly unable to prepare by its aid food for their
souls, or to draw wholesome nutriment from that word
of the promise which is theirs equally as ours. Or they
might be likened, as indeed they have been, to the fore
most of the twain that bare between them, two upon a
staff, the one cluster of grapes from the promised land.
They bear it, indeed, but do not see it, for they have their
back turned to it, and not, as the Christians who follow
after, the face. (Num. xiii. 23.)
It has been often, too, remarked what a prophetic sign
and symbol of the function of the Jews in all after ages
we have here, in these foremost men of the nation, who^
show to Gentile seekers the way which will lead them
to Christ, while they do not care to tread it themselves ?
for we hear of none of the chief priests and scribes join-"
ing themselves to this company to offer with them the
homage, which, due from all men to Israel's King, was
yet eminently due from those of his own people; but on
the contrary, they suffer them to depart alone. What a
prophecy, it has been well observed, is here of what the
Jewish nation ever since have been ; the near, and yet
prevented and outrun by those that were far off; bearers
of a record and a testimony, from which not they, but
others live ; continual witnesses against themselves;
guiding inquirers to Christ, and yet never finding the
way to Him themselves ; faithful guardians of the letter
of those Scriptures, which are evermore their own con
demnation; pointing others to the fountain of life, and

MATT. II. 7,8-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 53
all the while themselves perishing with thirst in the wil
derness.1 But now, armed with this knowledge, the evil king
"privily called the wise men," not as though by this
privy summons he would keep secret the fact of their
coming, for that was already notorious, (ver. 2,) but pro
bably desirous to conceal the importance which he
attached to it, and to the tidings which they brought.
Having " inquired of them diligently," not when this King
was born, for that lay not with any certainty within the
sphere of their knowledge, but "what time the Star ap
peared, he sent them to Bethlehem:" with that word
which sheltered the wickedest purpose under the disguise
of the holiest ; " Go, and search diligently for the young
Child, and when ye have found Him, bring me word
again, that I may come and worship him also."
They do not seem to have made Herod any promise of
return, which, of course, even if they had, would not have
bound them, so soon as they were warned with what
purpose it had been drawn from them. All that we are
told is, that " when they had heard the king, they depart
ed." But not altogether unaccompanied: for "lo! the
Star which they saw in the east went before them, till it
came and stood over" — not the house, for nothingof the

' Augustine (Serm. 199:) Nunc vero aliis demonstrate vita? fonte,
ipsi sunt mortui siccitate, Facti sunt eis tanquam lapides ad milliaria ;
viatoribus ambulantibus aliquid ostenderunt, sed ipsi stolidi atque immo-
biles permanserunt. And again: Illi portant codices, nos de codicibus
vivimus. And Aquinas: Similes facti sunt fabris area? Noe; qui aliis
ubi evaderent, prajstiterunt, et ipsi diluvio perierunt.

54 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 9.
kind is said, but — " where the young Child was.,n That
we have here optical and not astronomical notices, I think
is plain ; that this Star also served them now for quite
another, and a far higher purpose, than that of merely
showing to them their way, precious witness as it was to
them still, that they were on the right way. Indeed, we
shall miss the right point of view if we contemplate the
Star through any part of their journey so much in the
light of a topographical as of a religious signal and
guide. But how exactly shall we understand this ninth verse
in connexion with that which follows ? " When they saw
the Star, they fejoiced with exceeding great joy."2
1 There are those who make a great difficulty and outcry about this
of the Star standing over the place where the young Child was. They
begin to calculate at how great a distance even the nearest stars are from
the earth, and how impossible it is that a star should designate some
particular locality on earth; and hence they conclude that this as an evi
dently apocryphal element in the narration, may well throw suspicion
over the whole. Yet the same persons will read in Josephus, among
the portents which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, of the comet
which stood over the city, (B. J., 1. 6, u. 5, § 3, arm 'vnte. Tijr 7roXv»
— the same word as here,) and make no difficulties about it. But this
denying to Holy Scripture the liberty which is freely accorded to every
other book, of speaking phenomenally when it pleases, is a very ordinary
engine of assault upon it. When it serves their turn, the adversaries
are suddenly taken with a rigour of affected accuracy, which almost no
statement is literal enough to satisfy. It was so also of old, as we see
from Augustine's indignant replies, in more places than one, to cavillers
of the same order. (Con. Faust, 1. 33, c. 7, 8.)
3 E^mgijs-ar % "e. a v> according to the well known Hebraism, which, in
deed, finds its analogies in almost every tongue. Juvencus reproduces
it in his versified narrative ofthe Lord's life:

MATT. II. 9, 10.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 55
Had they lost sight of the Star for a season, — for the
season, that is, of their stay in the city, so that they
greatly rejoiced when they recognised it anew V Thus
the passage has been understood by many ; and of these
some have found a mystical significance in this, its disap
pearance, and have said, When they chose to walk in the
light of men, they lost the light of heaven.3 Others
have yet further extended the period during which the
Star had been hidden from them, have supposed that they
had but seen it at their first setting forth, in its rising ;
that it then had but pointed them the way, and, this done,
disappeared, till now they beheld it anew at the end of
their journey, as once they had beheld it at the begin
ning. Or are we merely to understand, as some suggest,
that the day had been consumed in the great city, in
their inquiries there after Him whom they were seeking,
in their interview with Herod, and that now, at evening,
as those who would fain make their journey by night,
they set forth once more, and delightedly beheld the hea
venly guide, that had guided them so far, still marshall
ing their path, — with the more delight since, perhaps,
they might have concluded that, having led them so far,
and having put them in relation with those who could

Gaudia magna magi gaudent, sidusque salutant.
Compare 1 Kin. i. 40; Jer. xxxviii. 3; LXX. {ayantjo-ii tumtov ijyot-
nrja-a. trt;) 1 Tim. i. 18; Luke ii. 9; (eipo^ijOijcray qojitiv,) and Jon.
iv. 6, where these very words of the text occur.
1 Thus Euthymius: 'Qj ivqovrs; rot aiVwdttrrK-rov oSriyov.
¦ So Bernard : Ut qui humanum quserebant consilium, divinum amit-
terent ducem.

56 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [matt. II. 9, 10,
give them those certain notices which now they had, they
should not see it any more.
I am inclined to think that neither of these explana
tions exactly represents the meaning of the Evangelist,
which Maldonatus has more successfully caught. He
bids us to notice that these words, " When they saw the
Star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy," immedi
ately follow his statement that "it came and stood over
where the young Ghild was," which they must needs in
a natural order have preceded, if either of the meanings
above suggested had been the right one. But as they
now stand, they express the joy of those Eastern seers, not
at the mere seeing of the star, which they had often seen
before, but at seeing it stand over where the young Child
was, having at length fulfilled its mission, and, having
brought them there where they would be. It is the joy
of men that have the haven in sight; that are just about
to grasp the good expected so long.1
St. Matthew, it will be observed, speaks of the Magi
as having come " into the house." Was this the same
place where the Child Jesus had been born ? Did they
find the Lord of Glory still in that stable, or cave, or
whatever place it might have been, where the manger
had served for his earliest resting place on earth, (Luke
ii. 7,) and where the shepherds had found Him laid? It
may have been so ; it is most commonly taken for granted
1 Maldonatus: Nee enim significat, ut ego quidem arbitror, Evange-
lista Magos aspectu stellae, qua? paulo ante evanuisse videbatur, Isstos
fuisse; sed eos gavisos fuisse videntes stellam, (sicut proxime dixerat,)
stantem supra ubi erat puer. Lsetantur enim non quod stellam viderint,
quam saepe jam viderant; sed quod Christum quemquaerebant invenerant.

MATT. II. 1 1 -3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 57
that it was so, in homiletic allusions, as in Christian
art; and certainly there is nothing in that word "the
house" to compel us to any other conclusion: since it
needed not for St. Matthew, who wrote with so different
an object from .St. Luke, from a theocratic, as St. Luke
from an ethical, point of view, to make prominent, as he
has done the stable or the inn. In St. Luke's Gospel,
which was, more than any other, a gospel for the poor,
for those whom the proud and prosperous world had
slighted and despised, this consolation, this gleam of
glory lighting up henceforth each lowly shed, each hum
blest habitation of the servants of God, who, so lodged,
did but share a common lot with their Lord, could, not
well have been omitted. But St. Matthew had quite
another purpose in view : his was to record the early
dignities ofthe royalChild, who even in his cradle received
the ambassadors of the nations, who yet " an infant of
days" was honoured, as with the love and homage of
the good, so also with the deadly hatred and enmity of
the wicked. Yet granting that the words, " the house,"
do not oblige us to suppose any other place, still how
very probably it may have been some other. Even as
suming this visit to have found place so early as the
twelfth day after the Nativity, how easily might Joseph
and the Blessed Virgin, in reverence for their awful charge,
have by that day shifted their habitation for some lowly,
yet not so altogether misbeseeming a place.
But we may leave this for a somewhat more impor
tant consideration. "When they were come into the
house, they saw the young Child with Mary his mother"
—Joseph is kept purposely in the background— " and

58 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. 11. 11.
fell down and worshipped Him." It is, indeed, an inte
resting question, and dogmatically not unimportant, how
much is implied iu this " worship" which, the Evangelist
tells us, the wise men addressed to the infant Saviour?
There are those who see in jt no more than civil homage,
as to an earthly king; who again may be divided into
two classes, such as conceive that to Him no greater
honour competed, and therefore no greater would have
been paid by these divinely enlightened sages, Photinian
and other heretics ; — and such as, like Erasmus, not at
all denying that such higher honours were rightly his due,
yet do not find the mention or ascription of them here.
I cannot doubt that these are as much in error as those,
although their error springs not from any such deadly-
root. It is quite true that the word which St. Matthew
uses began with a merely civil, and only by degrees ac
quired a religious, significance;1 that at first it meant no
more than the profoundly respectful salutation of the in
ferior to his superior;? that even in the Septuagint, as at
Gen. xxiii. 7, 12; xxvii. 29; and perhaps xlvii. 31, itis
sometimes used in the lower sense in which the word to
worship is used in our Marriage Service, to acknowledge
by an outward gesture or an inner tribute of respect the
worship or dignity of another ; as it was in Wiclifs
Bible, " worship thy father and thy mother ;" and even

* ngoirisuveiv, as in Latin, adorare. (See Doderlein's Synonyme, v.
2, p. 188.)
3 Herodotus, 1. 134, to which Passow refers, does -not bear out his
assertion that it is ever used as to salute merely with the hand on the
mouth, nr natitrdnLi.

MATT. II. 1 l.J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 59
in our present version, " Then shalt thou have worship
in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee."
(Luke xiv. 10.)
Yet in classical Greek the word had come very gene
rally to be used in its religious sense ; it is so, remark
ably often, in Sophocles ; nor, among all the other pas
sages where the word occurs in the New Testament, can
there be adduced a single one in which it has other than
a religious significance, in which it does not, at the least,
imply the recognition of a divine character and presence
in him to whom this homage is paid; and oftentimes
much more than this, even the adoration due only to the
God of gods, and Lord of lords. There are two pas
sages very decisive of the sense in which the sacred writers
of the New Testament used the word, and of the light in
which they regarded the homage which was expressed
by it. The first is Acts x. 25, 26, where Peter refuses
to accept this worship from Cornelius ; for " I myself
also am a man." The second is Rev. xxii. 8, 9, where
in like manner the angel forbids the offering of the wor
ship to himself: " See thou do it not ; for I am thy fel
low-servant: . . . worship God." The only passage
which seems to contradict this universal rule ofthe word's
use is Matt, xviii. 26, where the servant is said to have
fallen down and " worshipped" his lord. But if we as
sume, as we have a perfect right to do, that the scene of
this parable is the East — for where else should we find
defaulters in ten thousand talents ? — and remember that
this lord whom the servant " worshipped" was also his
king, this case will not be found an. exceptional instance ;
for the reverence paid to the eastern monarch, and to

60 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1 1.
the king o£ Persia in particular, which technically bore
this name of adoration or worship, did entirely ground
itself on the recognition of him as the representative and
incarnation of Ormuzd, and was purely an act of religious
homage.1 Therefore, indeed, the introduction of this
ceremony found such resistance both from the Greek3
and the Jew, (Esth. iii. 2,) although the motives of the
resistance were very different, the Greek refusing com
pliance as dishonouring to himself, the Jew as dishonour
ing tb his God.3
But even if the words admitted any plausible doubt on
this matter, which they do not, in. the very circumstance
of these wise men's coming there lay a recognition,
upon their part, of something more than mortal in Him
who was the object of their quest. He must have been
one in their eyes who, though " King of the Jews," or

' Two passages, for many, may be quoted, Curtius says, (viii. 5:)
Persas reges suos inter Deos colere ; and the Persian in Plutarch (The-
inistooles; c. 37:) 'H^m ntfjiog to-xi rifiav (Sao-ixsa xou, a-qoo-xvvnv uxt,-
va ®eov rov.ra Trarra o-tatovrog.
" Herodotus, vii. 136.
3 We have further evidence, not of course such a? we could rest
much on by itself, but of weight, as joined with all else, that the Evan
gelist intended to relate an act 6f religious worship-— in other words,
with which he expresses the homage done by these magi to the infant
Lord. Without urging too much the veoariviyxm and the Saga, yet
it is worthy of note how exclusively in the sense of a religious offering
the words irgotrqi^tt and nqoo-<poga are used in the New Testament;
thus eighteen or nineteen times in the TSpistle- to the Hebrews alone;
and Swe_ov only once signifies the gift which man makes to man, (Rev.
xi. 10,) but sixteen, or seventeen times, including the present, the gift or
offering which man makes to God.

MATT. II. 1 1 -3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 6 1
who rather, because " King of the Jews,'" was also King
of another and far higher kingdom. What attraction
would "a King ofthe Jews," who was only such, and
in nothing differed from other kings, have had in their
eyes, that he should have drawn them from their distant
homes? How, moreover, could they have ventured, at
the centre of Herod's kingdom and power, to announce
that they were come to do homage even there to another
king than himself? or how could he, without so manifest
an absurdity, such a contradiction as must at once have
betrayed him, have proposed to unite in that homage, un
less it had been clearly understood, on their part as on
his, that this King was ruler of a kingdom spiritual and
divine, which need not therefore have been assumed in
the least to interfere or clash with his, however to his
fears it actually seemed as if it would? We are not of
course to suppose that they, any more than others who,
at a later period of our Lord's life, ate said to have wor
shipped Him; (Matt. viii. 2; xx. 20; Mark v. 6; John
ix. 38, &c.,) possessed already the full-formed faith of
the after Church, concerning .the person of her Lord— a
faith into the full consciousness of which, and all that it
involved, the Church herself only came by degrees. To
suppose this would be to suppose that they ran before
aposdes themselves in their knowledge of Christ. For
even on them the knowledge of all which in their Lord
was given them only dawns by little and little, as from
glory to glory. But these worshippers possessed this
faith in its germs, and such that it only waited the occa
sion of its further development; which being so, this
Epiphany was also what the Church has so often loved
to call it, a Theophany as well.

62 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [_MATT. II. 11 .
"And- when they had opened their treasures" by
which " treasures" we must understand, not the precious
things themselves which they had brought, but the chests,
caskets, vessels, (which is the word of the Arabic version,)
or other receptacles which contained them,1 — "they pre
sented unto Him gifts,"" — -after the custom of the East,

* eijffaujos = -iyiN, Deut. xxviii. 12, the receptacle for treasure, (Jo
sephus, Antt., ix. 8, 2,) whether portable as here, = xi/Siuto;, 2 Kin.
xii. 9; LXX.; or the treasure-chamber, as often elsewhere: Matt xii
35 : xiii. 52; Josh. vj. 19; LXX.
1 There was another passage of prophecy besides the more obvious
ones, Ps. lxxii. 10; Isai. Ix. 6, alluded to already, which was very com-'
monly, in the early Church, held to have found its fulfilment in these
gifts— namely, Isai. vm. 4. Such an application df the passage was fe-
voured.by the earlier Latin translation, which, as we gather from Ter
tullian (Adv. Jud.,c. 9; cf. Adv. Marcion., 1. 3, c.13) was: Accipiet
virtutem Damasci et spolia Samariae, and not as in the Vulgate: Auferetur
fortitudo Damasci et spolia Samariae. How the application was exactly
made. may be best understood by a quotation from Augustine, (Serm-.
202, c. 2,) who, however, is plainly following therein the footsteps/of
Tertullian. Alluding to these gifts, he says: Tunc enim puer prius
quam sctret vocare patrem et matrem, sicut de illo fuerat prophetatum,
accepit virtutem Damasci et spolia Samaria? : id est, antequam per hu-
manam carnem humana verba proferret, accepit virtutem Damasci, illud
scjl. unde Damascus praesumebat. In divitiis quippe civitas ilia secun
dum saeculum florens aliquando pnesumserat In divitiis autem princi-
patus auro defertur, quod Christo magi suppliciter obtulerunt. Spolia
vero Samariae iidem ipsi erant, qui earn incolebant. Samaria namque
pro idololatria posita. . . Debellaturus soil. Christus gladio spiritali per
universum orbem regnum diaboli, haec prima puer spolia idololatriae do-
minatione detraxit, ut ad se adorandum magos conversos a peste illius
superstitionis averteret; et in hac terra, nondum loquens per linguam,
loqueretur de cado per stellam ; ut et quis esset, et quo, et propter quos
venisset, non voce camis, sed virtute Verbi, quod caro factum est, de-
monstraret.

MATT. II. II. J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 63
which will not allow any person to come empty-handed
into the presence of the great, but requires that the in
ward devotedness should embody itself in an outward
gift. Thus we have continual mention of such gifts, as
made to kings and other great persons on earth, and to
the King of kings in heaven. (1 Sam. x. 27 ; 1 Kin.
x. 2 ; Gen. xxxii. 13; xliii. 11,25; 1 Sam. ix. 7; xxv.
18, 27; Job xiii. 11.) That these gifts on this occasion
presented were themselves mystical ;l that they who of
fered them meant more, or at any rate that more was
meant by the Spirit which prompted them to these, than
merely that they would present to this Child the costliest
things which they had ; that in these, no less than in the
worship which went with them, there was a confession
of faith," explicit or implicit ; — this the Church has ever
more felt ; and the special symbolic significance which
has been attributed severally to the three gifts is proba
bly familiar to all. The frankincense, the choicest of
all odours, was offered to the Son of God, who as such
was himself also God, and to whom therefore the sweet
odours of prayer and all other sacrifices were rightly
due : the myrrh to the son of Mary, who, as man, was
subject to mortality, while at the same time he should be
free from corruption ; the myrrh, therefore, used in burial,
and yet preserving from decay, containing a latent pro
phecy, not of his death and burial only, as it is some-

' Mystica munera, Juvencus calls them.
1 Leo the Great: Quod cordibus credunt, muneribus protestantur.
Fulgentius: Attende quid obtulerint, et cognosce quid crediderint

64 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1 I .
times explained, but the pledge also of his resurrection:1
and the gold to the Son of David, the King of Israel, to
whom all other kings and people should yield tribute of
the most precious things which they had.3
But these gifts, royal, divine, and human, may claim
to be considered somewhat more in detail. There is a
sacred character belonging to all three, and not the least
to the gold. Even now in the East there are nations, the
Burmese for instance, among whom it is not permitted to
coin gold into money, or otherwise to employ it in com
mon and profane uses ; this m^tal being reserved exclu
sively for divine, or* which is there the same thing, royal
uses.3 and being with them a usual offering to their gods ;
(cf. Ps. Ixxvii. 15: "To Him shall be given of the gold
of Arabia.") On this, its sacred character, rests the fact
that in the Holy of Holies, as the image of heaven, all
is either of massive gold; or thickly overlaid with gold.

1 So in the ancient hymn: —
Myrrha, caro verbo nupta,
Per quod manet incorrupta
Caro carens carie.
3 The earliest writer, I believe, who makes this application, at least of
those who have come down to us, is Irenaeus (Con. Haer.,1. 3, c.9, §i
2:) Matthseus magos ait per ea qua; obtulerunt munera ostendisse; quis
erat qui adorabatur. Myrrham quidem, quod ipse erat, qui pro mortali
humano genere moreretur et sepeliretur; aurum vero quoniam Rex,
cujus regni finis non est; thus vero, quoniam Deus, qui et notus in Ju-
dsea foetus est, [Ps. lxxv. 2] et manifestos eis, qui non quaerebant eum.
Cf. Origen, Con. Cels., 1. 1 , c. 60 ; and generally for passages from the
Greek Fathers, Suicer, Ther., v. Xi|S«voc.
3 Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, 4, 1, 244.

MATT. II. 11.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 65
(Exod. xxxviii.; cf. 1 Kin. vi.) For heaven is the palace
of light — of light, it needs not to say, ethically contem
plated ; and in the bright shining of gold there is that
which better symbolizes light than any thing besides.
And thus, too, the New Jerusalem, "having the glory of
God," the brightness of God's presence, is a city of pure
gold. (Rev. xxi. 11, 18, 33.) Alike in the actual taber
nacle and in the ideal City, something more than the
costliness of the gold is to be taken into account, to ex
plain its selection as the material of which the one and
other is composed ; and so is it here. This gift is
not less significant of the higher character of Him to
whom it is offered than the two with which it is joined.1
The frankincense,9 among all the odours of antiquity
the highest prized and the costliest, was a gum exuding,
with slight solicitation, from a plant about which there is
nearly as much uncertainty now, as Pliny confesses that

1 The suggestion which has been sometimes made, that this gold may
have served, and by the providence of God was intended, in the deep
poverty of the Holy Family, to serve as a viaticum on occasion of the
hurried flight into Egypt, which was so near— this suggestion is not al
together to be rejected, since we know that at a later period the Lord
condescended to accept and use the offerings of his servants. (Luke
viii. 3.)
* Atflavot only occurs here and Rev. xviii. 13, in the New Testament.
It is strictly the tree which yields the frankincense, and Xifiavwros, (which
is used with a certain impropriety for the censer or thuribulum, Rev.
viii. 3, 5,) the frankincense itself But Aristotle does not observe the
distinction, and in Hellenistic Greek, in the Septuagint for instance, it is
entirely neglected. Thus, often as the frankincense is here named,
Xitiavuroi is found only once, (1 Chron. ix.29,) but Ji/Savot contiuually.
5

66 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 1 1 .
in his time there was.1 The Jews obtained it from Arabia
Felix, (Jer. vi. 20,) and in all antiquity it was considered
to be a native there, and lliere only. 2 Yet modern na
turalists are now generally agreed that the genuine frank
incense is a product of India, and was only believed to
be of Arabia, because it could not be traced further than
to the Arabian merchants, through whose hands the in
habitants of Western Asia and Europe obtained it. How
frequent its use in the Levitical offerings need not to be
observed ; so frequent and so predominant, that although
we cannot affirm it to have been absolutely restricted to
the service of God, yet we justly feel that there was an
ascription of Divine honours to Him unto whom this of
fering was made.
In the myrrh there is no such explicit recognition of a
Divine character in Him to whom it is presented, as in
the two preceding gifts ; nor was it to be expected that
there should, since in this lay rather the confession of bis
mortality. It appears, indeed, as one of the four ingre
dients of the holy anointing oil, (Exod. xxx. 23,) but
this is the only occasion on which we find it serving for
holy uses. It oozed from an acacia-like plant, found
chiefly in Arabia, and was used dry as a gum, or liquid
as an ointment. Its antiseptic qualities caused it to be
employed freely for purposes of embalming ; and thus it
was largely imported into Egypt, (Gen. xxxvii. 25 ; xliii.
11;) and in a hundred pounds' weight of myrrh and aloes
Nicodemus wrapt the dead body of our Lord, (John xix.

1 H. N., 1. 12, c. 31.
' Odor Arabicus, as it was therefore called. Cf. Heredotus, 3, 107.

MATT. II. 1 l.J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 67
%
39,) so that in this very cradle he receives already the
prophecy of his death.1

1 It is well known that the dramatic representation of modern Europe
grew up under the wing of the Church, and only slowly detached itself
from this its earliest shelter. Of the dramatic element, which was al
lowed to find place in its own services, we have a curious illustration in
the manner in which this offering of the Magi was set forth in some
churches on the festival of Epiphany. (Binterim, Denkwiirdigkeiten,
v. 5, p. 316.) Three boys, clothed in silk, with golden crowns upon
their heads, and each a golden vessel in his hand, represented the wise
men from the East. Entering the choir, and advancing toward the al
tar, they chanted the following strophe :
O quam dignis celebranda dies ista laudibus,
In qua Christi genitura propalatur gentibus,
" Pax terrenis nunciatur, gloria ccelestibus;
Novi Partus signum fulget Orientis Patria.
Currant reges Orientis steila sibi previa,
Currant reges et adorant Deum ad praesepia,
Tres adorant reges unum, triplex est oblatio.
During the singing of these verses they gradually approached the al
tar; there the first lifted up the vessel which he held in his hand, ex
claiming: Aurum primo,
And the second: thus secundo,
And the third : myrrham dante tertio.
Hereupon, the first once more:
Aurum regem,
The second: thus ccelestem,
And the third: mori nutat unctio.
Then one of them pointed with his hand to the Star hanging from the

68 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [_MATT. II. 1 1 .
And now the first great Manifestation of Christ to
the Gentiles is complete. It is because the coming of
the Magi has ever been contemplated by the Church in
the light of such a. Manifestation, because these wise
men have been by it regarded as the ambassadors of
the heathen world,1 and thus their homage, the homage
of all, that the day on which they came occupies so
prominent a place in our Christian Year. That, re
garded thus, it should do so, lay in the very nature of
things. For us Gentiles that day could be one of lio
common solemnity or gladness, on which the first signi
ficant intimation was given that He who was born King
of the Jews, was also He in whom the Gentiles might
trust ; willing to receive the homage of those who were
far off, as well as those who were near.2 That day

roof of the church, and sang in a loud voice: Hoc signum magni Re
gis : and all three proceeded to make their offerings, singing meanwhile
the responsal, Eamus, inquiramus eum, et offeramus ei munera, aurum,
thus, et myrrham. At the conclusion of this responsal, a younger boy
lifted up his voice, which was meant to imitate the voice of an angel,
from behind the altar, and sang: Nuntium vobis fero de supemis; Na
tus est Christus dominator orbis. In Bethlehem Judae; sic enim pro-
pheta dixerat ante. Hereupon the three who represented the kings
withdrew into the sacristy, singing, In Bethlehem natus est Rex ccelo-
rum, &c.
1 Chrysostom yet more strongly entitles them: o/ tijc «xxij<ri«
7rpoyovot. 2 Leo the Great, who has no less than seven admirable sermons on
the Epiphany, (Serm. 30 — 36,) explains well in the first of them the
grounds on which fhe Church has a feast of Epiphany, and what there
is of universal interest wrapt up in that special event of this day: Ad
omnium enim hominum spectat salutem, quod infantia Medialoris De1

MATT. II. 11-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 69
must needs be a great one for us, which showed the
Gentiles coming to the brightness of his rising, and not
coming only, but drawn thither by an especial leading
of his providence and grace ; for it is not the day on
which the Gentiles found Him, — that was but the con
sequence, — the day is rather that of his manifesting of
Himself to the Gentiles.
The Church Collect of this day abundantly justifies
its name, collecting and gathering up into a single focus
so much of the past thought and feeling and utterance of
the Church in regard of this day, and of the application
to ourselves of that event which on it we celebrate. That
our faith may pass into sight as did that of these eastern
sages, this is plainly its petition. Faith passed for them
into sight, when they who had trusted so long to that
lodestar in the heaven, who had travelled so far, not see
ing but believing, at length entered the house, and "saw
the young Child" with his mother. And, looking at
them, we ask that our faith, the faith by which we walk
in the present time, may pass into a sight even more
blessed than theirs was then; for that was of the Lord
still in his weakness and infirmity, but this in which we

et hominum jam universo declarabatur mundo, cum adhuc exiguo deti-
neretur oppidulo. Quamvis enim Israeliticam gentem et ipsius gentis
unam familiam delegisset, de qua naturam universal humanitatis as-
sumeret, noluit tamen intra maternae habitationis angustias ortCls sui
latere primordia; sed mox ab omnibus voluit agnosci, qui dignatus est
omnibus nasci. And Aquinas (Summ. Theol., 3, 36, 3 :) Ilia mani-
festatio nativitatis Christi fuit quasdam prselibatio plena? manifestationis
quae erat futura.

70 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [jHATT.II.il.
ask that our faith maybe swallowed up, is even the frui
tion of his glorious Godhead.1

* The point of the Collect, which perhaps is sometimes missed,, lies
clearly in the antithesis between "faith" and "fruition." This point
comes out more clearly, with the allusion to 2 Cor. v. 7: Per fidem
enim ambulamus, et non per speciem, in the Collect as it stood in the
Latin : Deus qui hodierna die Unigenitum tuum gentibus steila duce
revelasti ; concede propitius, ut qui jam te ex fide cognovimus, usque ad
contemplandam speciem tuae celsitudinis perducamur, per eundem Do-
minum. Long as is the following extract, it is yet so beautiful in it
self, and helps so much to place us in a right poirit of view for under
standing this Collect and the Church's meaning therein, that I shall
quote it ; and the more readily, as we are often in danger of missing
many testimonies of the English Church's love and reverence for anti
quity, through our too slight acquaintance with the elder theology of
the Church, in allusions to which, her prayers, and especially her col
lects, are so eminently, and yet so unostentatiously, rich. The passage
is from an Epiphany sermon of Guerricus, a worthy scholar of St. Ber
nard (Bernardi Opp., ed. Bened. v. 2, p. 956 :) Gratias tibi, Pater lu-
minum, qui dixisti de tenebris lumen splendescere, et illuxisti in cordi-
bus nostris ad illumin ationem scientist in facie Christi Jesu. Haec siqui-
dem est lux vera, immo vita sterna, utcognoscamus teunum Deum, et
quem misisti Jesum Christum. Cognoscimus quidem per fidem, ipsam
tenentes arrham fidelem quia cognoscemus te per speciem. Interim
tamen auge nobis fidem; donee per fidem perducamur ad faciem, tanquam
per stellam praeducem ad nostrum Bethleemiticum ducem, qui egressus
de Bethleem regit Israelem et regnal in Jerusalem. O quanto gaudio
ibi tripudiat fides magorum, cernentium in ilia. Jerusalem regnantem,
quem in Bethleem adoraverunt vagientem! Hie visus est in diversorio
pauperum, ibi in palatio videtur angelorum; hie in pannis parvulorum,
ibi in splendoribus sanctorum; hie in gremio matris, ibi in solio Patris.
Plane digna beatorum fides magorum, ut tam felici visione remunerctur ;
quae cum in eo nihil nisi infirmUm et contemptibile videret, non tamen
scandalizari potuit, quominus Deum in homine, et hominem in Deo
veneraretur  De his omnino convenienter intelligi potest, quod apud

MATT. II. 11. J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 71
Before leaving this visit of the wise men contemplated
in the light of an Epiphany, it may be well to observe
that when we speak of it as the Manifestation of Christ
to the Gentiles, the words must not be taken to affirm
that this was the only one, even in the days of his flesh,
but the first. For as our Lord's open ministry began
and ended with a temptation, began with that of the wil
derness and ended with that of the garden, exactly so a
manifestation to the Gentiles found place in his cradle
and just before his cross. It is indeed curious how
slightly we commonly pass over the other and later
manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, which yet St.
John relates with so marked an emphasis, which the Lord
welcomes with such a solemn gladness, and which is the
motive of so deep a discourse of his. (John xii. 20, 33.)
Seldom or never as that second is brought into relation
with this first, there yet exists between them a most real
connexion. It is here as with the two temptations, which
together include the whole circle of temptation : for ex
actly so the two manifestations of Christ embrace together
the whole Gentile world in its two grand divisions of east
and west. This earlier was to the elder East, that later
to the younger West. On the last day of our Lord's
open presence in the temple certain Greeks desire to see

Salomonem scriptum est, Justorum semita quasi lux splendescens pro-
cedit, et crcscit usque ad perfectum diem. (Prov. iv. 18.) Primo nam-
que semitam justifies ingressi sunt ad lucem splendentis sideris, cujus
ductu profecerunt ad videndura novum ortum matutinae lucis; sicque
demum pervenerunt ad contemplandam faciem meridiani Solis, in die
virtutis sutE rutilantis.

72 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 11.
Jesus. (John xii. 21.) What is this but the question
over again, "Where is He that is born King ofthe
Jews?" The Lord himself recognises all the signifi
cance of the moment, and of that request of theirs. It
fills him with holy joy ; he accepts the augury, beholding
in this little band of Greeks another pledge and prophecy
of the fulness of the Gentiles that should come in, and
the hour as already present in which He would be glori
fied in them. (ver. 23, 24.)
And surely it is not a little noticeable that as God
spake, as we have seen, to those eastern wise men in a
symbol of nature, and in that the most suitable to them,
by a Star, so to those western Greeks in the like, by a
corn of wheat, and the mute prophecy of life out of death
which it contained. Lest they should be perplexed and
offended at his death, which was so near, He does not
refer them to Old Testament prophecies, according to
which it needed that Christ should suffer. These would
have been indeed most fit in the case of Jewish candidates
for admission into the circle of his disciples, from whom
He would fain remove the offence of his death, (cf. Luke
xxiv. 26, 27; Acts xvii. 3.) But for these Greeks He
has another word; "Verily, verily, I say unto you, ex
cept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." And if
there was a fitness in the Star for those eastern watchers
of the heavens, there was at least an equal fitness in this
image of the corn of wheat for these Greeks. For this
truth of life only through death, which was about to be
sealed first in Himself, and afterwards in each one of his
people, was just the truth which the Greek mind had

MATT. II. 1 l.J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 73
missed, which in the moral world it had refused to know.
They had contemplated the fair and beautiful forms of
this earthly life as the highest which humanity could
reach; they had sought to fix these, and had done so in
a thousand shapes, in sculpture, in painting, and in
poetry, and with a success which no other people had at
all approached. But yet they could not fix them for ever.
There was a worm at the root of all this beauty, because
it was not a beauty of holiness; and the whole story of
Greek culture with all its tragic issues is made plain to
us by this single word of our Lord's. In a world of
sin, only through the grave and gate of death, only out
of a divine death, a death in God, can any enduring life
or beauty come forth; the corn of wheat must die, be
fore it can truly live. But this matter would lead us
from our immediate theme, and we must not follow it
further. But now, the task of these visiters, far from being
accomplished, and their homage paid, the wicked king
shall not be permitted to weave them and their devoted
ness to the Lord into the dark woof of the treachery
which he meditates. They are "warned of God in a
dream that tliey should not return unto Herod." We
may well conceive in all drearns more or less of a na
tural predisposition, so to speak, on the part of the
dreamer. The thoughts and sights of day are the stuff
out of which the visions of the night are woven; and
this would be so in the case of divine dreams and vi
sions equally as in that of others. Peter is hungry, and
to that hunger of his, itself probably more than natural,
God is pleased to link on the vision of the sheet full of

74 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 11-
all manner of objects for the satisfying of his desire.
That hunger is used as the first motive for the farther
teaching which the apostle shall afterwards receive.
(Acts x. 13.) It was on the anniversary of the
day on which Jerusalem was smitten, when, there
fore, the prophet's thoughts must needs have been dwell
ing on the great desolations of that earthly city,' that the
glorious vision of the heavenly Jerusalem was vouchsafed
to him. (Ezek. xl. 1.) Nebuchadnezzar's proud dream
of empire, prophetic as it was, yet was in some sort only
a prolongation of his waking thoughts. (Dan. ii. 31. )'
Perhaps it was thus also with these wise men. Their
interview with the tyrant grown gray in wickedness and
crime, may have inspired them only with distrust and
fear. The tiger may not have been able effectually to
hide his claws. The simpler they were, the more sure,
if not to see through his cunning device, yet to have a
feeling and instinct of his falseness; "for to be innocent
is nature's wisdom."2 In such a suspicion and fear they

* Gregory the Great: A radice cogitationis inchoavit: which Grotius
carries out yet further in some admirable remarks on the different sym
bolism of this vision of the proud king, and the later vision vouchsafed
to the righteous prophet himself (Dan. vii. 3:) Nabuchodonosoro futura
imperia ostenduntur sub facie humana., augusta, grandi, splehdida; quia
illeimperia magni faciebat, et habebat quasi pro diis suis, qui perstatuas
coli solebant. At Danieli infra.eadem apparent sub feratum imagine;
noverat enim propheta esse omnia ista imperia idololatriae, ac proinde
Diaboli, instrumento, per quae tamen, ut et per ipsos diabolos, Deus sua
decreta exsequeretur.
3 As Goethe, who, though not a Christian, yet so often and so won
derfully witnesses for Christian truth, makes the learned Faust to be

MATT. II. 12-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 75
may have left his presence, and may thus have had a
certain predisposition for the divine revelation which was
vouchsafed to them now. But be that as it might, they
had this warning of God in a dream, that they should
not return to Herod, nor assist him in that act of worship
toward the royal Child which he meditated. In obedience
to the heavenly monition, " they departed into their own
country another way"1 — a circumstance which has not
been left without its myslical and allegorical application.
All, it has been said, who, like these wise men, have seen
Christ, have been admitted into his presence and wor
shipped Him, will, after that glorious manifestation of
Him in their souls, walk in quite another way from that
which hitherto they have been treading.2 Here we lose
sight of these mysterious visiters of the cradle of our
Lord, whom, however, the legends of a later day fondly

deceived by Mephistopheles, but the simple Margaret to have a shudder
ing and instinctive sense of his Satanic nature from the first.
1 For their long journey's sake the Magi are often in Roman Catholic
countries taken as the patrons of travellers. Thus in Styria and Carin-
thiait is common even now to have the initials of their supposed names,
C. M. B., (see p-'lSJ over the doors ofthe inns.
3 Ambrose (Exp. in Luc, I. 2, § 46:) Alia venerunt via magi, alii
redeunt; qui enim Christum viderant, Christum intellexerant, meliores
utique quam venerant, revertuntur. Augustine (Serm. 202, c. 3:) Nos
ergo, carissimi, quorum erant illi magi primitiae, nos haereditas Christi
usque ad terminos terra; ... sic eum annuntiemus in hac terra in hac
regione carnis nostra?, ut non qua. venimus redeamus, nee prioris nostra?
conversationis vestigia repetamus. Hoc est enim quod et illi magi, non
qua venerant, redierunt. Via mutata, vita mutata est. For a slightly
different use of this their returning by another way, see Tertullian, De
Idololat, c. 9.

76 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 12.
pursued to their own land, out of a sense which in itself
was indeed a true one, that their lives could not hence
forth have been common ones, that this coming of theirs,
which has so great and so lasting a significance for us,
must needs have had more than-a passing significance
for themselves. But with these we have not to do.1

' There is a sketch done with exquisite grace, ofthe whole legendary
lore which in the middle ages gradually clustered round the brief scrip
tural account of the Magi, in an article on the Cathedral of Cologne,
in the Quarterly Review, 1846, v. lxxviii., p. 433—437. The very
popular story book from which it is drawn, and-which of course did but
in the main gather up the legends already existing, was composed by
Johannes von Hildesheim, who died in 1375, and it lias much to tell of
the first arrival of these Magi from their own land. Kings of three dif
ferent regions in India, of Godolia, Saba, and Tharsis, they arrived each
with his numerous retinue in the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem,
by separate routes, and unknown to each other, and only there at its
gates discovered that the same errand, and the same Star had drawn
them all. It has much also to tell of Herod's fear, as with their united
trains, in numbers like an army, they rode through the streets of Jerusa
lem; of their own amazement at the -unutterable light which filled the
lowly hut where they found the infant Lord ; so that, instead of all the
costly treasures which they had brought to offer, they presented each
what came first to hand — a little gold, some frankfncense, and some
myrrh. And not to dwell on much else, wonderfully characteristic of
that fresh spring of poetry which, in those ages, was everywhere bub
bling up — we have in this little Volksbuch all tlie later history ofthe kings
from the time that we lose sight of them in the sacred records. We learn
how they were baptized by St. Thomas, the apostle of India, and assisted
him in the preaching of the Gospel there, and how at length they sealed
the faith of Christ with their blood. Nor does this history leave them
till after many vicissitudes it at length brings their bones to Cologne,
the city of the Three Kings, which even now believes itself enriched
with these relics, and in its cathedral would fain rear a shrine worthy
to contain them.

MATT. II. 13. J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 77
It was after the departure of the Magi, — we are not
told how soon after, and our estimate of the interval that
had elapsed, will be affected by many considerations, —
that Joseph was warned, and by the same channel of
communication, " to take the young Child and his mo
ther and fee into Egypt." That land was at once so
near, and of such easy access, that we find it continually
serving as a place of refuge for those who on any ac
count desired to make swift escape from Palestine;
(Jer. xxvi. 21 ; xliii. 7; 1 Kin. xi. 40 ;) while yet, near
as it was, it had this advantage, that it lay beyond the
jurisdiction of Herod. But besides these obvious reasons
for its selection, it was a land which had already played
its part in the two great crises of the early history of
the fleshly Israel ; then, when, with Jacob, the children
of Israel came down thither; and again, when Moses
led them out of that land; and it should therefore now
fitly play its part again in the early history of the spi
ritual Israel, as concentrated in Christ.1 The words
" Be thou there until I bring thee word," intimate ano
ther revelation in reserve for Joseph. He should take
no single step in behalf of this Child committed to his

'Thus Leo the Great (Serm. 32:) At ille, qui sanguinem suum pro
mundi redemtione fundendum in aliam differret aetatem, iEgypto se
parontum ministerio subvectus intulerat, repetens scilicet Hebrseae gentis
antiqua cunabula, et principatum veri Joseph majoris providentiae potes-
tate disponens, ut illam diriorem omni inedia famern qua jEgyptiorum
mentes veritatis inopia laborabant, veniens de ccelo Panis vitae et cibus
rationis auferret ; nee sine ilia regione pararetur singularis hostiae sacra-
mentum, in qua primum occisione agni, sarutiferum Crucis signum et
Pascha Domini fuerat prafbrmatum.

78 the star of The wise men. [matt. ii. 14.
guardianship without a distinct leading and intimation of
God's will. For of Him, even more than of any other,
that word should be true that his times should be in his
Father's hands.
Joseph, aroused from sleep, at once " look the young
Child and his mother by night, and departed into
Egypt." This " by night " may not indicate any more
than the promptness of his obedience, so that without
delay, that very night, he commenced the journey; or,
seeing that there is no " by night " mentioned on the
occasion of his return, (ver. 21,)1 the word may very
well also imply the urgent peril of the time, which, as
he rightly understood, would brook no delay, but made it
needful that their flight should be at once instant and
secret' — instant, lest the bloody emissaries of Herod
should be upon them; secret, lest, if the way which they
had taken were known, these might follow the fugitives
on their track.
These perils of the infancy of our Lord have their
historic and their mythic anticipations and counterparts?
in Moses their historic ; in many, and notably in the real
or assumed founders of religions and of empires, Cyrus
and Romulus for example, their mythic. This last cir
cumstance is nothing strange ; for when we regard Christ
as the central man of humanity, we shall feel that it was
only to be expected, that in Him should repeat themselves

1 Jerome, who notes this, seems to hint something mystical in this
" by night," like that " it was night" when the traitor Judas went forth
upon his errand, (John xiii. 30;) that the present was even an " hour
and power of darkness."

MATT. II. 14.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 79
in a higher form many of the incidents which had found
place, or had been imagined to find place, in other notable
personages of history. For how many shadows took
substance, how many dreams became realities in Him !
The sense that the world of unrighteousness will be up
in arms against the mighty redresser of wrongs, and as
such, it must be remembered, the legends about these in
each case describe them, that it will have an instinct of
his appearance, and will endeavour to tread out, while
it is yet a tiny spark, that fire that shall one day con
sume it, this sense men have every where had; and with
this, and as the consequence of this, they have felt that
his very infancy shall not be secure, that there shall be
plots of hell against the heavenly Destroyer, long ere he
has put forth his destroying might ; that the future Her
cules will have to strangle serpents in his cradle. Nor
has men's consciousness of this failed to find its utterance
in a thousand shapes, which, fabulous in part or altoge
ther, did yet point at, and bear witness for, that which
should be wholly true.1
How, then, should this trait have been wanting here?
We may say with reverence that it scarcely could have
been absent in the life of Him with whom we now have
to do. The great strife between light and darkness which
runs through all history, had now reached at once its very

1 Thus in the Mohammedan tradition — which is also a. Jewish,
though probably a later Jewish one— about Abraham, the same or
similar perils beset him at his birth, from Nimrod, whose idolatrous em
pire Abraham shall afterwards overthrow. (D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient-
art, Abraham.)

80 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [[MATT. II. 14.
deepestground and its highest height. In every other
witness for the light there was something, oftentimes
much, of the darkness which he went forth to combat;
but here was light in which was no darkness at Jill. The
whole might and malice of hell must therefore array it
self against this purest manifestation of the opposing
kingdom: and whatever hostility it had put forth against
that kingdom of light before, and in its lower forms,
must repeat itself with a deadlier intensity now against
its crowning manifestation in the person of the Son of
God. In this respect the perils of our Lord's cradle run
parallel to those with which his ministry began, to those
of his temptation ; with, of course, the difference, that in
these the enemy makes war against Christ's natural, in
those, against his spiritual, life. But there was the same
needs be for that passage of his life as for this. In
Christ's appearance as the great head of the kingdom of
righteousness, there lay the necessity that He should en
counter, not temptations only; which every man has done,
but the Temptation — that in which the whole force of
all which entices and allures from God should be brought
to bear against Him. Being to destroy the whole king
dom of darkness, He must needs encounter at the very
threshold of his life — life natural and life spiritual — the
whole concentrated might and malignity of the Evil one.
Of the incidents which must have accompanied the
Lord's flight into Egypt, we have no authentic details ;
nor yet of his abode there. The freer and more wel
come, therefore, the field which this portion of his life
offered to the inventors of the apocryphal gospels ; nor
have they failed to avail themselves of the license which

MATT. II. 14-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 81
this silence of sacred history afforded them, to expatiate
freely in the region of fiction which thus lay open be
fore them.1 Tradition makes the place where the Holy
Family tarried during their abode there to have been
Matarea, in the neighbourhood of that temple, rival to
the temple at Jerusalem, which Onias, a fugitive priest,
had erected at Heliopolis about a hundred and fifty years
before.

1 In the Evangelium Infantias, now existing only in an Arabic version,
but resting probably on a Syriac original, the flight into Egypt, and the
adventures in Egypt, with the wonders that were there wrought by and
in behalf of tire Child Jesus, occupy several chapters, c. 9 — 26. (Thilo's
Codex Apocryphus, p. 73 — 95.) These miracles and adventuie, are,
for the most part, childish and unedifying enough ; yet of the former
there is one to which Athanasius once alludes, which is worthily con
ceived—the fall of the chief idol of Egypt at the presence of the Lord
in the Land, c. 10, though the hint for it was, doubtless, obtained from
Isai. xix. 1 ; which was thought to find its fulfilment therein; "Behold,
the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt : and
the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence." (Cf. 1 Sam. v. 3,
4.) This apocryphal book makes the time spent in Egypt to have been
three years, t. 26. Unaware of the real facts of the case, wlvich would
not have lent even a semblance to the charge, and that the time passed
in Egypt was that of the Lord's tenderest infancy, the early adversaries
pf Christianity were wont to charge Him with having brought his mi
raculous, or as they said, magical, powers from Egypt, which was es
teemed the very home of these secret and mysterious arts, the land to
which, if you divided the magic of the world into fen parts, nine would
rightly belong. Thus the heathen in Arnobius (Adv. Gent, 1. 3, «...
43 :) Magus fuit; clandestinis artibus omnia ilia perfecit: ^gyptiorum
ex adytis angelorum potentia nomina et remotas furatus est disciplines.
gf. Origen, Con. Cels., 1, i, c. 28, 38; Eusebius, Dem. Evang., 1. 3, c.
6; Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth., v. i, pp. 149, 166; Schoettgen,
Hor. Hebr., v. 2, p. 699.
6

82 1«JS BTAK VI! TUB WISH MEN. L»IATT. II. 15.
But in this, the Lord's abode in Egypt, with his sub- '
sequent bringing back from that land, the Evangelist notes
the fulfilment of a prophecy : He " was there until the
death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken ofthe Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt
have I called my Son,"1 The wOrds are from Hosea
xi. 1 ; for Origen's suggestion,2 whom Eusebius of
Csesarea follows, that they may be drawn from Num.
xxiv. 8, " God brought him forth out of Egypt," has
found no acceptance; as, indeed, it would be difficult to
suppose that by " the prophet" St. Matthew intended
Balaam, as must then be the case. Nor is it to be doubted
that, in their primary sense, the words are not prophetic,
but historic, and recount a past benefit to Israel, which
here, as in other places, is contemplated in its totality, and
called God's son, his first born; that they have reference
to his earlier goodness, in the great deliverance of the
children of Israel from their land of bondage. The fit
ness of their application to the later act of a mightier
preservation, rests on the fact that the calling of Israel
out of Egypt at that earlier day did stand in a typical
and prophetic relation to the later bringing back of Him
who was God's own Son out of the same land. As this
application of the passage has often been spoken against,

1 In this quotation St Matthew departs altogether from tlie Septua
gint, which, indeed, would not at all have answered his purpose, (tj-
Atyvnrov fitrixaXi tra. ra rtxytt ctuTov,) and attaches himself more
closely to the Hebrew original, which has the singular he needed,
and not the plural.
a In Num. Horn. 17.

MATT. II. 15.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 83
— Julian the apostate, for instance, affirming that St.
Matthew had endeavoured to impose on the simplicity of
Gentile readers, and palm on them a passage as prophe
tic of Christ, which, in truth, had no relation to Him,i
— it will not be lost labour a little to consider what are
the analogies which explain and justify the application
of the prophet's words to the matter in hand — what right
the Evangelist had to find, in that glorious event in the
past history of Israel, a prophecy of that which did now
a second time, and yet more gloriously, fulfil itself. Of
course, to make these analogies more than a mere fanci
ful playing with the earlier Scripture on the part of the
later Evangelist, which we dare not attribute to him, we
must believe that they ground themselves in the inten
tions of God, and are not merely traced by the ingenuity
of man: we must believe that it belonged to his eternal
purpbse that the earlier should in manifold ways prefigure
the later; and that among the other witnesses for a Divine
intention running through the whole history of Israel,
He was graciously willing that this should not be want
ing. In the first place, then, Israel being by the prophet
called God's son, is contemplated, not on its fleshly side,
not in its degeneracy, and as it fell short of the idea for

1 Jerome (in loc.:) Ut simplicitati eorum qui de Gentibus crediderant,
illuderet. A most unhappy calumny, as Jerome replies; since, apart
from the question of fitness or unfitness of the application to Christ, that
could not have been his motive, who wrote in Hebrew, and, as all are
agreed, in his first intention not for Gentile converts, but for the circle of
Hebrew Christians alone.

84 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. QmATT.II.16.
which it was constituted ; but in so far as it realized the.
idea only as such was it typical of Christ, who was a
concentrated Israel, bearing this very name. (Isai. xlix.
3.) Alike for Israel contemplated thus, and for Christ,
Egypt was a place of shelter. They went down thither
when in danger of perishing by famine, He by the sword.
It was in each case not by the will of man, but under the
direct leadings and interpositions of God's providence, that
He and they sought shelter in a land, which, as eminently
the land of idols, the unclean land, might have seemed
beforehand? the unfittest for them.1 Both were thus
withdrawn for a season from the true land which was
appointed to them as that in which their work was to be
accomplished, but to which, after a temporary stay in
Egypt, in both cases they returned ; Israel being called
out of Egypt to show forth the glory of God lo the world,
as in a like, and only in a far higher, sense was Christ.
In either case God's grace and providence were wonder
fully displayed, alike in the shelter which Egypt yielded
for awhile, and in the calling out of Egypt for the fulfil
ment of a glorious destiny.
" Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of
the wise men, was exceeding wroth" — not that there was

1 Calvin: Posset enim alioqui hie obstrepere carnis sensus, Scilicet ex
jSEgypto venturus est Redemptor? Matthaeus ergo non esse novum vel
insolens admonet, quod Deus Filium indesibi vocet, ac potius hoc ad
fidei nostra confirmationem valere, quod sicuti olim, ita nunc de integro
nascatur ex iEgypto Dei Ecclesia. Hoc modo est diversum, quod olim
totus populus jEgypti ergastulo inclusus fuerit: in secunda autem re-
demptione solum Ecclesia? caput Christus illic latuerit ; sed qui omnium
salutem ct vitam in se inclusam gestabat.

MATT. II. 16.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 85
any intention on their parts to mock him ; all that they
meant was, not to allow themselves to be made the tools
and instruments of his wickedness; but Scripture here,
as in so many other places — we have already noticed one
— speaks phenomenally, as from their point of view, with
whom at the moment it has to do. As it does this here
in the historical, so also in other places in the natural and
in the ethical woilds. In the natural, when it is content
to speak in the common language of men of the sun rising
and setting: in the ethical, when, for examp'.e, St. Paul
speaks of "the foolishness of God," "the weakness
of God," (1 Cor. i. 25,) of that which appears to men
as such ; when he so far puts himself for the moment in
their place as to speak their language. Thus is it here;
Herod counted that the wise men mocked him ; there
was most truly One that mocked him in them, but his
mockings Herod could not see ; for his ways are far
above out of the sight of such men as this.
" The king's wrath is the messenger of death," though
not now the death of Him at whom he aimed, for He
was "the elect among ten thousand." (Cant. v. IO.)1
1 Why the festival of the Holy Innocents follows so hard on those of
St. Stephen and St. John the Evangelist, and what was the Church's
meaning in combining them all three with a greater festival than them
all, and in what relation they stand to one another, and to it, baa been
often drawn out All are familiar with the three grades of martyrdom
which have been found in them, in St. John, and in St. Stephen ; yet
perhaps not so much so with application which was fondly made in olden
time of these words in the Canticles: " my beloved is white and ruddy,
the chiefest (or, elect) among ten thousand," (v. 10:) to the matter in
hand. This Dufandus (Ration. Div. Off., 1. 7, c. 42,) will best explain :
Quemadmodum regi urbem intranti comites additi sunt, sic et Ecclesia

86 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [mATT.H. 16.
But Herod, counting that in the death of all, the one
would surely be included, " 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 ofthe wise men."
Thus early it proved true that Christ_ brought a cross
with Him, that to be drawn into his circle was to be
drawn into the mysterious circle of pain. What fitter
prologue could there have been to the great tragedy
of Christianity, iu which feeble women, innocent chil
dren, wailing mothers, have the foremost parts allotted
to them still? And inasmuch as Christ Himself suffered
in these children who suffered for Him, we may say
that here already the sufferings of Christ commenced.
And if to any it should seem that for Him was reserved
the easier lot, that He lived while others died, yet let it
be remembered that He was spared only for a longer
agony, and a sharper doom. He was withdrawn from
that sword, and from its momentary pang, that He might
be baptized withhis long baptism of pain ; and that, saved
from Herod's sword, He might one day hang upon Pi
late's cross,
In nothing, certainly, does the Church's just estimate
Salsaitqrj mundum ingresso_ congruos comites voluit adjunetos. Qui
autem sunt hi comites? Ea de re in Cantico sic dicitar; Dilectus
meus, h. e. puer Jesus, candidus, et rubicundus, electus ex millibus.
Ecclesia igitur Christo nato comitem rubicundum sive Stephanum, qui
rubicundum pro Christo sanguinem fudit.-comitem candidum, S. Jo
an nom Evangelistam, quem candor virgineus commendat, et multa
millia infantum e quibus electus est puer Jesus, cum reliqui omnes occi-
derentur in tractu Bethlehemitico, pulchro reddidit

MATT. II. 16.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 87
of the relative value of the temporal and the eternal ma
nifest itself more clearly, than in the boldness with which
she has dared to call these children blessed, the little day
of whose earthly life was sp abruptly and permanently
dosed.1 In nothing does the tenderness of the Church,
her true sense of the overflowing grace of Him who is
her Head, come out more strongly than in the light in
which she has ever regarded them and their deaths, than
in the title of "Holy Innocents" which she has not
feared to give them. For just as, to take a slighter ex
ample, it has been confidently assumed of Simon the
Cyrenian, that the labour and the ignominy even of that
compelled bearing of Christ's eross (Matt, xxvii. 32) was
afterwards repaid him in a saving knowledge of Him
under whose burden he then came, whose load thus

' Dulees anima?, quas ante nefas
Letem rapuit, quas suhductas
Vitse pelago, nunc portus habet ;
Non vos illic spes sollicitae,
Non ambitio, non dira fames
Exercet opum, major habenti;
Non saevities, grassata semel,
Quae securos invasit adhuc,
Finemque dedit, vixdum expertis,
Nosse malorum. Nunc parta quies,
Interque piasj fati immemores
Lcetosque dies, ducitis, umbras.
The quotation is from the Herodes Infanticida of Daniel Heinsius,
which was much admired in its day. It is a tragedy, on the model of
Seneca's, and of very moderate worth ; but these Unes, making part of
a chorus in which the angels gratulate the slain children, are pretty,
though they reach not the earlier strains in which the Church has cele
brated their martyrdoms.

88 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 16.
far he lightened ; so has the Church been bold to conclude
that it was not for nothing, as regarded themselves, that
these infants were thus entangled in the tragic destinies
of their Lord. She has confidently assumed, that near
ness to Him did not bring to them merely their early
doom and their baptism of blood ; but that, unconscious
martyrs though they were, still martyrdom was imputed
to them;1 anil all the hard-hearted arguments to the con
trary2 are nothing worth against that true instinctive sense
1 Cyprian, Ep. 52 : jEtas necdum habilis ad pugnam, idohea extitit
ad coronam.
2 How different these from the language of affection and tenderness
in which they and their early death have beenjegarded by the elder teach
ers of the Church. Thus Augustine, from whose words here quoted
we infer that their martyrdom already found contradiction in his day :
(Serm. 373:) O parvuli beati, modo nati, nunquam tentati, nondum
luctati, jam coronati. Ule de vestra corona dubitaverit in passione pro
Christo, qui etiam baptjsmum parvulis prodesse non existimat Christi.
And the author of a sermon that used to be ascribed to Augustine: O
quam beataaetas, quae necdum Christum potest loqui, et jam pro Christo
meretur occidi. Quam feliciter nati, quibus in primo nascendi limine
sterna vita obviam venit ! Incurrunt quidem inter ipsa primordia ac
cepts lucis periculum et finem salutis, sed de ipso protinus fine capiunt
principia aeternitalis. Immaturi quidem videntur ad mortem, sed feliciter
moriuntur ad vitam. Vixdum gustarunt prasentem, statim transeunt
ad futuram. Nondurn egressi infantioe cunas, et jam perveniunt ad co
ronas. Rapiuntur quidem a complexibus matrum, sed redduntur
gremiis angelorum. And once more : Jure dicuntur martyrUm flores,
quos in medio ftigore infidelitatis exortos velut primas erumpentis eccle
sia; gemmas quaedam persecutionis pruina decbxit. Thus, too, Leo the
Great, (Serm. 31:) Quasi jam diceret: Sinite parvulos venire ad me,
ta'ium est enim regnum ccelorum; nova gloria coronabat infantes, et de
initiis suis parvulorum primordia consecrabat: ut disceretur neminem
liominum divini incapacem esse sacramenti, quando etiam ilia sita* gloire
essi-t apta inavtyrii.

MATT. II. 16-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 89
out of which it has been ever felt that what they thus
endured for Christ's sake was repaid them again ; that
for them also, martyrs but in deed, that word did yet
come true, " Near to the sword, is near also to God."'
But the " two years old and under" — this superfluous
cruelty, as it has seemed, of Herod, this bloody execution,
directed not merely against the new-born infants, but
against all the male children up to two years of age, has
at all times perplexed many. And from this they have
derived one of their chief arguments, who place the visit
of the Magi not during the first days of the Lord's earthly
existence, but very much later. On this there will be
occasion by and by to speak : for the present, it will be
sufficient to observe that the "two years old" need not
compel us to any such conclusion. What Herod wanted
was to make sure of reaching the dreaded Child. Some
time must have elapsed while he was waiting for the re
turn of the wise men, and before he could persuade him
self that he was mocked by them ; some more, perhaps,
before he determined on this method of delivering himself
from his fears. The emissaries that he employed were
not such as he could trust to make very nice distinctions.
He was determined there should be no mistakes, and
gave himself, therefore, this broad margin, lest, had he
calculated too nearly,2 the one at whom he aimed should
by some chance have escaped him. The same determi
nation, at all costs, to make all sure, appears in his com-

' Ignatius (Ad. Smyrn., 4:) 'Eyyvt pttxaiqat:, syyvg ©sou.
' So Grotius: Herodes omni modo cavens ne puer elaberetur, latius
sevitiam extendit.

90 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 16.
mand that the children should be slain, not in Bethlehem
alone, to which yet the answer of the Sanhedrim alone
had pointed, but " in all the coasts thereof"
The assailants of Holy Scripture have at different times
urged- against the credibility of this whole account, the
extreme unlikelihood that Herod, to whom none can deny
the character of a sagacious and far-sighted politician,
should have trusted to such a weak device as this, when
he might so much more securely have laid hands on the
young Child; and they give us. not seldom to understand
how much more effectually they would have conducted the
affair, if it had been in their hands. But although, ar
guing from the result, men have called it this weak device,
did that deserve to be so considered, which would have
perfectly succeeded, had not the providence of God di
rectly interfered to defeat and bring it to nothing? How
much more certain were they who sought the Child in
love to discover Him,, than he would be,, seeking Him
in hate; how much more prudent to use their love for
his own ends, than by any premature step to cause the
object of his fear to be for ever withdrawn from his power,
— not to say, that there must have been every motive at
work in him which should induce him to conceal from
the .people his hatred of David's Son, and to proceed
against Him by plot and stratagem rather than by open
violence ; and who would here serve him better than these
harmless enthusiasts from the East, as he must have
esteemed them?
And even if this was such a weak device, and one sure
to fail, is not this the very character of wickedness,, that
it makes the most inexplicable oversights? Does not

MATT. II. 16-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 91
this psychological fact repeat itself evermore in the world's
history, that its cunning fails at the critical moment when
there was most need that it should stand? There are
some, indeed, who will never make allowance for the
wicked acting blindly. They do not at heart believe that
which Origen says on this very conduct of king Herod,
that wickedness in its very nature is something blind.'
Yet who can read the history of great criminals without
meeting there the most striking confirmation of this fact
— devices woven in great measure with the most won
drous skill and foresight, and yet failing, and grossly
failing, in some single point, omitting some most obvious
precaution? There is something which they have
not taken into calculation. They have worked their
sum with only the leaving out of one factor ; yet that
one sufficient to disturb the whole result; for that one is
God; even He who " taketh the wise in their own
craftinesss ;" who " turneth the way of the ungodly up
side down."
But, further, it has excited the surprise of some, nor
has this circumstance been left unused by the adversaries
of the faith, that no mention should occur of so remark
able an incident as this in profane history; and, most of
all, that all allusion to it should be wanting in Josephus,
who is otherwise so large in narrating the life, and so
free in noticing the atrocities, Of Herod.
Yet it is not entirely true that there is no allusion to it
in profane history. Certainly some have affirmed that
Macrobius, to whom alone we are indebted for such, was
i TvyXov ya$ rittrriv q r&yj/gia. (Con. Ccls., i. 61.)

92 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. .[MATT.II. 16.
no heathen, but a Christian, and that his, therefore; was
evidently no independent witness ; or, if they could not
prove this, they have wished that the question whether
he were a Christian or heathen should be considered as
an unsettled one; but the internal proofs of his belonging
to the remains of the heathen party are so strong, or, at
any rate, so sufficient, that it is difficult not to suspect
some motive at work in those who have stood out against
evidence so clear.1 He then, this Heathen Grammarian,
writing at the beginning of the fifth century, in a collec
tion of the jests and witty sayings of illustrious men, re
cords this among the keen sayings of Augustus: That
when he heard that among the children under two years
old, whom Herod, king of the Jews, had commanded to
be slain in Syria, his own son had been included, he ob
served, " It is better to be Herod's swine than his son."2
We catch a slight echo of this sanglant pun in the simi
larity of our words, "son" and "swine:" it does not,
that is, disappear so entirely in English as it does in the
Latin of Macrobius. Scaliger has called this bitter sar
casm of Augustus into doubt; he wonders, at least, how
it could have fallen from him, and on the very insufficient
ground, that Augustus had himself given Herod leave to
execute his sons. But if ever there was a saying that
bore the stamp of being his to whom it has been attri-
1 See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt., art. Macrobius; and Bahr's
Gesch. Rom. Literatur, p. 600.
a Saturn., 1. 2, c. 4: Quum audisset [Augustus] inter pueros, quos
in Syria Herodes rex Judneorum intra bimatum jussit interfici, filium
quoque ejus occisum; ait, melius est Herodis porcum '[w] quam filium

MATT. II. 16.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 93
buted, it is this. How much of the Eoman, and of
Augustus in particular, speaks out in it: his own affected,
perhaps in part real, clemency ; (he had urged Herod,
even while he gave him the permission, not to put his
sons to death ;) his contempt for the Jew, and for his
ceremonial law — most of all, for his abstinence from
swine's flesh, the favourite meat of the Roman;1 yea, his
very ill will at having had his consent asked and obtained
for such atrocities as these; — all of this seems to find
its utterance here.
But although the mot may thus be considered as itself
lifted above all suspicion, and is found recorded in the
writings of a heathen author, I yet cannot consider the
confirmation of the sacred history which it yields, so real
as some have been inclined to count it. Living as Ma
crobius did at the beginning of the fifth century, that is,
when the knowledge of the Christian Scriptures and of
the facts which they recorded had penetrated every where,
even into those few fortresses of heathendom which still
remained, such as the neoplatonism to which Macrobius
was himself probably addicted, there is no sufficient
ground for affirming that this is an independent witness
fop the truth of this event; or that his knowledge of it
was derived elsewhere than from Scripture itself. In all
probability it was drawn mediately or directly from
thence.2 It will be observed that the emperor's jest is

1 Juvenal (Sat 14, 98,) describing the Jews :—
Nee distare putant humana came suillam.
* The intra bimatum looks wonderfully as if it had grown out of the
unro Sitrovs xu.t xxrare^w ofthe Evangelist. — Of still slighter worth as

94 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [JHATT. II. 16.
complete, even after all that refers to the massacre ofthe
Innocents is withdrawn from it, that this massacre adds
nothing to its point — that point lying in the fact that he
who would hot kill a swine, had put to death three of his
own sons; and, farther, that the connecting link by
which the massacre of the children at Bethlehem is
brought into relation with this saying is one historically
inexact; namely, the. assumption on the part of Macro
bius, that among the children who there perished was
one of Herod's own;' for the supposition of Baronius
and some" others,3 which has no other ground than this
present passage, that there was such a child of his,
whom, by a just judgment of God, he included either
intentionally or by accident in this slaughter, this suppo
sition, however striking, is yet without a shadow of his
toric probability. How Macrobius came to confuse these

an independent heathen testimony, is the passage about the Magians
and the Star, so often quoted from Chalcidius, who himself was also a
Neo-Platonist, flourishing probably in the sixth, though some have
placed him in the fourth century. The passage which begins: Est quo
que alia sanctior et venerabilis historia, is but a reproduction, in weaker
outline, ofthe sacred narrative. See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Biog.
under his name, which considers it uncertain whether Chalcidius was
not a Christian after all.
' Some indeed have attempted to make inter pueros, " at the same
time as the children," with allusion to the fact that Antipater's execu
tion must have been very nearly contemporaneous. So J. Masson, in
an Essay of but moderate value, The Slaughter of the Children in Beth
lehem as an historical'Tact vindicated, Lond., 1728, p. 23.
a Keppler for instance, (De Anno Nat. Christi, p. 130;) Credibile in-
fantem et ipsum, ex pellice Bethleemitica. Herod was now seventy
years old.

MATT. II. 16J THE STAR OF THE WISE MENi 95
two events, Herod's putting to death of his own sons,
and murdering the children at Bethlehem, it is not very
hard to see : the sons were put to death under the charge
of affecting their father's throne and life; and these chil
dren, lest a competitor to that throne, and one that should
endanger that life, should be found among them.
I do not think, then, that we can honestly draw his
testimony into a confirmation of the scriptural account.
But if we do not find a confirmation therein, neither do
we need one. Did we regard St. Matthew merely in the
light of an historian to be believed until he shall prove
himself unworthy of credit, there would be nothing here
which we might not readily receive, as we receive ten
thousand other events of ancient history, if credible in
themselves, on the faith of some single witness. There
is nothing in this massacre alien from the character of
Herod.1 Any one who is acquainted with, and calls to
mind, the cruel precautions of eastern monarchs, in
times past and present, in regard of possible competitors
for their throne, often making an entire desolation, even
of their own kindred round them, will see in this what
many an eastern despot would have done — what cer
tainly a Herod would not have shrunk from doing.3
* Schlosser, the historian, who certainly would not count himself
under any obligation to receive a fact because he found it in the Bible,
acknowledges the internal probability of this massacre.
2 The sense ofthe worth of life while it is as yet undeveloped, that is
of child's life, can hardly be said to belong in any very high degree ex
cept to Christianity. How little the moral feeling of antiquity revolted
from precautions such as Herod's, where great political interests seemed
at stake, we have evidence in the story, and the evidence is equally good,

96 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. 11. 1 0.
The man who could put his wife and three of his own
sons to death, who made a solitude round him by the
slaughter of so many of his friends, who could kill, under
semblance of sport, as he did, the youthful high priest
Aristobulus;1 who, when he was himself dying by hor
rible and loathsome diseases, so far from being softened,
or owning the hand of God, which every one else saw
therein, could devise such a devilish wickedness as that
narrated by Josephus, to secure weeping and lamentation
at his death,2 would have had little scruple in conceiving
or carrying out an iniquity such as the. sacred historian
lays here to his charge.
Nor need the silence of Josephus surprise ua. In
whether that be true or false, which Julius Marathus, the fr-eedman of
Augustus, told in his life of the emperor, and which Suetonius (Octa-
vius, 89,) has preserved for us. Among the indications of the empe
ror's future greatness there went such distinct portents before his birth,
that nature was about to bring forth a king of the Roman people, that
the senate enacted, no child born during the following year should be
reared (senatum exterritum censuisse, ne quis illo anno genitus educa-
retur:) however, those senators whose wives were then pregnant hin
dered the final carrying of the bill to the treasury.
1 Josephus, Antt, xv. 3.3.
2 It troubled him greatly to anticipate the joy which there would be
among the Jews at his death : and with-the purpose of turning this joy
into weeping, he got together from every city the chief personages of the
land, whom he shut up in the hippodrome of Jericho, where he lay
dying. He then obtained » promise from his sister Salome and her
husband, that the instant he expired these all should be slain, so that,
although none wept and lamented him, there should yet be abundant
weeping and lamentation^at his death. His intentions were not better
fulfilled than those of tyrants after their deaths commonly are. (B. J,,
33, 6, 8.)

MATT. II. 16-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 97
the first place, it is probable that we all unconsciously
exaggerate very much the number of those who perished
in this slaughter. A small country town, (St. John calls
it a xa/irj, vii. 62,) even with the inclusion of its neigh
bourhood, could have yielded no such multitude of male
children under two years old, as many take for granted.
In the Romish martyrologies they swell, indeed, to an
army of martyrs in themselves. The numbers suggested
are sometimes such as almost to provoke a smile. Thus
an expositor of that Church makes mention of some
who had estimated the number of the slain at one hun
dred and forty-four- thousand ; Rev. xiv. 1, being the
motive to this particular number. He, however, him
self cannot believe that a little country town could have
supplied so many, and is content with supposing them to
have been fourteen thousand. In all likelihood, they
were very much fewer than a hundredth part of this
number, though a good many more than the "ten or
twelve," at which number some have rated them. Such
an act would have been but a drop of water in the great
sea of Herod's cruelties and crimes ; taken, that is, apart
from its true connexion, and not seen as the endeavour
to kill the Lord's Christ. And there was every motive
in Herod to induce him to keep out of sight this con
nexion ;' and not merely this, but to effect the slaughter
itself with as little noise as possible. As at first he sent

1 Spanheim, in his excellent Dubia Evang., lxxvi., has suggested this :
Quid obstat etiam quominus dicamus stragem illam dissimulatam forte
a tyranno, et alio praetextu, alio titulo editum, et militum potius vej
satellitum furori ascriptam quam Herodil
7

98 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 17, 18.
for the wise men "privily," (ver. 7.) so there is every
reason to conclude that these murders also" were ac
complished as secretly as fhe nature of the things would
allow; the children were exactly, as we say, made away
with. Every reason existed why Herod should have
sought to effect their deaths; with the exciting of as little
attention as possible. No tyrant willingly confesses that
he trembles upon his throne ; to which we may add, that
Herod in all things sought to flatter the nation's expecta
tions of a Messiah, and would not have ventured thus
openly to show and to avow his deadly hatred to David's
son. To the Christian historian, the death of these little
ones, that died for Him who one day should die for them
and for all, had the deepest significance, and must needs
find place in history. But how easily might it have
escaped the notice of the Jewish historian ; or, even if
he had known it, how certainly must he, traitor as he
was to the dearest hope of his nation, to its hope of a
Christ, have missed, or, not missing, have yet refused to
acknowledge, the connexion which alone would have
given it a right to a place in history.1
" 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." No one will, I suppose, affirm
1 There are two essays devoted to this subject, which, however, I
have not had the opportunity of consulting. M. Reis : Joseph! silen-
tium Evang. Hist, non noxium esse, Altorf, 1730. And Vollborth,
De causis cur Josephus caedem puerorum Bethleh. silentio prjeterierit,
Gott. 1788.

MATT. II. 17, 18-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 99
that this prophecy of Jeremiah (xxxi. 15) was then ex
clusively, or then first fulfilled, in that bitter wailing of
these Bethlehemite mothers over their slaughtered infants;
or deny that the prophecy had a most real fulfilment be
fore, in the desolation of that whole region through the
carrying away, by NebuzaTadan of the children of the
captivity. Nor ought we, I think, to affect to find no
difficulty in that "Then was fulfilled" with which St.
Matthew -claims the prophecy as belonging to the history
which he is telling. Yet, as I cannot but think, a great
part of the difficulty of the passage, and of its seemingly
only remote relation to the matter which the Evangelist
has in hand, springs from our stopping short with the
words which he actually quotes, and not viewing^hem in
and with the context wherein they stand in Jeremiah.
It is, for many reasons, hardly possible to suppose that
St. Matthew intended his readers to stop short with the
words he cites, and not to embrace the whole prophecy
in their minds, and silently to extend his "then was ful
filled" to it all. Merely the desolation of those mothers,
merely the fact that there were such, refusing to be com
forted, this had no such deep religious significance in it,
as should have claimed for it a place in St. Matthew's
narration; but the sorrow which is turned into joy — the
tears whieh God causes to flow, and then himself pre
sently wipes away from the eyes— the life which he
brings out of death, — these have a very profound signi
ficance : and of such gracious dealings of God, chasten
ing, yet not killing, casting down, yet not utterly destroy
ing, Jeremiah is there plainly speaking.
When, indeed, the ten tribes had been carried away

100 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 17j 18.
captive, and now the two were submitted to a like doom,
it must have seemed as if all was over, as if Israel's part
in the world's history were now played out, as if its hope
had utterly perished from the Lord. And the better to
express this, Rachel, as a faithful mother in Israel, is:
introduced by the prophet^the personification does not
belong to the heart, but only to the outer clothing, of the
prophecy, being probably suggested by the nearness of
Rachel's grave to Rama,1 the spot where the forlorn band
of captives, bound for a distant land, were assembled,
(Jer. xl. 1,) — she is introduced as though disturbed in
her grave by this bearing away of her children, these
"sons of her sorrow" (Gen. xxxv. 18,) into a hopeless
captivity. She has travailed for them, and given them
life with her death, in vain. She will hear of no better
hope ; she refuses to be comforted. Ahd yet this is but
a passing note of sadness, presently swallowed up'in the
more prevailing harmonies of the chapter. The Lord
himself is her comforter: He bids her to refrain her
voice from weeping and her eyes from tears. The chil
dren whom she accounts lost shall yet come again from
the land of the enemy, (ver. 16, 17.) So was it then:
and now once more that lamentation is renewed. To
the weeping mothers of a laterday — those, too, gathered
up and personified in the same image of Rachel mourn
ing for her lost offspring — to them, also, it must have
seemed that they had brought forth in vain — children for

* Rama was only a short half-day's journey from Bethlehem; (Judg.
xix. 2, 0, 13 ;) quite near to which was Rachel's grave. (Gen. xxxv.

MATT. II. 17,18-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 101
the, murderer. And as many of them as were true mo
thers in Israel, waiting the consolation of Israel, the bit
terest of their wailing must have been, that with their
own, He also had perished, (for they could not have sup
posed it otherwise,) that should have redeemed Israel, in
whom its whole hope centred, and all its blessed future
was laid up. With their sons, the sword of the false
Idumean had found out also the royal Child, even the
Son of David. And in the sense of their own and of
Israel's wo, they " would not be comforted." Their
children " were not;" so, at least, to them it seemed.
And yet they were ; for thus, by the aid of the prophet,
we must complete the thought of the Evangelist ; they
were, for He was, He had escaped the tyrant's sword, in
whom alike they and the mothers that bare them should
find their true life, and with that life, a recompense for
this, as for every pang. He was, who was the Resurrec
tion and the Life, and therefore they should yet come
again from the land of the enemy, the land of darkness
and the grave, to which they had thus prematurely been
borne.1

1 Spanheim does not seem to me to have fully seized the force and
purpose of the citation, yet to have done so more nearly than most.
(Dub. Evang., 82.-84 :) Sic etiam tacite a Matthaeo citatione cladis
illius et planctus insinuantur lectoribus consolationes eximiae quae abun
dant toto illo capite, de reliquiarum conservatione, et amore Dei in
suum populurn, ut ostenderet Matthaeus, nihilo magis strage ilia de-
tractum fuisse Dei populo vel regno Christi, ac olim deportatione populi
in captivitatem; Deum reliquias suas et semen sanctum semper serva-
turum, et curaturum, ut tandem emergat, et ab ipso ferro tyrannorum
nova sumat incrementa.

102 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 17, 18.
I have deferred" to the present moment a question
which cannot be overlooked altogether, — namely, in
what period of the history of the Infancy are the visit
of the Magi, and the subsequent flight into Egypt, to find
their place! — or, supposing that we separate them in
time from one another, their places? In the ancient
Church it was almost universally held that the day on
which the wise men appeared at Bethlehem was the
thirteenth inclusive after the Saviour's birth; and the
25th of December being accepted as the day of the Na
tivity, the 6th of January was consequently kept as this
Epiphany, or Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.1
Not a few in modern times have taken the same view,
or at least have placed this visit before the presentation
of Christ in the temple, — that is, within the first forty
days of the Saviour's life. (Lev. xii. 2, 4.)? At the same
time most of the modern harmonists place the visit of
the Magi later, — -that is, after the presentation in the tem
ple ; and some very much after it, so that it shall not
have taken place till the Child Jesus had reached, or
nearly had reached, his second year. It is a matter of
necessity that those who take this last view should ac
cept the calculations which place our Lord's birth as far
back as the year 747 u. c. ; for since Herod died quite
early in 750, only so will room be allowed for events
which must have happened before that event. There is

' Augustine, Serm. 203, §,1.
2 So Petavius, Grotius, Chemnitz, Jansenius, and Spanheim, who
in his Dub. Evangel., 25, 26, weighs tlie whole matter in the main ex
cellently WelL

MATT. II. 17, 18-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 103
no reason why others should not- combine this* date of
747 with their schemes also, but for this scheme no later
date can possibly be adopted.
The advantages of placing the wise men's visit at so
late a period, and the inducements thereunto, which,
however, I will say beforehand do not seem to me suffi
cient to outweigh the inconveniences, are chiefly these :
— 1. There is no need, then, to set an interval of time
between the departure of the Magi and the warning to
Joseph that he should take the young child and flee ;
which interval there certainly does not, on the face of
St. Matthew's narrative, appear to have been ; (ver. 1 2,
13;) however that does not absolutely exclude it.
2. Time is thus allowed for the Magi to have travelled
from their distant homes, which it haidly is, if we sup
pose tbem to have stood by the cradle on the thirteenth
day after the Nativity. The journey from beyond the
Euphrates to Jerusalem was not ordinarily one of less
than three or four months.1 3. Those who set the visit
toward the end of the second year, find here an explana
tion of that whieh, according to the common explanation,
they find inconceivable, — namely, the slaughter of chil
dren of two years old for the purpose of reaching an in
fant new-born.
Such are their chief grounds ; yet the disadvantages
of this arrangement, in my mind, more than countervail

1 Ezra is four months travelling from Babylon to Jerusalem; (Ezra
vii. 9;) the tidings ofthe destruction of Jerusalem do not reach Ezekiel
in Chaldea for near five months. (2 Kin. xxv. 8,9; Ezek. xxxiii. 21.)
See Gresswell's Dissert., v. 2, p. 138—140.

104 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 17, 18.
its advantages, so that I should certainly prefer to adhere
lo the old order of the events. I would not indeed urge,
as some do, against that scheme, that the harmonizing of
the -narrative of Matthew with that of Luke becomes
thus a good deal more difficult, inasmuch as, after the
presentation in the temple, and before the dwelling at
Nazareth, there must have been not merely the flight
into Egypt, but a return to Bethlehem, that the wise men
might find the Holy Family there. Bethlehem was too
near to Jerusalem, — at a distance but of seven or eight of
our English miles — to make any difficulty in this. But
certainly the words, " When Jesus was born, behold,
there came wise men from the east," do seem to imply
the intention of the narrator to place his birth and their
coming in far closer juxtaposition than that it can be al
lowable to intercalate two years, and all the events of
Luke ii. 22 — 38, between.1
Again, the difficulties of the Magi's presence from so
remote a land on the twelfth day after the Saviour's
birth, and of the decree of death including children un
der two years old, are, one of them entirely removed,

1 It is 'lytrov ysvvrfisvrog, notytywyfitvov. Cf.Heb.xi.23; Mojo-jjc
ym?jOs/s txgujSi). Nor need the ntniuv of St. Matthew make the slight
est difficulty ; for, however it may be quite true that not »rat3io» but
(S§i»ot is the new-born babe, and is so used of Christ, (Luke ii. 12; cf.
1 Pet. ii. 2 ;) and however the Greek Grammarians may have recog
nised the distinction, (thus Eustathius, quoted by Wetstein: Pgupog, to
aqrt ysyovoe' Tratdioy, ro Tgj^o^evor vnQ ryflyt.) yet natSiov is also
continually used for such; it is applied to the Baptist, but eight days
old, (Luke i, 59;) and the naiSta of Mat. xix. 13 = /Sji/t'! of Luke
xviii. 15.

MATT. II. 17, 18. J THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 105
the other greatly lightened, by the simple assumption,
which to me seems on other grounds the most to be pre
ferred, that the Star did not appear simultaneously with
the Saviour's birth, but preceded and announced it.
Granting that the Star had first appeared at the period,
not of the Lord's birth, but of his Incarnation, which was
the opinion of Chrysostom,1 and the parallel "sign of the
Son of Man in heaven" (Matt. xxiv. 30) does not ac
company but precedes his second advent, we shall then
have abundant time for the coming of the wise men even
from the remotest East. And if we only suppose that
Herod did what, if this view is correct, so many inter
preters must have done, namely, made the mistake of
supposing that the appearance of the Star, and the birth
ofthe Child fell at the same moment, — this, too, the Magi,
while as yet they had not been at Bethlehem, may have
presumed, — and add to the nine months thus obtained
the forty days and somewhat more which intervened be
fore the king's decree went forth, we shall thus have
nearly a year. Supposing, further, we were justified in
making St. Matthew's "two years old" to signify those
in their second year, and the Jews did count a year and
a day, or in the case of animals intended for sacrifice a
year and a month, as though it were two years,3 then the
entire difficulty arising from the age of the children that

1 In Matt., Horn. 7, 3; so Theophylact.
3 See the proofs that this was so in Greswell's Dissert., v. 2, p. 136,
who also quotes from Aristotle, (negi taunt, ii. 2, 11 :) 'Airofittwu it
ra. xipartt fcovoc o eXatfos xar' 'tros, fltf^ftjtteioc anodttrovti which
means in its second year.

106 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 17, 18.
were to die will have disappeared; since Herod would
certainly have allowed himself the margin of a month or
two to prevent mistakes. And even if he set the age at
full two years, meaning that his banditti's swords should
certainly find out a child that even by his own calculation
could only have been of one year, or, as the ancient
Church supposed, of much less than one, there is nothing
very wonderful, in such exaggerated precautions of cruel
ty: they are only in keeping with the exaggerated sus
picions which dictated the crime at all.
After all, there are difficulties in every arrangement of
the succession of events ; though not so great as some
would have us to believe; but this to my mind seems the
preferable arrangement. If this be correct, and if our
Lord's birth did take place, as theJbest chronologists seem
more and more to be coining to agreement that it did, at
the close of the year 747 u.. c, then, since Herod died
early in 750,1 his abode in Egypt must have been of two

1 The year of Herod's death is not without its difficulty, nor yet is
our uncertainty about the year in which the Saviour of the world was
born, without its importance, as giving us a certain terminus before which
that must have happened; for, though how much before will still remain
approximatively, and from other grounds, to be concluded, yet it is some
thing to have one of the limits secure. Now every thing here points to
the spring of 750 a.u.c. The most important help for the fixing of this
date is, as so often happens in ancient history, an eclipse; for such an
eclipse of the moon, we learn from Josephus, Antt, 17, 6, 4, happened
during his last illness, and not very many days before his decease. But
no eclipses of the moon were visible in Judaea near enough to the one
which took place in the night between March 12th and 13th, 750, to
dispute with it the right of being the one to which the Jewish historian
alludes. For the numismatic argument, which is complicated, but which

MATT. II. 19,20.3 THE STAR 0F THE WISE MEN- l07
years' duration. Should 749 be rather the year of the
Nativity, in this.case Egypt will have afforded its shelter
to the Holy Family scarcely more months. Almost as
soon as they were there, the command will have been
given to return. In this last case Herod must have issued
the decree for the massacre of the children from that
horrible death-bed, which Josephus so fully describes —
which atrocity, if it seems inconceivable at such a time,
we must only remember that from the same death-bed,
and only five days before his own decease, he did not
shrink from giving the command, which was obeyed, for
the putting of his own son to death.
But now, this tyranny being overpast, and the earth rid
of that monster's presence, "behold, an angel ofthe Lord
appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt; saying, Jlrise,
and take the young Child and his mother, and go into
the land of Israel; for they are dead that sought the
young Child's life.'" The plural here does not require
us to assume any other deaths than that already men
tioned in the text, of Herod himself — not that, for exam
ple, of some principal abettors of his, in counsel or in act,
in the crime which he had meditated, and who had died
as well as he.1 The use of such a plural is far too corn-

issues in exactly the same results, see Milliter's Der Stern Der Weisen,
pp. 76 — 81. The respect owing to so profound and independent an in
vestigator ofthe ancient chronology as Mr. Greswell, should hinder one
from passing unnoticed the fact that he has called in question this result,
himself placing the death of Herod a year later, that is, in 751 A.u.c.
(Dissert., v. 1, p. 272 seq.)
1 Thus Keppler suggests Antipater, who, having prompted his father
to the putting of his two brothers to death, as his possible rivals

1 08 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II . 1 9, 20.
mon to make any difficulty here, or any such supposition
needful. The immediate motive to the plural here was,
probably, an intention of thus bringing this passage of
our Lord's life into closer and more observable relation
with the parallel circumstances in the life of Moses ; in
the narration of which these Very words occur: "All the'
men are dead that sought thy life." (Exod. iv. 19.1)
There, in the interval of forty years which had elapsed
since Moses had fled from Egypt, we can quite under-
standhow all had died who had nourished purposes of re
venge against him. Here it is little likely that any other
besides Herod himself is intended.
"And he arose and took the young Child and his
mother and came into the land of Israel. But when

to the throne, so might have instigated out of a Uke motive the present
massacre, but had himself perished by his father's command.
1 Spanheim (Dub. Evang., £15, 3:) Evidens est veris Evangelistee
[Angeli?] allusum ad revocationem Mosis in Egyptum, qui infanticidio
subductus, infanticida sublato, iisdem pcene verbis revocatus legitur;
aireXde sig Aiyvnrov rsQvrjxaa-t ya£ Travrie oiXtjrovvric o-ov ri\v yv%T}V.
(Exod. iv. 19.) Hinc etiam collatio ilia *a.pa\kii\os aliquomodo fir-
matur et illustratur quam instituimus (in expositione verborum Ex
jEgypto evocavi filium ineurn) inter populum Israeliticum et Christum
primogenitum Dei, inter utriusque conditionem, et beneficium subsequu-
tumi Utiquesanenegari nequit liberatorem typicum etverum iisdem verbis
revocatum, et suavem dari comparationem inter Christum et Mosem,
uterque infanticidio subductus, uterque revocatus, uferque Dei voce re
vocatus, uterque post obitum tyrannorum, uterque Dux populi Dei con-
stitutus. And Grotius: Non temere est quod ipsa verba usurpantur
quae exstant, Exod.iv. 19: id enim solet in sacris litteris rei gestae simi-
litudinem declarare.

MATT. II. 21-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 109
he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judsea in the room
of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither." It
may at first sight seem strange that Joseph should not
have certainly concluded that, if the father was dead, the
son would succeed to his throne, that he should not have
calculated on this from the first, instead of suffering a
later discovery of it to compel him altogether to alter his
plans. But, in fact, this unexpected discovery of his,
that Archelaus reigned in Judaea, is exactly that which,
when we know accurately the circumstances of his acces
sion to his father's throne, we should have looked for.
It was not merely that there were so many vicissitudes
in the bloody house of the Idumaean that Joseph might
easily have anticipated some other arrangement, but
Josephus expressly tells us that Herod had intended to
leave the kingdom to his son, Herod Antipas, but on his
death-bed altered the entire disposition of his dominions,
and, bequeathing to him only the tetrarchy of Galilee and
Peraea, left the kingdom to Archelaus.1 How exactly,
then, does the course which Joseph pursues fall in with
the historic circumstances of the time ! He drew nigh
to Judaea, taking for granted that it would be as it had
been settled, and as probably that it was notorious to all;
namely, that Antipas, a weak and unworthy prince, but
one to whom no such atrocities were imputed as to his
father and brother, sat on his father's throne ; and then,
on the borders of the land, he learned to his dismay, that
this arrangement had been reversed, that Archelaus, the
genuine son of his father, the inheritor of all his cruelty,

Antt., 17, 8, 1.

110 THE STAR OF. THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 22.
had succeeded to his throne, and ruled in the land where
he proposed to dwell.
Archelaus was a son of Herod,hy a Samaritan woman,
Malthace by name ; and was privately brought up, with
his whole brother Antipas, at Rome.' He did not "reign"
in the. strictest sense of the word— that is, as king; for
although Herod bequeathed to him the title, of royalty,
and he was saluted king by the army,3 yet when he went
to Rome, that the title might be confirmed by Augustus,
an embassage of the Jews followed him there, protesting
against his domination, on the score of his father's in
tolerable cruelty and his own; for they said that, almost
immediately on his accession, and as if he feared that he
should not be recognised as the genuine son of his father,
he had inaugurated his reign by the massacre, on no suf
ficient provocation, of three thousand Jewish citizens.3
They prevailed so far, that Augustus would for the pre
sent only allow him the title of ethnarch, with the promise
that the higher, dignity should be his, in case he so con
ducted himself as to deserve it.4 Continuing in his cruel
and tyrannous courses, he again, .provoked the Jews to
carry accusations against him to, Rome; and this time
with more entire success ; for the emperor removed him
altogether from his rule, after he had abused it for ten
1 Josephus^ Antt., 1. 17, c. 1, J 3; B. J., 1. 1, c. 28, § 4.
a.B.X, 1. ),o. 33, §§ 8,9. -
3 Their words are striking in their relation to the passage before us:
Toy $£, inoTTtp ayav ieta-a.VTa,.fx.i] voQog viog doi-ttev lHqa$ov, ngootp.ia.tr-
atrtja.1 r«v fSaoiMiay rqitrxiMom no\irav fova. Joseph felt that he
was this genuine son of his father.
' B. J., 1. 2, 1. 1, §§ 2, 3; and c. 6, §§ 2, 3.

MATT. II. 22,23.3 THE STAR or THE WISE MEN. Ill
years, and banished him to Vienne in Gaul, where he
died.1 Again Joseph is instructed what he shall do ; " being
warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the
parts of Galilee," — probably little knowing that he was
herein preparing a fulfilment of the prophecy : " The
people that walk in darkness have seen a great light ; they
that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them
hath the light shined." (Isai. ix. 2 ; cf. Matt. iv. 15, 16.)
"And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that
il might be fulfilled which was spoken by the pmphets,
He shall be called a Nazarene." That explanation of
these Words is perhaps encumbered with the fewest diffi
culties, which starts with calling attention to the plural,
" by the prophets," which the Evangelist here uses — a
form of citation from the Old Testament, which only ap
pears once elsewhere; (Mark i. 2;) and then evidently
because the Sacred writer is making allusion to passages
from more prophets than one — namely, to Mal. iii. 1.
and Isai. xl. 1. Here, in like manner, it has been said,
by the use of the plural, " the prophets," and not " the
prophet," St. Matthew would indicate that we have a
collective fulfilment of prophecy — a fulfilment of that
which was spoken, not by one prophet, but by many .2
As, however, it is plain that our Lord's bringing up at

' B. J., 1.2, c. 7, § 3.
' Jerome: Si fixum de Scripturis posuisset exemplum, nunquam
diceret, quod dictum est per prophelas : sed simpliciter, quod dictum
est per prophetam ; nunc autem pluraliter prophctas vocans, ostendit se
non verba de Scripturis sumsisse, sed sensunt.

112 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT. II. 23.
Nazareth, with the scornful appellation of "the Naza-
rene," which he consequently bore,1 is nowhere distinct
ly and in as many words foretold in the prophets, we
must look; a little deeper, and see if there be not an un
derlying vein of prophecy! — prophecies, not one, but
many, which at their inmost centre and core were ful
filled when this title of contempt was given Him. These
prbpheeies Ibelieve no other than all those which fore
told his low estate, the contempt and scorn which should
be his portion from the ungodly world; such, for example,
as Issfr;1 xlix. 7 ; liii. 3 ; Ps. xxii. : all which scorn and
contempt were incorporated and gathered up in this nick
name, for such originally it was, of "the Nazarene."
For what did that name imply, but that he xlrew his origin
from the most despised city (John i. 46) of the most
despised province in the laad; (John vii. 52;) from a
city out of which even a Nathanael could expect no good
thing; from a province out of which the haughty schools
of Jerusalem affirmed, though indeed falsely,2 (John vii.
52,) that no prophet had come ; from which, therefore, it
was little likely that the greatest Prophet of all should
come. It is true that even Bethlehem, the Lord's true birth
place, was, as we have seen, small and outwardly of little
account — " least among the princes of Judah ; but then
* For proof of the manner in which this name has survived, among
the Jews, as a name of scorn applied to the Saviour, see Eisenmenger's
Entdeckt. Judenthum, v. 1, pp. 64, 254, 631.
11 Gath-hepher, the birth-place of Jonah, (2 Kin. xiv. 25,) and-El-
kosch, of Nahum, were both in Galilee; anda greater than either,
Elijah, was of Thisbe, which pertained to the same region. (Tob. i. 2.)

MATT. II. 23.3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 113
how full of glorious recollections ; with a history entwined
with that of patriarchs, prophets, and kings; where
Rachel, the favourite wife of Jacob, had died, and was
buried ; (Gen. xxxv. 19 ;) where Ruth had been espoused
to him by whom she became the ancestress of the line
of Judah's kings; (Ruth iv. 18 — 22;) and more yet than
this, the city of David " the king;" and more than this
all, the city which long ago had been designated as the
birth-place of Him who, being David's son, was yet also
David's Lord.
What a contrast to all this did Nazareth present ; not
once mentioned in the Old Testament ; not once men
tioned, as we may note in passing, by the great Jewish
antiquarian and historian, Josephus ; probably not having
come into existence till after the return from the captivity;
its very name indicating, as some suppose, its littleness ;¦
without a single venerable tradition, without one associa
tion of dignity; a place so little befitting the Lord of
Glory in their eyes who had only an eye for outward
glory, that "of Nazareth," or "Nazarene," attached to
the Lord's name, seemed to them who looked no deeper
than the surface, at once lo refute his claims of the Mes-
siahship, and to justify their rejection of Him as such ;
for, as some of these objectors urged: "Hath not the
Scripture said that Christ cometh from the seed of David,
and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?"
(John vii. 42.)
In estimating the motives which induced St. Matthew
' "ixi a little shoot, as contrasted with a stately tree. (See Heng-
sta nberg, Christologie, v. 2, p. 4.)

114 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [MATT.II.23.
to urge this point, we must not leave out of sight an in
tention which, it is evident, his Gospel, and especially
these first two chapters of it, had — namely, to remove
every occasion of stumbling out of the way of Jewish
readers, or of converts from the circumcision recently
made. All the events and circumstances of the Lord's
life* that might have perplexed or offended these, as being
contrary to their expectations, he so treats of, that they
shall now see in them not arguments against his claims
to be the Christ, but for it. So is it here. Not, he would
if'
imply, without an express command of God, did it come
to pass that this Child was brought up at Nazareth; in
nurture there, and in the slight which accrued to Him
from this, was only fulfilled that which their own prophets
had long since foretold. These had spoken of Messiah
as one whose outward circumstances should be inglorious,
in whom his brethren should see no external beauty or
dignity that they should desire Him : and thus, when
their contempt gathered itself up in the one contemptuous
epithet, " the Nazarene," an epithet which this his resi
dence in Nazareth suggested and supplied, they did but
fulfil in regard to Jesus, the son of Mary, that which long
since had been declared should find its fulfilment in Him
who was indeed the Christ.
A word or two may be permitted in conclusion — which
I am the more inclined to add, as I cannot doubt that,
whenever in our country the assault on those divine facts
whereon our faith is founded, and on the sacred record
which contains them, begins, (ifit has not begun already,)
the history of the Infancy will be one of the earliest and

MATT. II. 23-3 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. 115
chiefest points of atlaek. To enter into a defence
of, or apology for, this portion of sacred history is
not, and has not been, except incidentally, my inten
tion ; for I have written for them who believe, and not
for them who do not. Yet this much it may be
permitted to observe. For as many, indeed, as deny
that the name of this Child, of whom St. Matthew is
telling, was "Wonderful," "the Mighty God," (Isai. ix.
6,) it is nothing strange, but only consistent, that they
should be perplexed and offended with all about his birth,
which marks Him out as so different from the other
children of men ; that they should seek to explain away
the ideal aspect in which all of the actual presents itself
here; to dissipate, if they may, the nimbus of glory which
encircles the Saviour's head, even while He is yet this
" infant of days." It is nothing strange that they should
endeavour to get rid of the witness which is borne to
Him, even in his cradle, alike by heaven, by earth, and
by hell — by Star and by angels from heaven, by wise
men and simple, seers and shepherds, on earth, — and as
by their reverence and love, so not less by the instinctive
hatred of the wicked king, wherein all hell bears witness
that it, too, knows its destroyer to be at hand.
Such gainsaying must naturally be expected. But for
as many as devoutly receive the central fact, the wonder
of wonders, namely that this Child was Immanuel, was
"God with us"— they will count that this rather would
have been strange, this inexplicable, if heaven had broken
forth upon earth, and had yet given no tokens nor signs
that it was heaven and not earth which now was blos
soming and budding, God and not merely man that was

1 16 THE STAR OF THE WISE MEN. [_MATT. n- Z^.
being born. This, indeed, would have perplexed them,
if the newest and most unwonted of all should yet have
had nothing new, nothing unwonted about it, nothing
to distinguish it from the commonest and the most out
worn of our old and work-day^ world; that the most
wonderful should have appeared, and yet, notwithstand
ing, should have grouped round it no choir of attendant
wonders. They, at leasts will not be of the number of
those who will allow nature to have its poetry and its
prophecy, but not grace, even the world to have its har
monies, heard from time to time above its harsher dis
cords, but not the Church and kingdom of heaven ; who
are content that beauty, should stand in the service of
fiction, but not of truth; who rather, on the instant that
they meet it in this service, count it suspicious, as though
some one must have feigned it there, as though of itself
it never could have stood in that service, nor done actual
homage to Him, from whom yet all beauty descends, the
weak shadows and reflexes of whose transcendent glory
is all of glorious which we here behold.
No words of my own will so fitly express the tone in
which I would fain conclude this essay as those which
the Prayer Book supplies: — "' O God, who by the lead
ing of a Star did manifest thy only-begotten Son to the
Gentiles; Mercifully grant, that we, which know thee
now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy
glorious Godhead, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

THE END.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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