(Read Matt. 2:13-23.)

YOU remember how King Herod had told the wise men that they must go and search diligently for the young Child, and when they had found Him, bring him word again, that he might come and worship Him also.
Why did they not return to the king?
It was because God took care of them; He did not allow them to go back to Jerusalem. That cruel King Herod never saw them again, for God sent word to them in a dream, telling them not to go him. They went back again to the far country from whence they had come, but they had found Him who was born King of the Jews, and they had seen Him, and laid their treasures at His feet. They had not come in vain, the great wish that God had put into their hearts had been fulfilled, for they had worshipped His King.
King Herod had said just what the wise men had said. They said, “We are come to worship the King of the Jews;” and Herod said, “I wish to come and worship Him, too.”
But God, who knows all the thoughts of our hearts, knew what Herod’s thought about Him who was born King of the Jews was. In the first verse you read, we see that God told Joseph, the husband of Mary, not to stay any longer at Bethlehem.
In the dream which God sent him, Joseph heard these words, “Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.”
Then this was why Herod wished to find Jesus; he wanted to kill Him; that was really the thought that was in his heart, though he had spoken such good words about wanting to bow down before Him, and do Him honor.
The land of Egypt was some way off, but Joseph did not wait for the morning to come before he started to go there. It was still night, and the stars were shining down from the sky when the young Child, with Mary, His mother, began the journey, and fled away from the cruel purpose of the King. God watched over the young Child, and no one could hurt Him. There was another reason, too, why, when the Lord Jesus was so very young, He was taken to the land of Egypt. If you read the fifteenth verse again, you will find that reason plainly told. God’s prophet had said, long before this time, that God had called His Son out of Egypt; and all that God’s prophets have spoken must be fulfilled.
When was that word which the prophet Hosea had spoken brought to pass?
We do not know how long it was after the journey by night down into Egypt that God sent Joseph another dream. You may read in the twentieth verse the very words which he heard as he lay asleep in that strange country. An angel of the Lord said to him once more, “Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.”
Yes, the wicked king was dead. How dreadful to think that, though men called him Herod the Great, what God tells us about him is that he tried to kill His holy Child Jesus!
You have been reading how he tried to kill Him; how, that he might be quite sure of putting Him to death, he killed all the children in Bethlehem, from those who were infants in their mothers’ arms to those who were just able to run about, and call their parents’ names! The poor mothers loved their little children as much as your mothers love you, but they could do nothing to save them; they could only mourn and cry, and no one could comfort them, because their little boys were gone.
Where did Joseph and Mary intend to go, after the word of God’s prophet had come to pass, and His Son come back from Egypt?
The twenty-second verse tells us that he feared to go to Judaea, the country where Jerusalem is. Jerusalem was the royal city of King David, but Christ, the Son of David, did not go there. Herod’s son was king now; he was a cruel man, like his father, and Joseph was afraid of him. Perhaps he might not have known where God wished him to take the young Child and His mother, but once again God told him in a dream just what to do. Joseph was to take Christ, the Son of David to Galilee. Ask someone to show you this country on the map, and then see whether you cannot find for yourself the town of Nazareth.
I am sure you can find it, and you will not forget the name of the place where the Lord Jesus had His home when He was a child. Nazareth is not spoken of once in the Old Testament. The name of the town means a branch, and it was not at all a grand place, but lay far away among the hills, which are green in spring time, with soft grass full of sweet and gay flowers. You remember that this was the town where Joseph and Mary lived before they went to Bethlehem. They came back now to their old home, and the holy Child grew up in a place which was thought so little of that a man of Galilee once wondered that “any good thing” could come from it. It was three days’ journey from Jerusalem, and the poor people who lived there did not even speak so correctly as the people of Judæa.
But it was not because it was Mary’s home that they went to live at this poor place. Look once again at the last words you read, and you will see that the reason is given: “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”
Here we find another name given to the Lord Jesus; not “Emmanuel,” God with us; not “Jesus,” Jehovah, the Saviour; not “Son of David;” but “Nazarene.”
No prophet had spoken exactly these words about Christ: “He shall be called a Nazarene,” but more than one had said He should be despised and thought nothing of, and this is just what the name means. The blessed Son of God grew up in this world a poor Man, among poor people, in a place which everyone despised. He was despised and rejected of men.

Bible Subjects. Peace.
WE are coming to the end of our volume, and can speak only of a few verses out of the many that remain on the subject of peace. We shall do best to look at the practical and experimental side of the subject. Most gracious are the divine teachings respecting peace which we find in the last chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians. In effect vs. 6 and 7. say to us, Give God your cares, and God will keep your hearts with His peace. Do not worry about anything, but in everything make known to God the special things that you really need by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, then God will put into your heart, as a garrison, His peace through Christ Jesus. Perhaps nothing like a well-garrisoned heart proves to others that the believer has been to God, and is walking with God. How differently do some of God’s people bear their trials from others; some have their hearts kept by the peace of God, others are in confusion or overwhelmed, for in the day of trial we find that we cannot keep ourselves, Let us seek for grace to carry out the exhortation of vs. 6, for then we shall not lack the blessing of vs. 7. We say, seek for grace, for no one can in his own strength fulfill such an exhortation, but God will give the grace where there is true waiting upon Him.
Then again says the apostle, in effect, in vs. 8, Occupy your mind with things in which God has pleasure, and, in vs. 9, practice them, then you shall have the blessed nearness and companionship of the God of peace. If our children occupy themselves with things we approve not, we cannot have companionship with them. Our practical state of heart is in question in these verses, and the blessings they propose to us will be ours so far as we, by grace, carry out the conditions on which the blessings will be realized.
St. James gives us, through the Spirit, a solemn yet sweet word on peace (ch. 3:18) ― “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” Read the whole chapter. What a searching word it is to us!
Men guide great ships with a little rudder, and direct powerful horses with a very small bit; but who is he that has a helmsman’s hand upon his tongue? A child by dropping a, little lighted match may burn down a Forest, and by the fire of the tongue the prosperity of whole communities of men is consumed.
Oh, these our untamable tongues! Men tame lions and other wild beasts, “but the tongue can no man tame.”
Ah! how this unruly evil shows us what we really are in our spiritual progress. How the secret state of our hearts is laid bare by the tongue! Our very mouths have each in them that which is “full of deadly poison.”
What a call is this for prayer to the Lord to set His watch at the door of our lips! The very mouth that has opened to let out the glad throng of words of praise to our God opens again to send forth its dark utterances against our fellow men. The contradictory tongue is a marvel of misery.
But let none of us be deceived, the secret of an unruly tongue is a low state of soul, a carnal condition, a wisdom that is earthy, animal, devilish―not by any manner of means of God. But heavenly wisdom, that which comes from above, is first pure―it is the result of nearness to God Himself. God is holy, God is light: in Him is no darkness at all. The first thing then in this heavenly wisdom is its pureness. Meekness of wisdom, not smartness or overbearing ways, characterizes the truly wise, that is the heavenly wise! How lovely is this wisdom―peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated; how wealthy―full of mercy and good fruits; how holy―without partiality, without hypocrisy! Blessed are the peacemakers; happy before God are they “that make peace.” They sow righteousness in peace, and the result of such sowing is holy fruit.
If there is any one practical thing more to be sought after than another by the Christian it is “the wisdom that is from above.”