1. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, 2 behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. 3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with 4 him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together,

5 he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Beth- 6 lehem of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. 7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently 8 what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that 9 I may come and worship him also. When they had heard the king, they departed; and, 10 lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. 11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, 12 they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

No distant, silent star beckons us, like them, to seek Christ. We have a more sure word of prophecy —a Bible, in which prophets and apostles conspire to bring us to the Saviour; his history is finished; we have not only his manger, but his cross, his tomb. Judea, Samaria, Galilee are imprinted with his famil- iar footsteps; his resurrection and ascension, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the testimony and blood of martyrs, the conversion of souls already without number, all perform that office for us which that solitary star rendered to these wise men. But faith is not in proportion to the amount of evidence. “Prophets teach the Jews in vain; a silent star beckons the Gentiles; they arise and follow.” Still he that seeketh findeth, if he seeks, like these wise men, with all the heart. N. A.

THE world had been preparing for Christianity in every way—by Grecian culture, Roman dominion, the Old Testament revelation, the amalgamation of Judaism and heathenism, the distraction and misery, the longings and hopes of the age; but no tendency of antiquity was able to generate the true religion, or satisfy the infinite needs of the human heart. The Greek religion, which aimed only to deify earth- ly existence, could afford no comfort in misfortune, nor ever beget the spirit of martyrdom. The Ro- man religion was stripped of its power by being de- graded into a mere tool for political ends, and by the exaltation of worthless despots to the rank of gods. The Jewish religion, in Pharisaism, had stiffened into a spiritless, self-righteous formalism; in Sad- ducism had been emptied of all its moral and relig- ious earnestness. Expectations of the coming of a Messiah, in various forms and degrees of clearness, were at that time, by the political, intellectual, and religious contact of the nations, spread over the whole world. The Persians were looking for their Sosiosch, who should conquer Ahriman and his kingdom of darkness. The Chinese sage, Confucius, pointed his disciples to a holy one, who should ap- pear in the West. The Western nations, on the contrary, looked toward the East. Suetonius and Taci- tus speak of a current saying in the Roman Empire, that in the east, and more particularly in Judea, a new universal empire would soon be founded. Thus in an age sunk in unbelief and superstition, yet anxiously awaiting for deliverance from its outward and inward misery, appeared the Saviour of sinners. Says Augustine, with as much beauty as truth: “Christ appeared to the men of the aged dying world, that, while everything around them (even that which had once been the object of their enthu- siastic love) had withered away, they should receive through him a new, youthful life.” P. S.

The great bulk of the Jewish nation had never returned from Babylon, but remained, in distinct communities, spread over the surface of that em- pire. From Babylon, the Jew had gone through every region of the East, and wherever he went he became a zealous missionary of his faith. Among the Jewish ideas diffused far and near by this uni- versal agency, none would find so easy and wide a circulation as that which, above all others, filled the mind and heart of every Jew in that age—the ex- pected appearance of a great prince, of whom they spoke as the Messiah or “Anointed.” No indication of popular feeling can be more sure than that supplied by the literature of a period; and Jewish literature, from the date of Daniel to the age of Christ, was more and more completely Messianic. The Book of Enoch, the Jewish Sibylline books, the Psalter of Solomon, the Ascension of Moses, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, and other writings of later Judaism, strove to sustain and rouse the nation, in those dark days, by prophetic anticipations of Messianic deliverance. G.

1. Three striking incidents marked the birth and infancy of our Lord: First, the midnight appearance of the angelic host to the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem, and their visit to the village in which the great birth had that night occurred; second, the presentation of Jesus as a first-born child in the temple, and the testimony there given to him in the prophetic utterances of Simeon and Anna; and third, the visit of the wise men from the east, and the worship and offerings which they presented to the new-born child. Each of these had its special wonders; in each a supernatural attestation to the greatness of the event was given; and, woven together, they form the wreath of heavenly glory hung by the divine hand around the infancy of the Son of Mary.

2. Wise Men; Magi, from the East. The birthplace and natural home of the Magian worship was in Persia. And there the Magi had a place and power such as the Chaldeans had in Babylon, the Hierophants in Egypt, the Druids in Gaul, and the Brahmins still have in India. They formed a tribe or caste, priestly in office, princely in rank. They were the depositaries of nearly all the knowledge or science existing in the country where they lived; they were the first professors and practisers of astrology, worshippers of the sun and the other heavenly bodies, from whose appearance and movements they drew their divination as to earthly events—all illustrious births below being indicated, as they deemed, by certain peculiar conjunctions of the stars above. Both as priests and diviners they had great power. In political affairs their influence was predominant. The education of royalty was in their hands; they filled all the chief offices of state; they constituted the supreme council of the realm. As originally applied to this Median priest-caste, the term Magi was one of dignity and honor. Afterward, when transferred to other countries, and employed to designate all professors of astrology and practisers of divination, as these astrologers and diviners sunk in character, and had recourse to mean imposture, the name of magian or magician was turned into one of dishonor and reproach. H.—The word Magus, or Magi (in the plural), is used by Matthew (who was a Hebrew) in the Persian or national and honorable sense of the term, as given above; while Luke (who, though born in Syria, was probably a Greek, and who wrote for the Roman world) uses the term (Acts 13: 6, 8) in a later and dishonorable sense as an equivalent to sorcerer; for in the Roman world those who practised magic and divination sought credit for their black arts by adopting the honorable title of Magi. The honor paid to these foreigners by King Herod shows them to have been persons of high consideration, persons in royal service at the court of the Parthian kings. The same thing may be inferred from the costly presents which they brought to Bethlehem. The word for the East is twice used, but in the second instance there is a slight change of form, which indicates a change of the sense. When used together geographically, the first of these two forms must point to some country more distant than the second; and the one should be translated “the Far East,” the other “the East.” The latter indicates Babylonia, and the former the high plateau of Persia lying beyond. Upham.

Christ was promised as the Saviour and Deliverer of all nations, and proofs of his descent into this world, to fulfil his high mission, were given to the pious Jew, and also to the Gentile. To both were declarations made, while he was yet an infant, of his high official character. The Magi, as well as the shepherds, were brought by divine direction to pay their homage to him, not as to one who had yet to earn the dignity ascribed to him, but who was already invested with it. Such testimonies as these we can only attribute to the Deity; imposture or collusion on his part, during a state of infancy, was a physical impossibility: and it certainly appears impossible to reconcile such evidences with the supposed mere humanity of Christ. G. T.—It is an ignorant conceit, that inquiry into Nature should make men atheistic. No man is so apt to see the star of Christ as a diligent disciple of philosophy. These sages were in a mean between the angels and the shepherds. God would, in all the ranks of intelligent creatures, have some to be witnesses of his Son. Bp. H.—If the shepherds in his immediate neighborhood had the first, the sages from afar had the next sight of the new-born King. Even so still, simplicity first, science next, finds its way to Christ. B.

3. Herod the King. Of three Herods who appear prominently in the pages of the New Testament, the first was Herod the Great, the son of a crafty and wealthy Idumean or Edomite, who, during the reign of the last of the Asmonean princes, attained to great political influence in Judea, securing for his eldest son Phasael the governorship of Jerusalem; and for Herod, his younger son, the chief command in Galilee. Phasael was cut off in a political commotion, but Herod escaped all the perils to which he was exposed, distinguished himself by his address and bravery, showed great political foresight in allying himself closely with the power which he saw was to prevail in Judea as over all other lands, sought and won the personal friendship of Cassius and of Mark Antony, and, mainly by the influence of the latter, was proclaimed King of the Jews. H.

Herod was now master of a kingdom which included all the land originally divided among the twelve tribes, together with Idumea. Exclusive of the latter country, the whole was divided into four districts, a clear conception of which is needful for understanding the topography of our Lord’s ministry:—1. Judea. 2. Samaria. 3. Galilee, Lower and Upper; extending northward as far as the parallel of Mount Hermon; but shut out from the sea by the narrow strip of Phœnice. 4. Perea, the name of the whole region E. of Jordan and the Dead Sea as far S. as the Arnon (see map, Sec. 12). This fair kingdom had been won by a man of ability, magnificence, and taste; but utterly regardless of his people’s most cherished feelings, and insensible to the high destiny of the “Holy Nation.”

Of his ten wives, we need only notice the offspring of the first five. 1. He married Doris before his accession to the throne; and her only son

ANTIPATER was the last victim of his dying father’s rage. 2. ARISTOBULUS, his eldest son by Mariamne, the granddaughter of Hyrcanus, was the parent of a large family, and from him were descended the two AGRIPPAS, the first of whom was the “KING HEROD” who slew James and imprisoned Peter; the second, the “KING AGRIPPA” before whom Paul pleaded. 3. After the judicial murder of Mariamne, Herod married another Mariamne, daughter of the high-priest, Simon: her son was HEROD PHILIP, whose marriage with his niece Herodias, daughter of Aristobulus, followed by her divorce of him to marry his half-brother, Herod Antipas, led to the martyrdom of John the Baptist. He is often confounded with his half-brother PHILIP, the tetrarch of Iturea. 4. His next wife, Malthace, a Samaritan, was the mother of HEROD ANTIPAS and ARCHELAUS. 5. By Cleopatra, a maiden of Jerusalem, he had two sons, the younger of whom was PHILIP, the tetrarch of Iturea and the adjacent districts, with Trachonitis. 6-10. His other wives and their children are of no consequence in the history. These complicated relations will be made clearer by the following conspectus of the chief personages with whom the N. T. history is concerned, for the four generations of the family:

| Wives. | Sons. | | | — | — | — | | 1. Doris… | 1. Antipater… | Executed by their father in his lifetime. | | 2. Mariamne, grandd. of Hyrcanus II. | 2. Aristobulus… | | | 3. Mariamne, d. of Simon… | 3. Alexander… | Lived as a private person in Rome. | | 4. Malthace, a Samaritan… | 4. HEROD PHILIP I… | | | 5. Cleopatra… | m. Herodias. | Tetrarch of Galilee. | | | 5. HEROD ANTIPAS… | Ethnarch of Judea. | | | 6. ARCHELAUS… | Tetrarch of Northern Perea, etc. | | | 7. HEROD PHILIP II… | | | | m. Salome, d. of Philip I. and Herodias. | | | | B. Children of Aristobulus. | | | 1. HEROD AGRIPPA I… | Named in Acts xii… | King of Judea. | | 2. HERODIAS, married: | | | | (1) Herod Philip I. | | | | (2) Herod Antipas. | | | | | C. Children of HEROD AGRIPPA I. | | | 1. HEROD AGRIPPA II… | Named in Acts xxv… | Tetrarch of Northern Perea, etc. | | (titular king). | | | | 2. BERENICE… | Named in Acts xxv. | | | 3. DRUSILLA, m. to FELIX… | Named in Acts xxiv. | S. |

The political and personal relations of Herod were evidently well adapted for the furtherance of a new religion. The rulers of the Jews, since the captivity, had been Persian between B. C. 536-532; Egypt-Greek and Syro-Greek between B. C. 332-142; Asmonean and independent between B. C. 142-63; and under Roman influences since the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey, B. C. 63. Under Herod (from B. C. 37 to the birth of Christ) the government might fairly be called cosmopolitan. In him the East and the West were united. By birth an Edomite on the father’s side, and an Ishmaelite on the mother’s, he represented a third great division of the Semitic race by his nominal adoption of the Jewish religion. Yet his life was entirely moulded by conceptions borrowed from the two great Aryan races of the ancient world; his conceptions of policy and government were entirely Roman; his ideal of life and enjoyment entirely Greek. And, in addition to this, he was surrounded by a body-guard of barbarian mercenaries. At no previous or subsequent period could a world-religion have been more easily preached than it was among the heterogeneous elements which were brought together by his singular tyranny. F.—The period when Herod was reigning at Jerusalem under the protectorate of Augustus was chiefly remarkable for great architectural works—especially the rebuilding and decorating the temple—for the promotion of commerce, the influx of strangers, and the increased diffusion of the two great languages of the heathen world. J. S. H.

3-6. Herod was troubled.** He knew the expectation of the Jews; and, so far as he shared it, a man of his temper could not but regard with jealousy and dismay the birth of an heir of David’s house, destined to reestablish his father’s throne. It was as a temporal king that he beheld him; and hence a rival to be put down and destroyed. The body (the Sanhedrim) which gave this information respecting the place from which the Messiah was to come was the same body which in a later day declared of Jesus: “We know this man whence he is; but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.” K.

11. In absence of all outward warrant for the act, in spite of the most unpromising appearances, they bow the knee before that undistinguished infant, lower than it bent before the haughty Herod at Jerusalem; bow in adoration such as they never rendered to any earthly sovereign. And that act of worship over, they open their treasures and present to him their gifts: the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh, the rarest products of the East; an offering such as any monarch might have had presented to him by the ambassadors from any foreign prince. When we take the whole course of these men’s conduct into account; when we think of their long and perilous journey with no other object than the making of this single obeisance to the infant Redeemer of mankind; when we look at them standing unmoved amid all the discouragements of the Jewish metropolis; when we attend them on their solitary way to Bethlehem; when we stand by their side, as beneath that lowly roof they silently worship, and spread out their costly gifts—we cannot but regard their faith as in many of its features unparalleled in the gospel narrative; we cannot but place them in the front rank of that goodly company in whose acts the power and the triumph of a simple faith shine forth. H.—Great hall been their disappointment at finding no trace of the child in the royal family at the capital; great was their surprise at being led to the humble lodging of Mary at Bethlehem; but greater still the faith which led them to worship the babe in her arms, and lay their offerings at his feet. Their worship was a sign of the kingly, the divine glory hidden in the child; their gifts were a prophecy of the coming of the Gentiles to his kingdom. J. P. T.

The MAGNIFICAT of Mary is the expression of thankfulness for personal favor. The SONG of Zechariah celebrates personal mercy, and regards Christ only as the national deliverer. But the NUNC DI-MITTS of Simeon recognizes in him a light to lighten the Gentiles, as well as the glory of his people Israel. This gospel then is clearly a system of universal truth, at once redeeming and sanctifying all who receive it. Most appropriately, therefore, though the Jews first heard the tidings of the Advent, the first act of worship was paid by Gentiles; whose gifts proved a providential supply to the holy family when escaping from the jealous hatred of Herod, the head of the Jewish nation. J. A.

Section 10.—Flight into Egypt. Herod’s Cruelty. Return to Nazareth.

13. AND when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child, and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to de- 14 stroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and de- 15 parted into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. 16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had dili- 17 gently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy

18 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.

19. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to 20 Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into 21 the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life. And he 22 arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned 23 aside into the parts of Galilee: and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

ALL wickedness is useless. No permanent good, no solid advantage, was ever secured but by good and righteous means. All the trouble, all the crime, that Herod chose to incur, and for which he brought upon himself most grievous retributions, were utterly abortive with regard to the object he had in view. Had he rendered to the Divine Child the homage he professed to be ready to offer, this would in no wise have endangered his own temporal interests. Christ came to die, and not to reign, or but to reign by dying. Herod’s wrath did, therefore, but subserve the real purposes of God. K.

The child Jesus was indeed born a king. But it was a king of all the world, not confined within the limits of a province, like the weaker beauties of a torch, to shine in one room, but, like the sun, his empire was over all the world. His kingdom was not of this world; and he that gives heavenly kingdoms to all his servants would not have stooped to pick up Herod’s petty coronet; but as it is a very vanity which ambition seeks, so it is a shadow that disturbs and discomposes all its motions. J. T.

13,14. The Word has become flesh, and is now lower than the angels, and even in the cradle he is despised and rejected of men. Already round the manger rages the fury of Herod: and scarcely is he born when already the child must flee! A. T.—The Evangelists furnish none of the incidents of this journey. This silence of authentic history has been actively supplied by legends and traditions, which are interesting as showing what kind of narratives of our Lord’s life we should have had, in exchange for the noble simplicity of the gospels, if men had been left to their own devices under the influence of the Oriental and legendary spirit. K.—It is left to apocryphal legends, immortalized by the genius of Italian art, to tell us how, on the way, the dragons came and bowed to him, the lions and leopards adored him, the roses of Jericho blossomed wherever his footsteps trod, the palm-trees at his command bent down to give them dates, the robbers were overawed by his majesty, and the journey was miraculously shortened. They tell us further how, at his entrance into the country, all the idols of the land of Egypt fell from their pedestals with a sudden crash, and lay shattered and broken upon their faces, and how many wonderful cures of leprosy and demoniac possession were wrought by his word. All this prodigality of superfluous, aimless, and unmeaning miracle furnishes a strong contrast to the truthful simplicity of the gospel narrative. F.—How unlike that holy flower of paradise, in the true gospels, which a few simple touches make to bloom in beautiful self-evidence before us! H. B.

15. In Egypt the fugitives were safe. It was, moreover, almost another Judea, for the favor shown to their race by the Ptolemies had induced as many as a million of Jews to settle in the Nile valley; and of the five quarters of Alexandria, with 300,000 free citizens, Jews occupied more than two. They had had a temple of their own at Leontopolis, in the Delta, for about 160 years, though they preferred to go up to that at Jerusalem; the Greek translation of the Bible, which had already widely taken the place of the Hebrew original, had been made in Egypt. Nor would it be difficult for Joseph to find support, as the different classes of Jewish workmen in Egypt were associated in guilds, which maintained those out of employment. G.—The abode of Jesus in Egypt formed a step by which the course of his life was assimilated to that of his people’s history, and so fulfilled, in its highest sense, the saying of the prophet Hosea, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” S.—This citation shows the almost universal application in the N. T. of the prophetic writings to the expected Messiah, as the general antitype of all the events of the typical (O. T.) dispensation. A.

16. Among the atrocities which disgraced the later days of Herod, what is called the Massacre of the Innocents (which took place late in the year before, or early in the same year with the death of Herod) passed away unnoticed. The murder of a few children in a village near Jerusalem would excite little sensation among such a succession of dreadful events, except among the immediate sufferers. The jealousy of Herod against any one who should be born as a king in Judea—the dread that the high religious spirit of the people might be re-excited by the hope of a real Messiah—as well as the summary manner in which he endeavored to rid himself of the object of his fears, are strictly in accordance with the relentlessness and decision of his character. H. M.—It was that Herod, whose crimes, committed in violation of every natural feeling, ever urged him on to new deeds of cruelty; whose path to the throne, and whose throne itself, were stained with human blood; whose vengeance against conspirators, not satiated with their own destruction, demanded that of their whole families; whose rage was hot, up to the very hour of his death, against his nearest kindred; whose wife, Mariamne, and three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater, fell victims to his suspicions, the last just before his death. It was that Herod, who, at the close of a blood-stained life of seventy years, goaded by the furies of an evil conscience, racked by a painful and incurable disease, waiting for death, but desiring life, raging against God and man, and maddened by the thought that the Jews, instead of bewailing his death, would rejoice over it as the greatest of blessings, commanded the worthies of the nation to be assembled in the circus, and issued a secret order that, after his death, they should all be slain together, so that their kindred, at least, might have cause to weep for his death! N.—Bethlehem was at that time merely a village, in which the number of infants must have been very small; and it would be extravagant to suppose that more than twenty-five children perished on this occasion, and it is quite possible that they may have been fewer. K.

17,18. Jeremiah, predicting the captivity of Israel, beautifully introduces Rachel their mother crying bitterly in Ramah, when she saw her children driven out of their country slaves to heathens. Therefore Matthew uses the prophet’s words in their genuine meaning, when he applies them to the slaughter of the infants. For as in the prophecy so in the history, the mother of the Israelites is figuratively introduced weeping at the calamity of her children; and the figure, as used by the evangelist, has a peculiar beauty which is wanting in the prophet, Rachel being buried in the fields of Bethlehem, where the infants were slain. M.

Our assurance is clear, and, as we think, well grounded, that all who die in infancy are saved. Distinguished among them all, let us believe this of those slaughtered babes of Bethlehem. Their fate was singularly wrapped up with that of the infant Saviour. The stroke that fell on them was meant for him; the sword of persecution which swept so mercilessly in many an after-age through the ranks of Christ’s little ones was first reddened in their blood. The earliest victims to hatred of the Nazarene—if not consciously and willingly, yet actually dying for him—let us count them as the first martyrs for Jesus, and let us believe that in them the truth of the martyrs’ motto was first made good, “Near to the sword, near to God.” “O blessed infants!” exclaims Augustine; “he who at his birth had angels to proclaim him, the heavens to testify, and Magi to worship him, could surely have prevented that these should have died for him, had he not known that they died not in that death, but rather lived in higher bliss. H.

19. The history divides itself, at Herod’s death, into two portions, which intersect almost without mingling: that of Christ and his Church, and that of the Jews as a nation. The latter belongs rather to the history of the Old Covenant than of the New. It is the story of the last expiring effort of a noble but corrupted and mistaken people to defend their supposed rights against the earthly masters to whose yoke they had already bowed, and against the spiritual Lord whom they resisted because they knew him not. Perhaps the devout student of the spiritual conflict is too often at a disadvantage for want of a comprehensive view of the external relations of the Jewish nation. This distinction is thus insisted on by the eloquent historian of the Jews. S.—The history of the Jews, after the death of Herod (not rightly named the Great) and the birth of Jesus, separates itself into two streams: one narrow at first, and hardly to be traced in its secret windings into the world, but with the light of heaven upon it, and gradually widening till it embraces a large part of Asia, part of Africa, the whole of Europe, and becomes a mighty irresistible river—a river with many branches—gladdening and fertilizing mankind, and bearing civilization, as well as holiness and happiness, in its course; the other at first as expansive, but gradually shrinking into obscurity, lost in deep, almost impenetrable, ravines; sullen apparently and lonely, yet not without its peculiar majesty in its continuous, inexhaustible, irrepressible flow, and not without its own peculiar influence as an undercurrent on the general life and progress of mankind; too often attempted to be cruelly dried up by violent means, or turned into blood, yet still emerging when seeming almost lost, and flowing on, as it still flows, and seems destined to flow. Though the Jewish and

Christian history have much in common, they may be kept almost entirely distinct. H. M.

22. Archelaus reigned so tyrannically in Judea, that after two years the endurance of his people became utterly exhausted, and they lodged complaints against him at Rome, in consequence of which at length he was deposed, and banished to Vienne in Gaul, and his dominion made a province of Rome, the government of which was administered by Roman procurators. This was the political situation of Judea during the time of our Lord’s ministry. But Galilee remained under the separate government of Herod Antipas for many years—not only nearly the whole period of our Lord’s life, but considerably after his death, even to the year 42 A. D., when, being accused at Rome by his nephew Herod Agrippa of a secret understanding with the Parthians, he was deposed and banished to Lyons in Gaul, and his tetrarchy and all his property given to his accuser, who is no other than the “Herod” of the twelfth chapter of Acts. Galilee was obviously the best and safest place for the bringing up of the child Jesus. Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch, though not a good man, was a person of mild disposition as compared with Archelaus, with whom he was, moreover, on terms so hostile that there was not the least likelihood that he would give up the infant Christ into his power. K.

23. Nazareth. The physical geography of Palestine is, perhaps, more distinctly marked than that of any other country in the world. The character of the country from north to south may be represented by four parallel bands—the Seaboard, the Hill country, the Jordan valley, and the Trans-Jordanic range. The Hill country, which thus occupies the space between the low Seaboard plain and the deep Jordan valley, falls into two great masses, the continuity of the low mountain-range being broken by the plain of Jezreel (Esdraelon). The southern mass of those limestone hills formed the land of Judea; the northern, the land of Galilee. Almost in the centre of this northern chain of hills there is a singular cleft in the limestone, forming the entrance to a little valley. Gradually the valley opens into a little natural amphitheatre of hills, supposed by some to be the crater of an extinct volcano; and there, clinging to the hollows of a hill, which rises to the height of some five hundred feet above it, lie, “like a handful of pearls in a goblet of emerald,” the flat roofs and narrow streets of a small Eastern town, and that little town is Nazareth. F.

Nazareth is twenty miles east of the Mediterranean, and sixteen miles west of the Sea of Galilee. Distant only two miles from Esdraelon, the level of this basin is about eight hundred feet above the level of the great plain, while the hills about it rise several hundred feet higher still. N. C. B.—It is one of the peculiarities of the Galilean hills, as distinct from those of Ephraim or Judah, that they contain green basins of table-land just below their topmost ridges, forming marked features in any view from the summit of Tabor, or farther north from the slopes of Hermon. Such above all is Nazareth. Fifteen gently-rounded hills “seem as if they had met to form an inclosure” for this peaceful basin; they rise round it like the edge of a shell to guard it from intrusion. A. P. S.—From its very position, this unwalled town seems to covet obscurity and seclusion. Unlike Bethlehem and the cities of Judah and Benjamin, perched on the hilltops; unlike Shechem, whose gushing fountains and perennial streams have invited the earliest settlements of man, the site of Nazareth offers no natural advantages. Among the many smaller ridges which crowd round the platform, from which rises the mountain-chain of Lebanon, several here are clustered, forming a wide, natural amphitheatre, the crest of which rises round the basin of Nazareth, as though to guard it from intrusion—“inclosed by mountains as the flower is by its leaves.” The town clings to the hill-side, on a steep slope at the northwest of this hollow, unknown and unnamed in the Old Testament—a place that had no history till he came who has hallowed and immortalized it. H. B. T.

A broad valley passed a few miles to the north of it, leading from the populous towns of the Lake of Tiberias to the Mediterranean coast. Only four miles north, on the edge of this valley, was Sepphoris, for a time the Roman capital of Galilee, and the largest town in the district. N. C. B.—The distant view of the village is beautiful. Its streets rise in terraces on the hill-slopes toward the northwest. The hills, here and there broken into perpendicular faces, rise above it, in an amphitheatre round, to a height of about five hundred feet, and shut it in from the bleak winds of winter. The flat-roofed houses, built of the yellowish-white limestone of the neighborhood, shine in the sun with a dazzling brightness, from among gardens and fig-trees, olives, cypresses, and the white and scarlet blossoms of the orange and pomegranate. A mosque with its graceful minaret, a large convent from whose gardens rise tall cypresses, and a modest church, are the principal buildings. G.—No great road led up to this sunny nook. Trade, war, adventure, pleasure, pomp, passed by it, flowing from west to east, from east to west, along the Roman road. But the meadows were aglow with wheat and barley. Near the low ground ran a belt of gardens, fenced with loose stones, in which myriads of green figs, red pomegranates, and golden citrons ripened in the summer sun. High up the

Nazareth, from N. N. E.—The distant range of hills is to the S. of the plain of Esdracion.

slopes hung vintages of purple grapes. In the plain among the corn, and beneath the mulberry-trees and figs, shone daisies, poppies, tulips, lilies, anemones, endless in their profusion, brilliant in their dyes. Low down on the hill-side sprang a well of water, bubbling, plentiful, and sweet; and above this fountain of life, in a long street straggling from the fountain to the synagogue, rose the homesteads of many shepherds, craftsmen, and vinedressers. It was a lovely and humble place, of which no poet, no ruler, no historian of Israel had ever taken note. W. H. D.

Section 11.—As a Child questions with the Doctors in the Temple.

Jerusalem.