37.

[12:3] Gal. iv. 4.

[12:4] Gen. xlix. 10; Dan. ix. 25; Haggai ii. 6, 7.

[12:5] Virgil. Ec. iv. Suetonius. Octavius, 94. Tacitus. Histor. v. 13.

[13:1] Haggai ii. 7.

[13:2] Dan. vii. 14.

[14:1] See Supplementary Note at the end of this chapter on the year of
Christ's Birth.

[14:2] Luke ii. 6, 7.

[15:1] Luke i. 11, 19.

[15:2] Luke. 26, 31.

[15:3] Luke ii. 13, 14.

[15:4] Matt. ii. 9.

[15:5] Matt. ii. 12.

[15:6] Matt. ii. 3. The evangelist does not positively assert that the
wise men met Herod _at Jerusalem_. On their arrival in the holy city he
was probably at Jericho--distant about a day's journey--for Josephus
states that he died there. ("Antiq." xvii. 6. Sec. 5. and 8. Sec. 1.) We may
infer, therefore, that he "heard" of the strangers on his sick-bed, and
"privily called" them to Jericho. The chief priests and scribes were,
perhaps, summoned to attend him at the same place.

[16:1] Matt. ii. 16. The estimates formed at a subsequent period of the
number of infants in the village of Bethlehem and its precincts betray a
strange ignorance of statistics. "The Greek Church canonised the 14,000
innocents," observes the Dean of St Paul's, "and another notion, founded
on a misrepresentation of Revelations (xiv. 3), swelled the number to
144,000. The former, at least, was the common belief of our Church,
though _even in our liturgy the latter has in some degree been
sanctioned_ by retaining the chapter of Revelations as the epistle for
the day. Even later, Jeremy Taylor, in his 'Life of Christ,' admits the
14,000 without scruple, or rather without thought."--_Milman's History
of Christianity_, i. p. 113, note.

[16:2] Matt. ii. 11.

[16:3] Luke ii. 38. It is a curious fact that in the year 751 of the
city of Rome, the year of the Birth of Christ according to the
chronology adopted in this volume, the passover was not celebrated as
usual in Judea. The disturbances which occurred on the death of Herod
had become so serious on the arrival of the paschal day, that Archelaus
was obliged to disperse the people by force of arms in the very midst of
the sacrifices. So soon did Christ begin to cause the sacrifice and the
oblation to cease. See Greswell's "Dissertations," i. p 393, 394, note.

[17:1] Luke ii. 40.

[17:2] Luke ii. 52.

[17:3] Mark vi. 3.

[17:4] John vii. 15.

[18:1] Luke ii. 46, 47.

[18:2] Luke iv. 16.

[18:3] Luke iii. 21-23. "It became Him, being in the likeness of sinful