m others of more
matchless price. For their gold he gave them charity and spiritual
riches; for their incense, perfect faith; and for their myrrh, perfect
truth and meekness: and the Virgin, his mother, also bestowed on them
a precious gift and memorial, namely, one of those linen bands in
which she had wrapped the Saviour, for which they thanked her with
great humility, and laid it up amongst their treasures. When they had
performed their devotions and made their offerings, being warned in a
dream to avoid Herod, they turned back again to their own dominions;
and the star which had formerly guided them to the west, now went
before them towards the east, and led them safely home. When they were
arrived there, they laid down their earthly state; and in emulation of
the poverty and humility in which they had found the Lord of all power
and might, they distributed their goods and possessions to the poor,
and went about in mean attire, preaching to their people the new king
of heaven and earth, the CHILD-KING, the Prince of Peace. We are not
told what was the success of their mission; neither is it anywhere
recorded, that from that time forth, every child, as it sat on
its mother's knee, was, even for the sake of that Prince of Peace,
regarded as sacred--as the heir of a divine nature--as one whose tiny
limbs enfolded a spirit which was to expand into the man, the king,
the God. Such a result was, perhaps, reserved for other times, when
the whole mission of that divine Child should be better understood
than it was then, or is _now_. But there is an ancient oriental
tradition, that about forty years later, when St. Thomas the apostle
travelled into the Indies, he found these Wise Men there, and did
administer to them the rite of baptism; and that afterwards, in
carrying the light of truth into the far East, they fell among
barbarous Gentiles, and were put to death; thus each of them receiving
in return for the earthly crowns they had cast at the feet of the
Saviour, the heavenly crown of martyrdom and of everlasting life.

Their remains, long afterwards discovered, were brought to
Constantinople by the Empress Helena; thence in the time of the first
Crusade they were transported to Milan, whence they were carried off
by the Emperor Barbarossa, and deposited in the cathedral at Cologne,
where they remain to this day, laid in a shrine of gold and gems; and
have performed divers great and glorious miracles.

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