cending and
complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be
ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push
their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man's
tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.
The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod's question, put
their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be
born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an
exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its
spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against
Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly
pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no
truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men
will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent
rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in
Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and
Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of
his head.
Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored
to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful
persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not
extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom
been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him.
Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even
to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the
rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire
prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity
would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that
have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same
yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our
hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish
and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle.
Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our
own door and even in our own hearts.
The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were
in Jerusalem--in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a
monopoly of divine favor, the
|