blessing of God had rested upon that peaceful village, that had come
to be called "the city of David," and as if no sorrow was ever to visit
its soft green fields.

But, as if to draw our thoughts upwards, there is no spot on earth to
which, at some time or other, sorrow does not come; and the hitherto
peaceful Bethlehem was to have its full share.

A wicked king sat on the throne of Judea, whom nobody loved and many
abhorred. He was an old man, and terribly afflicted; and his temper,
which was always ferocious, had become more dreadful than that of the
wildest lion that had ever rushed up from the swelling of the Jordan.

His father, Antipater, was an Idumean, and a servitor in the temple of
Apollo at Ascalon, whilst his mother, Cypros, was an Arabian. He,
therefore, belonged to the despised Ishmaelites and the hated Edomites;
and the Jews were by no means inclined to look favourably upon him. To
please them he professed to follow their religion, but he was not a Jew
at heart. He trampled upon their feelings and prejudices, and leaned to
the side of the Romans; and they, therefore, mistrusted him, and longed
for the time when they should be freed from his misrule.

He had rebuilt their temple, and made it the most noble and magnificent
building on the face of the earth; and they gloried in seeing its white
marble pinnacles and golden roof glittering in the sunshine. For nine
years he had constantly employed 18,000 men in its re-erection, and for
upwards of thirty years more he had kept adding to its embellishments,
till for grandeur and costliness it stood unrivalled. But when it was
completed he set up over its chief gate the golden eagle of the Romans,
and at the sight of that abhorred ensign all their gratitude fled,
giving place to bitter resentment.

He married Jewish women, which was a compliment to their race; but his
unjust and cruel treatment of them roused up all their worst feelings,
and made them regard him for ever as an enemy.

The beautiful and virtuous Mariamne, who belonged to the Maccabees, the
noblest of their families, he, in a cruel fit of jealousy, ordered to be
put to death. Her brother, the youthful Aristobulus, who was
High-priest, he caused to be drowned before his eyes in pretended sport.
Her grandfather, the aged Hyrcanus, who had once saved the life of
Herod, when threatened by the Sanhedrin, he sent tottering to his death.
Her mother, Alexandra, fell a victim to his frenzy, and her t