nd partly
because they all feared that any outburst of Messianic hopes would lead
to fresh cruelties inflicted by the relentless, trembling tyrant. So the
Magi, who represented the eagerness of Gentile hearts grasping the new
hopes, and claiming some share in Israel's Messiah, saw His own people
careless, and, if moved from their apathy, alarmed at the unwelcome
tidings that the promise which had shone as a great light through dreary
centuries was at last on the eve of fulfilment. So the first page on the
gospel history anticipates the sad issue: 'They shall come from the
east, and from the west,' and you yourselves shall be thrust out.

III. Then followed the council of the theologians, with its solemn
illustration of the difference between orthodoxy and life, and of the
utter hollowness of mere knowledge, however accurate, of the letter of
Scripture. The questions as to the composition of this gathering of
authorities, and of the variations between the quotation of Micah in the
text and its form in the Hebrew, do not concern us now. We may remark on
the evident purpose of God to draw forth the distinct testimony of the
ecclesiastical rulers to the place of Messiah's birth, and on the fact
that this, the most ancient interpretation of the prophecy, is vouched
to us by existing Jewish sources as having been the traditional one
until the exigencies of controversy with Christians pushed it aside
Notice the different conduct of Herod, the Magi, and the scribes. The
first is entangled in a ludicrous contradiction. He believes that
Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, and yet he determines to set himself
against the carrying out of what he must, in some sense, believe to be
God's purpose. 'If this infant is God's Messiah, I will kill Him,' is
surely as strange a piece of policy gone mad as ever the world heard
of. But it is perhaps not more insane than much of our own action, when
we set ourselves against what we know to be God's will, and consciously
seek to thwart it. A child trying to stop a train by pushing against the
locomotive has as much chance of success. The scribes, again, are quite
sure where Messiah is to be born; but they do not care to go and see if
He is born. These strangers, to whom the hope of Israel is new, may rush
away, in their enthusiasm, to Bethlehem; but they, to whom it had lost
all gloss, and become a commonplace, would take no such trouble. Does
not familiarity with the gospel produce much the same