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near or from far, whether they have been ever, or are only now become, His people.

As then these wise men were, as St. Chrysostom says, "the forefathers of the Church," it is our business to prove ourselves to be their descendants, by making our conduct like theirs, an exact contrast to the behaviour of the Jews. They ended at points as far separated from each other as could be; the one party coming to Christ, the other turning from Him; the one worshipping Him, the other crucifying Himthe one offering myrrh as a gift of honour at His birth, the other mixing it with His wine for the draught of death. And so throughout all the circumstances of their visit this difference is observable.

1. First, in their ready belief in Jesus upon the slightest evidence, while the Jews rejected the strongest proofs. God stirred them up by simply shewing them a star-some new and extraordinary light which they at once saw was miraculous-and they came to Jerusalem seeking its explanation. But the Jews, though they had the testimony of the prophets, fixing, as they well knew, both the time and place of the Saviour's birth; though the shepherds had published to them the news told them by the heavenly host;

though these very strangers had forced upon their attention the birth of their King; though Simeon and Anna and Zacharias had borne witness to Him; yet none sought Him except to destroy Him. As an ancient father has said, "They learn from a foreign tongue first of all, what they would not submit to learn from the prophets; that if they were disposed to be candid, they might have the strongest motive for obedience; if they were contentious, they might henceforth be deprived of all excuse. For what could they have to say, who did not receive Christ after so many prophets, when they saw that the wise men, at the sight of a single star, had received Him, and had worshipped Him ?”

2. And not only in their willing faith are these wise men our examples, but also in cheerfully encountering danger and difficulty in consequence of that faith. They came, it may be, from that Sheba of which our Saviour said, that it was in the utmost parts of the earth; undertaking what was in those days, and in those unsettled times, a long and perilous journey for His sake. They came fearlessly before Herod, to say that they sought to worship another King of the Jews; they were not daunted by the tumult among the chief priests and throughout all Jerusalem; but they

persevered to the end, until the same star that had so long before caused them to leave country and friends and home once more appeared, to their great joy, and marked the spot where their search was to prove successful. But the Jews would not go even the short distance of Bethlehem from Jerusalem to see Him who in so wonderful a manner was declared to be their own King. They would have met with but little trouble, and no danger; they would not have had to cross the borders of their own land; their friends and home they would have left scarce a single day; but they were too proud to be instructed, too selfish to bestow aught of their time or care upon what they thought an uncertain. gain. Let the words of prophets, of angels, and of saints be against them-their own opinions. were to them dearer than the truth, their own comfort more precious than the favour of God.

3. Again, these wise men, when the object of their journey was attained; when their miraculous guide pointed out instead of a palace a common manger; when instead of a king, they beheld an infant with His mother, the humble wife of a carpenter; when they found that He who had caused so much excitement in them far away, was unknown or despised at home;

they did not doubtingly imagine that they had deceived themselves or been misled, but at once fell down and worshipped Him, and presented gifts, the choicest that their country could supply, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And what on the other hand did the Jews? We read of nothing but Herod's cruelty, to which it seems they quietly consented. They would not themselves go to worship their Lord, so they cared not if others went to slay Him; they would offer no gifts to honour Him, so they would not stretch forth their hand to defend Him; but, even then, they had within them that heart, which afterwards led them to complete what Herod in vain attempted; they were first faithless, then careless, then pitiless; and while we with the other thousand and tens of thousands of the Gentiles have come to the brightness of Christ's rising, and been hitherto upheld and blest by Him, they have received back the measure which they meted out, and have become, we cannot say undeservedly, disbelieved, uncared for, and pitied less than any men.

Yet we must not boast, remembering how the apostle has warned us to take heed lest if God spared not these the natural branches, He spare not us who have been grafted into their place.

We must beware lest we follow in their steps rather than with these eastern kings in whose train we ought to follow. So little has been told us respecting them, we know not who they are, what their knowledge or hope of a Saviour was, what became of them after they returned to their own country, whether as some traditions maintain they established the worship of Jesus among their own people, or suffered it to die with them; our ignorance indeed is so complete of all that went before or followed after the one short scene in which they appear in St. Matthew's gospel, that it is our duty to make the most of that example which they have left us, in order that we may follow them through that breach in the middle wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles, through which they were the first to

pass.

1. What if no miracle lead us from our daily employments to wander far in search of Christ? what if we have no visible heavenly guide to point out the place of His abode, are we for that left the more in darkness? Are we for that left ignorant of when and how we may find Him? Our Bethlehem, or as the name means, our "House of bread," we all know full well to be this place where Christ is ever present, where

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