name ever spoken. Under heaven there is no other name given by which men may be saved. God's authorized Saviour is the meaning of the name, prophetic as Joseph pronounced it, in actual fulfilment as we know it, and to a degree beyond power of words to estimate. Ever since that solemn investment of the Divine Infant with His name and title, the lips of men and women and children have spoken the name of Jesus Christ in joy and sorrow, in faith and hope and love. and penitence, in face of torments and in disdain of allurements, in the quiet of contemplation and in the whirlwind of temptation. The name Jesus Christ has been the watchword of all that was best in humanity, most virtuous, greatest, and most heroic. more that name prevails for all that is good and for the salvation of the human race. Jesus circumcised, and thus was the original purpose of that holy rite finally fulfilled, for Abraham and his race were marked with it as a token that the Messias was to come.

More and

and wise, Thus was

It was a popular Jewish belief that at every circumcision Elias the prophet was invisibly present among the ten regular witnesses, a reminder of the fiercest and most aggressive loyalty of the Hebrew to Jehovah. If this was true, Elias must have embraced the Infant Messias with loving reverence, and proclaimed that the outward mark of circumcision was now to be supplanted by the inner character of divine sonship stamped upon the soul, no longer the scar in the flesh marking the true child of Abraham, but the soul's faith in Jesus Christ elevating man to sonship with God.

After Mary and Joseph, the first to be called to the adoration of the New-Born were the simple children of nature: God has always preferred the men who plough the fields and watch the flocks and ply the tools of our common lot of labor; the class to which Jesus and Mary and Joseph belonged. fitted for supernatural faith are upright men of science. Hence, the shepherds were succeeded by the Wise Men of the East in paying homage to Jesus.

After them, the best

Their country was Chaldea. In that country in former ages the people of God had lived in captivity, and their Scriptures must have been known to many of the more learned Chaldeans. Perhaps the Magi had received the holy books of the Hebrews as heirlooms from their fathers, and in them had learned the promise of a Redeemer. But it is well known that Zoroaster, their great philosopher, plainly taught that God would some day send a mighty teacher to mankind, who would conquer evil and establish good in the world. There was ample material in all this for the

investigations of scientific inquirers after truth, a class whose love of research is proverbial. But these men were not only enlightened men of science, they were also earnest and religious spirits, sharing in some way or other, we may well suppose, the Messianic hopes of Israel.

God had sent angels to announce the Glad Tidings to the shepherds, a direct mode of communication fitted to simple minds and requiring no discourse of reasoning to understand. He acted otherwise with the scholars of the Orient. They were used to observing the heavens for the truths of science, a high vocation, and one which God would honor in an especial manner. They sought for natural truth among the heavenly bodies; God spoke to them among the stars, and it was the language of supernatural hope.

There is no valid evidence that the Magi were kings. They were rulers in the realm of intellect and priests of the temple of natural science. They came from the East-Chaldea-whence God had originally called Abraham. These souls were the elect among the Gentiles, representatives of one of the nobler castes of human kind. The brilliant orb in the midnight sky turned their steps towards Jerusalem, the one point, as the Magi well knew, in the geography of the earth that centred universal expectation; and now, in the ever open book of the sky, they had a chart to guide their journeying thither. Great modern astronomers have endeavored, with some show of success, to prove that the "star" was but an extraordinary

natural phenomenon which God used for His purpose. But the only entirely satisfactory explanation is that it was wholly miraculous; this alone explains why the Magi, astronomers by profession, were irresistibly moved to follow it. This shining meteor of the heavens beckoned them on like the pillar of fire leading the Israelites across the desert. They remembered the prophecy of Balaam (Numbers xxiv. 17): "A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel." That star was indicative of the Teacher they sought