tions, along with their astrological art, may have calculated beforehand this rare planetary conjunction, and fixed upon the event as the sign of Messiah's coming;-led to this possibly by the tradition, which the Jew Abarbanel mentions, that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter had preceded the birth of Moses, the first law-giver. Our author, nevertheless, is too earnest a believer in the supernatural, and in the proper subjection of physical forces to such a transcendent fact as that of the Incarnation, to have any wish to remove miracle from the story. To him the star is not a planetary star, but a special star, divinely ordered, keeping its way in heaven, indeed, according to celestial dynamics, but disappearing when its mission was done. The new star, moreover, was a part of their Messianic expectation, a part of the prophecy which had come from a very distant day. The prophecy of Balaam tells of a star to come out of Jacob, and this was the oracular sign which Daniel declared. That the planetary conjunction came about the same time, proves nothing against the theory of a Star divinely appointed. The language of Matthew is certainly explicit. He says nothing of any planetary conjunction. It is a special star which brings the wanderers to the manger at Bethlehem. The closing words of this chapter on Kepler's discovery are one of those flashes of eloquence which break occasionally the calm movement of the discussion. "It is not strange that St. Matthew, even if he knew of them, did not record the planetary conjunctions. They were facts of nature, left to be made known to the Church, when most needful to it, by one solemnly elected of God to publish the laws and harmonies of the material universe: that, coeval with the Advent of the Lord of the heavens and the earth, a new Star shone, heralding this through all the worlds, and dating it through all time; that when He by whom all things were made and without whom, there was not any thing, lay in the manger in Bethlehem, the apparent sign of the glory that he had before he made the worlds was seen in the heavens, this the inspired evangelist records alike for itself, and for the miracle of its guiding to its Lord in virtue of both of which it holds high place on the eternal page.

VOL. LXXXVII. - NEW SERIES, VOL. VIII. NO. III.

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"Not then, of those planetary phenomena that Kepler rediscovered, but of a new Star, the magi speak, when they say they beheld the Star of the King. This harmonizes exactly and decisively with their coming. Their pilgrimage might have followed upon the conjunction of the planets; yet the faith that braved the toils and dangers of their long road is so high-toned that it requires that decisive intimation. This accomplishes what all else prepared for. It sent them to Jerusalem. History and science elucidate the sublime lesson of the power, the wisdom, and the reward of Faith in the coming of the wise men to the Lord; yet the gospel alone gives, what the records of history and the researches of science, though tending that way, lack, the full explanation, on its human side, of that abounding and unshaken confidence with which these magi proclaimed, in astonished, affrighted, unbelieving Jerusalem, the birth of its King." Eloquent words, and very captivating to the devout mind! But the unimag inative scientists will hardly admit their force as explaining interference with the fixed order of nature.

That this admission of a supernatural star seems to favor the pretended science of astrology, our author confesses in the next chapter, which he devotes to the "Astrological element in the narrative." This belief in astrology in that age was so rooted that it needed no confirmation. Christianity indeed, in seeming by some of its miracles to strengthen astrology, really put an end to it. Astrology, too, with all its absurdities, was not wholly falsehood; and in this instance, at any rate, the reading of the stars was guided by a higher wisdom and to the holiest of ends. The magi may have been astrologers, and used their astrology in this finding of the young child; but we are not to fasten to their art the bad name which it has gained since it has been superseded by the science of astronomy. The magi used their occult art to discover the great secret of the Divinity in Humanity; and that alone would give it dignity. In this chapter the tone is of a gentle mysticism, which reveals in the author the wondering spirit of the Quietists.

And this again comes out, in the tenth chapter, on the "In

spiration of St. Matthew," which seems to the author so complete, so clear, so self-evidencing, that all argument to prove it is superfluous. "There is a kingdom of grace," he says, "having its harmonies, even as the kingdom of nature hath. To those who have no hearts to feel them, they are as if they were not. Their notions as to this kingdom are as blank as those of a blind man to the Kingdom of Light. A man without eyes might grope about, with a tape-measure, among the houses in Jerusalem, and his measurements somewhat avail; of such value are the researches of men like Strauss in the spiritual Jerusalem. As to some things of an unspiritual kind, their fingers may avail something; but the soul-inspiring harmonies of the kingdom of grace, such cannot know. Can men, born deaf, know the symphonies of Beethoven? Such critics of harmonies, poring over the printed notes of 'The Creation,' and measuring with scale and dividers here and there, on the silent page, may detect typographical errors, make some shrewd and more absurd remarks upon the number, arrangement, and proportion of the dots, be witty and wise over those who see what they cannot see, feel what they cannot feel, in the mysterious scroll; but though the mighty master of the organ unroll, in volumes of majestic sound, the music expressed in these mystic characters, all is a blank to them, save what they glean from the mute symbols of a melody they have no faculty to hear. Our knowledge is not to be called in question, because darkened souls, like Renan's, know it not. A world of sight and sound is not less sure, because such men have no hearing and no sight. The spiritual world, with its truth and harmonies, is none the less a world because they are dead. Its truths and harmonies are the only realities."

The closing chapter, in some respects the finest in the book, not only sums up in concise statement the course of the argument, but offers in exquisite phrase some thoughts upon the unbelieving spirit of the age, and the need of recognizing the higher meaning of prophecy and the events of the sacred record. The moral and spiritual significance of this story, which so many carelessly pass by, comes out to him in its

full beauty. He sees in it the fulfilment of that ancient song in which a gentile prophesied that a "Star should come out of Jacob, and a Sceptre rise out of Israel;" in these strangers coming to Bethlehem, the type of that great multitude which from all nations were to come into the company of the Lord; in the Magi worshipping the young child, the sign of the wise and the good acknowledging allegiance to the greater grace of God in religion. He claims that this story of the wise men lays strong hold not only on the heart of the Church, but on the reason of the Church; that the devout reason calls for some such visible attestation of this as the great truth, that while salvation is of the Jews, its reach is to the gentiles, and its appeal is to the natural piety and the matured knowledge of men. It is the answer of the Church to the question, "How near to the Lord did the nearest of the heathen come?"

This spiritual teaching of the story is only hinted, and will doubtless be more fully exhibited in that sequel, of which the present volume seems to be only the proem and the preparation. The finer qualities of the author's thought will appear in that book, in which the critical spirit will be less prominent. But the present volume will be, to all who read it in sympathy with its faith, most interesting and fascinating. It belongs to a class of which we have too few specimens in our life of sensation and intellectual conceit. It is really one of that class which are called, in Germany, books of "Erbauung," and which warm the soul by their gentle earnestness and sincerity of conviction more than it could be by any vehemence of rapture. If the other stories of the Evangelical record, which have about them a mystic and transcendent obscurity, such as the temptation, the transfiguration, the agony in the garden, the resurrection, could be treated in this way, the result would be more edifying than the result of attempting to rationalize what must be accepted as spiritual phenomena, if accepted at all. A sorry bungle the interpreters make of it, who attempt to show any natural way in which the Christ was transfigured, or raised from the dead, or taken up into heaven. These narratives are stories of the Spirit, and are not to be judged by those

who have no faith in the Spirit. They are better peremptorily rejected, as fiction and folly.

Not all minds are constituted like the mind of the imaginative student of the gospel, who, in the long months and years of his thought and inquiry, has found this secret of the story of the wise men, and is moved to tell it; and not a few even of those who call themselves students in the Scripture, will perhaps pass the book by, as too slight for their heed. But others will welcome it, as a real contribution to the spiritual understanding of the legend which is still printed in the record, and which destructive criticism has not yet displaced. Even to those whose faith is different, who have other views of inspiration and of the nature of the Christ, the reading of a treatise so reverent, so wise, and so gentle in its spirit, while it is so positive in its tone, cannot be without profit. Orthodoxy, in this mild and gracious form, almost wins one away from the heresy which refuses to bow before the Cross, or worship any creature, even the holiest, who is born of woman. There are two forms in which the orthodoxy of our time shows itself, which have no attraction for the liberal believer, the hard, dogmatic, self-righteous form of command and threatening; and the cunning, dialectic form, which would beguile by the speciousness and the subtilty of its logic. But the orthodoxy, which, without compromise or concealment, speaks modestly its word, not claiming a right, and hardly expecting a hearing, in the din of the world's voices, the orthodoxy that is content to bring new light from some obscure passage of the sacred volume, if haply it may give comfort to some inquiring soul, the orthodoxy of a kindled and waiting imagination, that sees through all the noise and hurry of this worldly excitement the quiet glow of the heavenly life that surrounds it, is unspeakably refreshing. Such is the orthodoxy of this story of the wise men.

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