harmony of a Jewish peasant household? Was He the product of that eastern soil? or was He what He claimed to be? Those who do not admit the true doctrine of His person and work, are continually brought to a standstill by astonishment. We, too, marvel, but with us the mysteries are not many. They have been reduced to one, God was manifest in the flesh. "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Rabbi, Thou art the King of Israel."

CHAPTER I.

The Birth and Infancy of Christ.

"Unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given.”

"A child He was, and had not learned to speak,
Who with His words the world before did make;
His mother's arms Him bare, He was so weak,
Who with His hands the vault of heaven could shake.
See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
Whom all the world is not enough to hold;

Who of His years as of His age hath told,
Never such age so young, never a child so old."

A

GILES FLETCHER.

VILLAGE maiden, of whose previous his

tory we know almost nothing, had the homely tenor of her life one day strangely broken by the descent of the angel Gabriel, and his salutation, “Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” In the midst of her troubled surmisings as to what the meaning of this salutation might be, he announced to her that she was to bear the promised Messiah. She was thus called to the most awful charge ever laid upon a mortal

creature. The call was as overwhelming as it was sudden and startling. From the privacy of her obscure life, she was summoned to be the instrument of the fulfilment of God's greatest purpose and the accomplishment of God's most amazing work. She was to be the last link in the long chain of chosen souls through whom God's purpose had advanced, and in her it was to be consummated. In her, man and God were to be brought into the most inexpressible closeness. She was to be the human mother of the eternal Son. What consequences were to be involved in this election none could dream; only, as the call was great, there must be much to endure, to surrender, to anticipate. It is idle to try to imagine what the state of the soul of the maiden must have been when she heard of the place she was to fill in the eternal plan. What tides of fear and rapture, of shame and wonder, swept through the gentle heart we cannot even dream; but her answer was one of profound and humble obedience. She was betrothed to Joseph, and standing on the brink of a new life at a time when, if ever, the heart flutters on wide-spread wings of hope and fear, and excited words rush

1 See Church's Human Life, p. 172.

to the lips; but before the holy angel, and with her heart filled by his great message, there was neither dejection nor exultation. He came and went, and she remained in her sweet humility waiting the fulfilment of the word of the Lord. That her character was singularly pure, simple, and religious, is quite apparent. The very fact of her being chosen to be the mother of the Mes

But it

siah, is proof in itself of that. But it appears also from the unconsciousness and the gentle greatness of trust with which she accepted the overwhelming honor that was put upon her. In the thought of God's presence with her, in the thought of accomplishing His purpose, all hopes and fears and loves of her own little life went clean out of sight. The Lord had magnified her, she was His handmaid; He might do with her in all things as He willed.

We read next of her going to Elizabeth, who was soon to obtain the dearest wish of a Jewish woman, in having a son. When she stood on the threshold of her kinswoman's house, she was received by a joyful salutation, which confirmed to her the angel's message. Elizabeth's words of blessing went beyond those of the angel. Being filled with the Holy Ghost, she said,

"Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." Thus the angel's message was confirmed by human voice. What she had hidden in the deep silence of her trustful heart, what she had believed, and yet trembled to believe, was made real by another, and that repressed still spirit broke forth in words of song, in which she poured out her praise to God who had shown His mercy to the humble. "All generations," she sings in her gladness, "shall call me blessed,"-a true woman's thought of happiness-blessedness in blessing others. Her song is the last word of the old covenant and the opening utterance of the gospel. While retaining the form and color of the old Hebrew poetry, it quivers tremulously with the great and partially disclosed revelation about to be given. The hymn, like others that stand near it, could not have been sung earlier or later. "Such sunlit mountain-tops in the distance, with such mists over the paths that lead to them, such a firm grasp of salvation and redemption, such a clear view of its character, and such silence as to its details, can only belong to the thin border line of a period neither quite Jewish nor quite Christian. A little less, and these