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II.

CHAP. dogmas, its precepts, or its opinions. The impression it makes, the emotions it awakens, the sentiments which it inspires, are perhaps its most vital and effective energies: from these men continually act; and the character of a particular age is more distinctly marked by the predominance of these silent but universal motives, than by the professed creed, or prevalent philosophy, or, in general, by the opinions of the times. Thus, none of the primary facts in the history of a widely-extended religion can be without effect on the character of its believers. The images perpetually presented to the mind, work, as it were, into its most intimate being, become incorporated with the feelings, and thus powerfully contribute to form the moral nature of the whole race. Nothing could be more appropriate than that the martial Romans should derive their origin from the nursling of the wolf, or from the god of war; and whether those fables sprung from the national temperament, or contributed to form it, however these fierce images were enshrined in the national traditions, they were at once the emblem and example of that bold and relentless spirit which gradually developed itself, until it had made the Romans the masters of the world. The circumstances of the birth of Christ were as strictly in unison with the design of the religion. This incident seemed to incorporate with the general feeling the deep sense of holiness and gentleness, which was to characterise the followers of Jesus Christ. It was the consecration of sexual purity and maternal tender

ness.

No doubt by falling in, to a certain degree, with the ascetic spirit of Oriental enthusiasm, the former incidentally tended to confirm the sanctity of celibacy, which for so many ages reigned paramount in the church; and in the days in which the Virgin Mother was associated with her divine Son in the general adoration, the propensity to this worship was strengthened by its coincidence with the better feelings of our nature, especially among the female sex. Still the substitution of these images for such as formed the symbols of the older religions, was a great advance towards that holier and more humane tone of thought and feeling, with which it was the professed design of the new religion to embue the mind of man.*

СНАР.

II.

In the marvellous incidents which follow, the Visit to visit of the Virgin Mother to her cousin + Eliza- Elizabeth. beth, when the joy occasioned by the miraculous conception seemed to communicate itself to the child of which the latter was pregnant, and called forth her ardent expressions of homage: and in the Magnificat, or song of thanksgiving, into which, like Hannah in the older Scriptures,

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II.

CHAP. the Virgin broke forth, it is curious to observe how completely and exclusively consistent every expression appears with the state of belief at that period; all is purely Jewish, and accordant with the prevalent expectation of the national Messiah: there is no word which seems to imply any acquaintance with the unworldly and purely moral nature of the redemption, which was subsequently developed. It may perhaps appear too closely to press the terms of that which was the common, almost the proverbial, language of the devotional feelings yet the expressions which intimate the degradation of the mighty from their seat, the disregard of the wealthy, the elevation of the lowly and the meek, and respect to the low estate of the poor, sound not unlike an allusion to the rejection of the proud and splendid royal race, which had so long ruled the nation, and the assumption of the throne of David by one born in a more humble state.†

Birth of
John the
Baptist.

After the return of Mary to Nazareth, the birth of John the Baptist excited the attention of the whole of Southern Judæa to the fulfilment of the rest of the prediction. When the child is about to be named, the dumb father interferes; he writes on a tablet the name by which he desires him to be

Agreeing so far, as the fact, with Strauss, I should draw a directly opposite inference, the high improbability that this remarkable keeping, this pure Judaism, without the intervention of Christian notions, should have been maintained, if this passage had been invented

or composed after the complete formation of the Christian scheme.

+ Neander in his recently published work has made similar observations on the Jewish notions in the Song of Simeon. Leben Jesu, p. 26.

Luke, i. 57. 80.

II.

called, and instantaneously recovers his speech. It CHAP. is not unworthy of remark, that in this hymn of thanksgiving, the part which was to be assigned to John in the promulgation of the new faith, and his subordination to the unborn Messiah, are distinctly announced. Already, while one is but a new-born infant, the other scarcely conceived in the womb of his mother, they have assumed their separate stations: the child of Elizabeth is announced as the prophet of the Highest, who shall go "before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways." Yet even here the Jewish notion predominates: the first object of the Messiah's coming, is that the children of Israel "should be saved from their enemies and from the hand of all that hate them; that they being delivered from the hand of their enemies, might serve him without fear."*

Bethlehem.

As the period approaches at which the child of Journey to Mary is to be born, an apparently fortuitous circumstance summons both Joseph aud the Virgin Mother from their residence in the unpopular town of Nazareth, in the province of Galilee, to Bethlehem, a small village to the south of Jerusalem.t Joseph on the discovery of the pregnancy of his

* Even the expression the "remission of sins," which to a Christian ear may bear a different sense, to the Jew would convey a much narrower meaning. All calamity being a mark of the divine displeasure, was an evidence of sin; every mark of divine favour therefore an evidence of divine forgiveness. The expression is frequently used in its

Jewish sense in the book of Mac-
cabees. Macc. iii. 8.; 2 Macc.
viii. 5. 27. and 29.; vii. 98. Le
Clerc has made a similar observ
ation (note in loc.) but is opposed
by Whitby, who however does not
appear to have been very pro-
foundly acquainted with Jewish
phraseology.

+ Matt. i. 18. 25.

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CHAP. betrothed, being a man of gentle character, had been willing to spare her the rigorous punishment enacted by the law in such cases, and determined on a private dissolution of the marriage. A vision however warned him of the real state of the case, and he no longer hesitated, though abstaining from all connection, to take her to his home; and accordingly, being of the same descent, she accompanied him to Bethlehem. This town, as the birthplace of David, had always been consecrated in the memory of the Jews with peculiar reverence; and no prediction in the Old Testament appears more distinct, than that which assigns for the nativity of the great Prince, who was to perpetuate the line of David, the same town which had given birth to his royal ancestor.‡

Decree of Augustus.

The decree of the Emperor Augustus §, in obedience to which the whole population of Palestine was to be enrolled and registered, has been, and still remains, an endless subject of controversy. One point seems clear, that the en

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