SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 225, 28 January 1911, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

THE THREE KINGS. There is no story in the Bible upon which the imagination of the Middle Ages fastened with such eagerness as on this of the Three Wise Men. The exquisite beauty of the narrative takes the heart captive now as then with some occult fascination; the glamor of far-off lands and ways unknown lies in it. "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." The play of the Three Kings was one of the most popular religious plays of the Middle Ages, and the child-like imagination of early writers, fascinated by the simplicity of the narrative, filled in all sorts of detail, after the fashion of children with a favorite story. John Goldenmouth said the Wise Men must be Kings, since David had prophesied that the Kings of Arabia and Saba should bring gifts; St. Leo fixed their number at three; and then there was the story of how Herod burned the ships at Tar-slush in -his fury against them; how they were led -by an angel in the form of a child — the angel of the shepherds; how they were baptised by St. Thomas on his way to India, died Christians, and were buried at Cologne. Then when the fifteenth century took to the dogma of symbolism it represented one King, Balthazar, as "fuscus," taking the three to symbolise the three races of mankind. Their names were used on amulets and in conjurations. Up till the eighteenth century the Return of the Magi was kept in Italy on March Ist as a highly popular festival, and in our own day Provencal peasant boys went out with cakes and flowers to greet the Three Kings riding in to the stable, over the windy plains, as in days of old they had come with gifts from far away. Most of us still, however civilised, know the fascination of far horizons and how they draw the heart. And in the Middle ages horizons were even more extended than are those of the modern universe, because the seen and the unseen were more near each other. And also the continual going up and down along the roads of the world of travellers to far-off lands kept the simple and untravelled in perpetual assurance of a world not realised marvellously near at hand. Travellers brought tales of monsters and marvels; Crusader and pilgrim from the East, where Copt and Arab kept the tradition of the exact localities of Bible story, told how the "doleful creatures" of Scripture were still found in the Holy Places delivered to the Saracen, how the pelican and the porcupine, the owl and dragon, the aspic and the basilisk and the fiery flying serpent, still haunted the wastes, and how the night-monster settled and the satyr cried to his fellow among the reedy desolations of Eastern lands. The literal faith of the people, that made plays of the mysteries of their religion, preserved the conviction of the unseen whole and strong in them. The strangeness of the visible world was a pledge of the wonders of the next. It produced a lively and practical sense of death in the world, because always close at hand were the fearful jaws of the Leviathan which Job and Isaiah told of —the grievous hell of Christian dogma—who had "enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it."- In such a world, with heaven all about and the pit beneath, who could tell what marvellous thing might not come suddenly out of the void into the humble ways of daily life?—like the angels of early artists, who came out of eternity at a touch, breaking'in upon the material world in a sudden vision, with the stir of incredible swiftness on their wings and hair. The poverty of the stable enthralled the hearts of high and low in a universal appeal to pity and tenderness; and then, too, they were held and fascinated by the mystery of the strangers bringing gifts from far away with a lurking prophecy of death in them, gold and ineense and "myrrh for mortality." The majesty and wisdom and strangeness oi earth were bowed down there together with the ignorant and simple; the uncouth dromedary of the East and th* humble beasts of the stable stood side bv side where kings and shepherds worshipped together with the symbol of death in their hands. There was a piercing cenderness in the human appeal of the gift: "Hail be thou, Lord, long looked for, I have brought thee myrrh for mortality." Here was homage to the champion who should go down into the darkness beneath to fulfil prophecy. ''Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming"; the people that sat in darkness were to see a great light when the gates of brass were broken and the Conqueror went down to harrow hell with the print of the nails in His hands. The literal faith of the age gave an incomparable dramatic force to the apostrophe "Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates, and lie yet lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in."— "Who is the King of glory?" came back again from the throng of souls within the shado.w of death: "It is the Lord strong and mighty, even the Lord mighty in battle." The pagan dead went away into silence. In the cold place between the worlds the valiant fighters of the North lay down impotent like ants in the darkness, all their strength forgotten. And from the sunshine and the warm, busy Southern earth men went away into the silent presence of a fearful immortality, the Queen of Shadows, gentle and aw- [ ful, with poppies in her folded hands. The story of the Three Kings bringing gifts from far away is full of an occult sense of power over death, as if mortality should hear for ever the inaudible stir of worlds unseen lying close at hand: "Awake and sing, yet that dwell in dust," when the Wise Man comes from the East with his offering:—' "Hail be thou. Lord, long looked for, I have brought thee myrrh for mortality." —The Spectator. A BISHOP ON PRAYER. Dr. Boyd Carpenter, in a recentlyissued volume on "The Communion nf Prayer," says:—'•'Prayer is converse with God', and as we read the prayers which God's servants have uttered in past ages, we recognise both the variety and the similarity of Christian experiences. The relation of the soul to God is the same; the expressions nf its need are the same, whether the prayer belongs to an early or later Christian epoch; the divergences of thought, custom, or ecclesiastical environment do not invade the spiritual sactuary in which the soul holds converse with God. To use St. Bernard's thought—the soul retires from things without to things within, and from things within to things above. My hope is that these prayers, drawn from many lands and many ages, may stimulate the spirit of prayer and awaken a brave and active confidence in the value of prayer: for throughout the Christian world one thing more than all else is needed now—faith in the living God."