HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 49, 4 April 1874, Page 13

HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

By the A.bb<s J. E. D abbas.

(Translated from the French for the ' New Zealand Tablet. 1 ) 20. — Massacbe ov the Chit.t>rbn of Bhtuxehem. " Herod, seeing himself deluded by the Magi," continues St. Matthew (1) "was exceeding angry ; and sending, killed all the male children thai* were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which ho had diligently enquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying : " A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning ; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they are sot." (2.) The massacre of the innocent victims of Bethlehem was resolved on by Herod, from the day in which the reply of the Sanhedrim had drawn the attention of the tyrant to the royal city, indicated by the Prophets as the future birth-place of the Messiah. The bloody execution must have followed close on the departure of the Magi. It is one of the historical facts the most firmly established by extrinsic evidence. None can be ignorant of the words of Augustus on this subject. The news of the massacre at Bethlehem reached the court of the Emperor at the same time as that of the execution of Antipater, eldest eon of Herod. "On learning," says Macrobius, " that the King of the Jews had just caused the massacre, in Syria, of all the children of two years old and under, and that his own son had been put to death by order of his father, Augustus exclaimed : "It were better to be Herod's hog than his son." (3.) A. cruelty such as this revolts the delicacy of our modern rationalists. They believe neither in the miracles of the divine power, nor in the monstrous errors of human ambition. A.nd yet the barbarous treatment which the Idumean tyrant adopted towards the children of Bethlehem alone, had been, fifty years before, decreed by the Senate of Rome, against all those who should be born in the prophetic year, in which, according to the Sibylline oracles, " Nature was to give birth to a King." Augustus was not ignorant of it, fo' this decree, sanctioned by the fierce overbearingness of the republican senators, but rejected by the conscience of the people, had been issued in the very year which preceded the birth of that emperor. Accordingly, in hii ironical exclamation, there is not the shadow of blame intended to b* oast on the cruel policy of Herod ; there is not even an accent of pity in favor of the young victims and the tears f their mothers. In the eyes of Augustus, Herod acted p. udently mowing down these tender flowers ; his only fault lay in putting to df ath his own son even this, the imperial pleasantry will suffice to .«osolve him from. Such was> the humanity exercised by the despotism of Rome and of the crowned agents, whom the Capitol maintained in all the provinces ! Vespasian, the day following the taking of Jerusalem, caused all the members of the royal family of David to be sought out, and, in cold blood, ordered them to be strangled, to suppress, at its very source, the persistence of the popular aspirations, which were bent on expecting a liberator to spring from the root of Jesse. (4). So true is it that the Romans " had long believed in the existence ia their midst, of some unknown representative of the ancient Jewish dynasty !" (5) So true is it that the coming of the Saviour, promised on the threshold of Eden, and predicted and expected by the oppressed world, troubled the slumbers of the oppressors, and caused Satan, then holding unive: sal sway, to tremble on his throne ! 21.— Salvetb tloees Mabtybum The lamentation of Rachel, heard, on that day, throughout the plains of Rama, will resound even to the end of time, n s an accusing witness of ferocity, truly diabolic, from which Jesus Christ came to deliver the universe. The tomb of Rachel is distant a few steps from the Praesepiuin where the infant God would have his birth-place; Th« ruins of Rama crown the heights. There is shown on the side of the mountain, a grotto, where, local tradition tells us, several mothers, pursued by the soldiers of Herod, sought a refuge, and were strangled with the infants they sheltered in their arras. And yet, what haa become of the sanguinary royalty of Herod ? Who is the sovereign that reigns to-day over the capitol, on the spot where the imperial justice of Augustus thought, by a frivolous jest, to punish sufficiently the crime of Bethlehem, and the crowned author of such a butchery r" The Vicar of Jesus Christ occupies the throne of Augustus, beco r.e the seat of the holy paternity which beams upon the world. He sends to the shores of the rivers of China, messengers to gather the thousands of children, abandoned each year, by idolatrous barbarity, without pity and without remorse. In the name of the Infant Q-od, escaped from the fury of Herod, how many victims are thus snatched from death ! In the name of the Innocents, massacred at Bethlehem, how many souls, redeemed for heaven, go, each day, to swell the cortege of the Lamb ! With justice, then, may the entire human race repeat thj Canticle of the Church

" Ye prinaal flowers of Maivyrs, hail ! All hail 1 ye tender guileks-i baud. Sweet lobes uipt in your first bloom, By the stern tyrant's ciuel hand. Ye flock of gentle Mauyis, hail ! Ha?l ! you for Chiist the fiist cut down,'; You guileless 'neath the altai's foot Caicsa \\ioh joy your palm and crown." (0)