In the Toldoth Jesú, which Clouston terms "a scurrilous Jewish 'Life of Christ,'"—the Hebrew text with a Latin translation and explanatory notes, appeared at Leyden in 1705, under the title Historiæ Jeschuce Nazareni,—the many wonders admitted to have been performed by Christ are ascribed to his "having abstracted from the Temple the Ineffable Name and concealed it in his thigh,"—an idea thought to be of Indian origin. Clouston goes so far as to say: "Legends of the miracles of Isa, son of Maryam, found in the works of Muslim writers, seem to have been derived from the Kurán, and also from early Christian, or rather quasi-Christian traditions, such as those in the apocryphal gospels, which are now for the most part traceable to Buddhist sources." One belief of the Mohammedans was that "the breath of the Messiah had the virtue of restoring the dead to life" (422. II. 395, 408, 409).
In the first volume of the Orientalist, Muhammed Casim Siddi Lebbe gives an account of the views of Arabian writers regarding the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Weil has also devoted a section of his work on Mussulman legends to "John, Mary, and Christ." When the child Jesus was born, we are told, the withered trunk of a date tree against which the Virgin leaned, "blossomed, and its withered branches were covered with fresh dates," while "a fountain of fresh water gushed forth from the earth at her feet" (547. 249-264).
The Christ-Child To-day.
Folk-stories and churchly legends tell us that the Christ-Child still walks the earth, and appears unto the saints and sinners of this world.
Folkard reports a tradition from the Havel country in North Germany:—
"One Christmas Eve a peasant felt a great desire to eat cabbage and, having none himself, he slipped into a neighbour's garden to cut some. Just as he had filled his basket, the Christ-Child rode past on his white horse, and said: 'Because thou hast stolen on the holy night, thou shalt immediately sit in the moon with thy basket of cabbage.'" And so, we are told, "the culprit was immediately wafted up to the moon," and there he can still be seen as "the man in the moon" (448. 265).
Brewer gives many of the churchly legends in which the Christ-Child appears to men and women upon earth, either in the arms of the Virgin, as he came to St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano and to Jeanne Marie de Maille, or as a glorious child, in which form he appeared alone to St. Alexander and Quirinus the tribune, in the reign of Hadrian; to St. Andrew Corsini, to call him to the bishopric of Fiesole; to St. Anthony of Padua, many times; to St. Cuthbert, to rebuke him (a child of eight years) for wasting his time in play; to St. Emiliana of Florence, with the same purpose; to St. Oxanna, and to St. Veronica of Milan (191. 59, 60). Among the rude peasantry of Catholic Europe belief in the visitations of the Christ-Child lingers, especially at the season of His birth. With them, as Milton thought,—"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth." Yet not unseen, but seen often of the good and wise, the simple and innocent, and greatest of these visitants of earth is the Child Jesus, ever occupied about His Father's business.
CHAPTER XXVII.
PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT PARENTS, FATHER AND MOTHER.
1. Be a father to virtue, but a father-in-law to vice.