[XVI. An Impotent Destroyer]
The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod’s question, put their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.
Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of his head.
Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him. Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle. Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our own door and even in our own hearts.
The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were in Jerusalem—in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly spirit—but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.
[XVII. Splendid Gifts]
These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his “Last Supper” because he feared their splendor would distract attention from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St. Peter’s dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child. Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his colossal genius. Shakespeare, “with the best brain in six thousand years,” who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination over all our life, wrote in his will: “I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.” Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the invocation, “Strong Son of God, immortal Love.”
Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and Cæsar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.