The sky has cleared now, and through the open door can be seen a square of twinkling stars, one of which shines with unusual brilliancy. Within, however, it is very dark; for the lantern of the night-watchman shines only a little way through the sombre shadows of the stable. The cattle and horses have finished munching the grain. The last uneasy lowing ceases. It is very still, except in one far corner where the strangers cannot sleep.
And then there is a baby’s cry. And the bright star shines with glorious radiance over David’s City. And upon the drowsy shepherds in the fields where the Moabitess gleaned, there bursts a wondrous light and the sound of heavenly singing.
For the fullness of time has come. Upon the humble Judean town has burst that glory sung by the prophets of old. The long line of Rachel and Ruth and royal David has at last issued in the King of kings.
THE BLOSSOMS OF MARTYRDOM
VII
THE BLOSSOMS OF MARTYRDOM
But even at that first Christmastide, Bethlehem must again be the scene of innocent suffering in another’s place, as for the Christ-child’s sake some twenty baby boys in the little town are put to death by order of King Herod, whose diseased, suspicious mind trembles at the thought of even an infant claimant for his throne.
Five hundred years before, when the strong young men of Bethlehem had been sent away into Babylonian exile, the loud wailing from bereaved, heart-broken homes had recalled to Jeremiah that other sad mother buried there by the lonely roadside. So now again, the awful outrage, perpetrated almost within sight of that venerable tomb, seems to be linked across the long centuries with the first Bethlehem grief; and once more, in the words of the Lamenting Prophet, there is
“Weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;