in his daily toil, and the vehement flame of jealousy kindles within his breast.

"Without unshaken trust," at length he soliloquizes, "I can never receive her; without full proof, can never put her to open shame. What then remains but privately to give her a writing of divorce, and so shield her from the direful doom of our law?"

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Thus proposing, the just-minded artisan retires to rest, and is soon buried in slumber. But lo! as he sleeps, an angel bends above his couch, effulgent with light, and, smiling benignly, says, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost, and she shall bring forth a son, for thou shalt call his name Jesus, and he shall save his people from their sins."

With what tranquil joy does the morning now bedew his troubled spirit, and with what alacrity does he arrange and adorn his humble abode.

"This! this, then," he exclaims, "fulfills the ancient oracle, whose full meaning I have so often striven, in vain, to comprehend:

'Behold, a virgin shall be with child,

And shall bring forth a son,

And they shall call his name EMMANUEL.'"

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"Emmanuel?" he repeats, inquiringly, as if some sudden question had engaged his mind; "and why then JESUS?" and he pauses, deeply pondering. "I see! I see!" he cries, at length, a ray of joyous intelligence illumining his manly features; "all now is clear. This blessed word Emmanuel declares that this our child shall be 'God with us;' not with us, as of old, by pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, but with us as our PRINCE, our promised seed of David, and of Abraham, and of the promise given in Eden from the foundation of the world! And this more blessed title JESUS* declares the same sweet truth, that he that shall be born of this my virgin bride, herself of Israel's royal line, is none other than Jehovah, Israel's HELP against his enemies, whom the Lord hath brought upon us for our sins! He shall save us from our sins, and from our enemies, and be our Help, our horn of salvation, and our high tower! Even as it is written again,

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall * Jehovah his help.

be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even forever.'

"Oh happy day! Oh happy man that I am! And what a wretch have I been to doubt her sacred truth! How blind, to disbelieve, not her alone, but all the holy prophets since the world began!"

So saying, in the simple language of Scripture, he taketh unto him Mary his wife, and she abideth a virgin in his dwelling until the time of the fulfillment of the prophecy.

Thus, having witnessed the birth of the great forerunner-having witnessed the state of wonder, anticipation, and uneasy yearning in which the nations were all slumbering, we have come still nearer to the Being himself whom we seek. We have formed the acquaintance of his mother. And, for my own part, I can not reflect on the character she displays, and the circumstances of its development, without deep and abiding emotion.

Nor can I fail, in reflecting on the human relationship about to be assumed, at the next step of the drama, by One who was before all time, to realize more than ever the wonderful fact that he sustained the tenderest of all the

ties of earth. I had once a mother; so have, or have had, we all. Even so, likewise, had Jehovah, our Redeemer; for I count it no more a contradiction to say that the Lord himself, as a spirit veiled in human form, sustained this blessed relation, than that my own sustains the same. If the poet's legend be not false, it was but through a gate of dreams that my spirit found its way from abroad into this sphere of existence; and so finding, found, withal, the re- / lation of son to mother:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The light that rises in us, our life's star,
In other skies hath had its setting,

And cometh from afar."

Even so the uncreated LIGHT, veiling his beams within a vase of virgin mold, rose like a morning star upon the world, all tremulous, all phosphorescent with Heaven's inner, irrepressible effulgence; and, coming from afar, shed radiance on the path of friend, and brother, and sister, and MOTHER.

It is with wonder, with awe, and with a chastened transport that I cherish this theme, as it expands and enlarges before my view. And oh! may we be led by a higher than any mere human intelligence, to see the unfolding of this mystery with the serene and spiritual

eye

of faith, opening, as it were, the flood-gates of our souls to the whole tide of truth, that it may crystallize in gems on the walls of every chamber of the soul; gems which shall reflect and multiply each ray of heavenly light, until, down to the darkest caverns of thought and emotion, we become full of divine illumination.