HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 13

HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

By the Abbe" J. E. Dabeab. (Translated from the French for the « New Zealand Tablet.*) 16. — WHBBB IS BOBN THIS NEW KIN« OF THK JKWB ? " Whebe is He that is born King of the Jews ?" ask the Magi ; " for we have seen His 1 star in the East, and are- come to adbr« Bum." A similar question, grounded on a like narrative, and put to men .of the present day, would not even obtain the honor of an answer. But, throughout the entire world, and mainly at Jerusalem, at the time this question was mooted, the minds of men were unanimously preoccupied with the birth of a king, and the rise of a new empire. Herod, the Idumean tyrant, watched' with anxious eye the different manifestations of the popular expectation. Presently, he will order the massacre of the children of Bethlehem ; he will desire, if possible, the destruction of all the heads of princely familitft in.the hippodrome of Jericho — thus to extinguish, in a sea of blood, the national aspirations. It is easily conceived, then, what, trouble the words of the Magi must have excited in the suspicious mind of the King, and the contrary emotion it caused amidst the Hebrew multitude. But neither Herod nor his subjects show any astonishment at the apparition of a ■tar, or at the relation which might exist between such a phenomenon and the birth of a new King of the Jews. " A star shall rise out of Jacob," had said the son of Beor. This prophecy, enregistered in the Books of Moses, borne by emigration into Babylon, Persia, Chald -a, had never ceased to attract the attention of Israel. A Star, the Mesdab } were two names which caused the hearts of the children of Juda to swell with joy and exultation. When the Magi — that is to say, the Chaldean or Pers'an inheritors of the ancient science of the stars — came to announce to Jerusalem, " We have seen th« Star : ■where is the King of the Jews ?" their words wew as natural and as intelligible as if, in our day, at the report of a cannon announcing the birth o£ an heir to the throne, a stranger, hearing it, were to ask, «' Where is the palace of the King who is just born. 1 hear the Bignal of his entrance into this world." The prophecy of Balaam had not been interpreted in an allegorical sense ; its text would not admit of it ; it had been taken in a literal sense, and studied with such perseverance, that the Jews had succeeded in specifying the precise date of its realization. We read in the Talmud that the coming of the Messiah was to take place when the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter Bhould occur in the constellation Pisces. Now, Kepler has shown that this meeting occurred in the year of Rome 747, a year which touches close on that of the birth of Jesus Christ. The Pharisees were so firmly persuaded of the truth of this astronomical calculation that they did not fear, according to the testimony of Josephus, to predict to Herod himself the approaching fall of his throne. In fine, the belief on this point was so wide-spread, and at the same time so uniform, that Philo, who lived at that period in Alexandria, foretold, from a celestial phenomenon observed by him, that the Jews were about to gather together from all parts of the world, to inaugurate the empire of peace.

17.— IEALITV OF THE GOSPEI HABBATITE. So many testimonies, having a perfect and precise concordance, fall like an overwhelming weight upon the paltry productions of rationalism, which would talk to us of " legends and anecdotes, the fruit of a great and spontaneous conspiracy ." The Goepel is a monument whose foundations are set deep in history, and whose summit reaches even to the skies. It is certain, then, that a star, rising in the Ea9t, brought the Magi to the cradle of Jesus* Christ. If the celestial sign had not illumined the house of Bethlehem, the world, up to the preeeat day, would not have believed in the divinity of the Word made flesh. So true is this, that not only Barchochebas, but the Prophet of Mecca, Mahomet himself, could not succeed in conciliating the faith of the Orientals to their cause without the extraordinary apparition of a star which preceded their mission. It is a well-known fact, that the meteor which now baars the name of the oomet of Halle n eared the earth in the year 612, and that Mahomef;, beginning then his public r6le, profited by this circumstance to answer the requirements of the prophecy, and gave this phenomenon as the sign of his pretended mission. It is not the miracle of a star, announcing to the Magi the birth of Christ, which most astonishes the historian ; far more is his wonder excited at the incredible shallownees of rationalism, which passes thus lightly over such facts without «yen suspecting their importance. In the Imperial Library of Paris is preserved a fac-fiimile of an inscription found in China, at Syn-gnan-fou, and going back to the year 550 of our era. It is only two or three centurieß more recent than the zodiac of Denderah, which forms a portion of the same deposit, and which incredulous science freely attributed to a pre-historio epoch. "We reaJ, in the inscription of Syn-gnan-fou, these textual words ; " Persia, contemplating the splendours of the Messiah, came to pay its homage." Would modern Bcepticism inform us why it has not created ardund the Chinese inscription the factitious celebrity withjwhich it formerly endowed the famous marble of Denderah ? We know it but too well. 'The conspiracy of Bilence is sometimes as artfully used as that of reports in stock companies. What matter to^us these pre-determiucd artifices ? The world did not wait for the discovery ot the Chinese monument to yield its belief to the Goßpel. It was not the inscription of Syn-gnan-fou which dictated to the Platonic philosopher Chalcidius, in the year 250, these other words : " A Btar announcing, not deaths or maladies, but the descent of a god upon the earth, appeared to the Chaldeans, illustrious by their science and their skill in astronomy. At the sight of this new star, they determined to quit their country, and go in Bearch of the true God. When they found him they paid to him the homage due to the divine majesty hidden under the form of an infant." (1). A century before Chalcidius, Celsus, the sworn enemy of the Christian name, did not suspect the possibility of denying a fact so notorious as the arrival of the Magi at Jerusalem after the'appearance of an extraordinary star (2). About the year 103, Justin, brought up in the very centre of paganism) collected at Sichem all the contemporary traditions of the history of Jesus Christ. The memory of the Magi and pf the Btar of Bethlehem was still living. Justin proclaims it in

his dialogue with the Jew Tryphon, and his interlocutor does not dream for an instant of calling ia question the authenticity of a narrative still living in the memories of all (3). 18. Conclusion. We see here how the evangelical text is grounded on the most positive realities. At the time in which we write these lines there may. still be teen on "the road to Bethlehem a fountain called "Fountain of the Magi ; " and tradition tells us that in this place the miraculous star appeared anew to the travellers. What monuments does modern rationalism oppose to so many positive traditions? What ! an/obscure apocryphal writer will have had the good fortune to invent a^ legend, every word of which will happen to be confirmed by contemporaneous history, anterior prophecies, universal traditions, the memories of all generations, over the entire globe 1 A legend bearing in all its relations so close a resemblance to truth, appears to you quite natural ; chance, is a sufficient explanation of it, Well ! A literary man who, though apocryphal, is, however, not obscure ; who had at his disposal all the resources of philology, of historical and critical science, has' just- written the Life of Jesus in 459 pages. Explain to us why chance — so complaisant to apocryphal writers — has nevertheless favoured him so little that there is not a single line 1 1 his work that has not been contradicted by all the monuments, by all the testimonies, by every fa ;t and detail of the contemporaneous history of Jesus Christ 1 ,

(1) Chalcid., In Plat. Tiraieum Coinra., pars ii. cap vii. ; (2) Origen, contra, Celaum, lib. I ; (3) Justin, Dialog; cumTiyphr., torn. vi.