20 THE MAGI
bearing treasures. Kneeling in their royal robes, they adore the child in the manger, and the child bends forward to bless them.
Then come all the stories connected with them after their death. Their bodies rested for a long time in the magnificent temple that Eastern Christianity dedicated to the Divine Wisdom, which still bears that ancient title, though Mohammed claims it now instead of Christ. Milan received them next, and lost them ; and now for six hundred years the great cathedral of the Ehine has grown up above their sacred bones, representing in its gradual up-building, and for a long time in its unfinished glory, not only the slow accretion of splendid and poetic thoughts around the solitary and ancient story, but also the growth of all those stories to which we give the name of myths.1
Tf From time immemorial they have been regarded as kings :
We three kings of Orient are, Bearing gifts, we traverse afar Field and fountain, moor and mountain, Following yonder star.
In the cathedral at Cologne there is a golden reliquary in which are preserved, in the odour of sanctity, the relics of these men. I said to the venerable monk in attendance, " Do you really believe that these are the relics of the wise men ? " " Oh yes," he replied, " there is no question whatever as to their genuineness ; we know their names — Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. The Venerable Bede tells all about them." 2
Seeking a King.
1. The wise men came from the East. They came from beyond the bounds of that chosen and favoured Israel whose were the covenants, the oracles, the fires of Sinai, the glory of Zion, and the faith of the fathers. They came, doubtless, from Persia. Their business was a vain attempt to read the fortunes of empires and of men by watching the changing positions and mutual attractions of the stars. No plainer revelation of God's loving- kindness and wisdom stood before their eyes than the cold
1 S. A. Brooke, The Early Life of Jesus, 27. 1 D. J. Bun-ell, The Lctigion of the Future, 99.
ST. MATTHEW n. i, 2 21
splendours of the midnight sky. The heavenly commandment and promise they must spell out in the mystic syllables of the constellations, or else grope on in darkness. The sun was the burning eye of an Unknown Deity. With night-long solemn vigils, they strained their eyes into the heavens ; but they saw no " Heaven of heavens," because they saw no Father of forgiveness, and no heart of love. Their prophet was Zoroaster — a mysterious, if not quite mythical, person, ever vanishing in the shadows of an uncertain antiquity. These were the men whom God was leading to Bethlehem, representatives of that whole pagan world which He would draw to the Saviour.
Yet these disciples of Zoroaster held the best religion of their time, outside of Judaism. Their sacred books prove them to have been no degraded or sensual idolaters. When they fed their sacred fires with spices and fragrant wood, it was not the fire they worshipped, but a strange and unseen Light, of which the fire was a symbol. Their Ormuzd was an Infinite Spirit, and the star spirits were his bright subordinates. They believed in im- mortality, in judgment, in prayer, in the sacredness of marriage, in obedience, in honesty ; they practised carefully most of the virtues of the Christian morality, including that foundation one of truthfulness, which is rare enough in both East and West, and which Christianity has found it so hard to establish in public and in private life, in all its centuries of discipline. To this day, when the traveller or the merchant meets among the native eastern cities a man more intelligent, more upright, of nobler manners and gentler hospitality than the rest, he is almost sure to find him a Parsi, a descendant of those Zoroastrian students of the stars, brethren or children of the wise men who offered their gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Messiah in the stable.
2. These wise men looked for a King. " Where is he," they asked, " that is born King of the Jews ? " Why did their expecta- tions take this form? We could understand their longing for one who should give them bread ; or, if they had bread enough, should give them more gold to buy whatever would minister to their comfort, and pride ; or one who, since they cared for wisdom, should tell them hidden things that they desired to know ; or one who should take away the sting of a guilty conscience, and set
22 THE MAGI
them at peace with any higher god whom they might I offended; or, bettv ae who Bhould d heir will, and
strengths their power to live a worthy life. But their hope, as we read of it. was simply in a king The true King might indeed bestow all these ben- h we have been courr but
that was not what came first to their minds. In hoping for a
they hoped for one who would rule them, to whom I should do reverence, and whom, when the time came, they should obey. I that the first of all needs for tl. and
for the whole i world was to be to be