Upon their own showing their unbelief was most unwarrantable. If ever men had the means of testing the claims of Jesus, the Nazarenes possessed them. True, they were ignorant of the miraculous event of His Incarnation; and we can now perceive at least one of the reasons for the mystery, which was allowed to enwrap it, as well as the higher purpose in Divine Providence of His being born, not in Nazareth, but in Bethlehem of Judæa, and of the interval of time between that Birth and the return of His parents from Egypt to Nazareth. Apart from prophecy, it was needful for Nazareth that Christ should have been born in Bethlehem, otherwise the mystery of His Incarnation' must have become known. And yet it could not have been made known, alike for the sake of those most nearly concerned, and for that of those who, at that period of His History, could not have understood it; to whom, indeed, it would have been an absolute hindrance to belief in Him. And He could not have returned to Bethlehem, where He was born, to be brought up there, without calling attention to the miracle of His Birth. If, therefore, for reasons easily comprehended, the mystery of His Incarnation was not to be divulged, it was needful that the Incarnate of Nazareth should be born at Bethlehem, and the Infant of Bethlehem be brought up at Nazareth.
By thus withdrawing Him successively from one and the other place, there was really none on earth who knew of His miraculous Birth, except the Virgin-Mother, Joseph, Elizabeth, and probably Zacharias. The vision and guidance vouchsafed to the shepherds on that December night did not really disclose the mystery of His Incarnation. Remembering their religious nations, it would not leave on them quite the same impression as on us. It might mean much, or it might mean little, in the present: time would tell. In those lands the sand buries quickly and buries deep - preserving, indeed, but also hiding what it covers. And the sands of thirty years had buried the tale which the shepherds had brought; the wise men from the East had returned another way; the excitement which their arrival in Jerusalem and its object had caused, was long forgotten. Messianic expectations and movements were of constant recurrence: the religious atmosphere seemed charged with such elements; and the political changes and events of the day were too engrossing to allow of much attention to an isolated report, which, after all, might mean little, and which certainly was of the long past. To keep up attention, there must be communication; and that was precisely what was wanting in this instance. The reign of Herod was tarnished by many suspicious and murders such as those of Bethlehem. Then intervened the death of Herod, - while the carrying of Jesus into Egypt and His non-return to Bethlehem formed a complete break in the continuity of His History. Between obscure Bethlehem in the far south, and obscure Nazareth in the far north, there was no communication such as between towns in our own land, and they who had sought the Child's life, as well as they who might have worshipped Him, must have been dead. The aged parents of the Baptist cannot have survived the thirty years which lay between the Birth of Christ and the commencement of His Ministry. We have already seen reason for supposing that Joseph had died before. None, therefore, knew all except the Virgin-Mother; and she would hide it the deeper in her heart, the more years passed, and she increasingly felt, as they passed, that, both in His early obscurity and in His later manifestation, she could not penetrate into the real meaning of that mystery, with which she was so closely connected. She could not understand it; how dared she speak of it? She could not understand; nay, we can almost perceive, how she might even misunderstand - not the fact, but the meaning and the purport of what had passed.