COPTIC.

Out of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the train of the star-led Magi.  The devout imagination of the Church, dwelling upon the significance rather than the bare historical statements of the Gospel, have seen them as the representatives of the whole Gentile world.  We often think of the treatment of the sacred story by the teachers and preachers of the Church as embroidering the original narratives with legendary material.  We can look at it in that way; and by so doing, I think, miss the meaning of the facts.  What we call ecclesiastical legend will often turn out on examination to be but the unfolding of the meaning of an event in terms of the creative imagination.  The object is to present vividly what the event actually means when the meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to overpass the simple facts.  It is thus, I take it, that we must understand the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story.  That the Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord.  Actually, they were understood to represent the Gentile world offering its allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they would naturally represent the three branches of the Gentile world as it was understood at the time.  The importance of their mission was reflected in the presentation of them as kings—­no less persons were required to fill the dignity of the part.  There was, too, a whole mass of prophecy to be reckoned with and interpreted in its relation to the event, the most obvious of which was that of Isaiah:  “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”

The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the Gospel story.  We may however content ourselves with the more simple rendering.  We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the reception of the Eastern Sages.  Just when they came we cannot tell; but we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem.  “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem.”  And at the direction of Herod, and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts and their worship.  “They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him:  and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”