The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were in Jerusalem—­in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly spirit—­but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them on and stood over where the young Child was.  God has put many stars in our sky to lead us on to Christ.  The stars themselves are as vocal with divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God.  The Bible is a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and all its stars stand over Christ.  All the Christian centuries are starred with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.

XVII.  Splendid Gifts

“And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.”  Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature?  The imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene.  There are the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the young Child.  This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King.  Worship is the expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and divineness in life.  The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds its Father.  The wise men found a King to worship; they were not following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness.  Our instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its appropriate satisfaction.  Christ completes our human childhood with divine Fatherhood.  He that hath seen him hath seen the father.

These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to Bethlehem.  Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ.  Columbus had no sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of Jesus.  Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his “Last Supper” because he feared their splendor would distract attention from and dim the glory of the Master himself.  The hand that rounded St. Peter’s dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child.  Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his colossal genius.  Shakespeare, “with the best brain in six thousand years,” who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination over all our life, wrote in his will:  “I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.”  Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the invocation, “Strong Son of God, immortal Love.”