people of revelation, God moved on hearts and led seeking souls to the light in divers manners.  These silent strangers at the cradle carry on the line of recipients of divine messages outside of Israel which is headed by the mysterious Melchizedek, and includes that seer who saw a star arise out of Jacob, and which, in a wider sense, includes many a ’poet of their own’ and many a patient seeker after truth.  Human wisdom, as it is called, is God’s gift.  In itself, it is incomplete.  It raises more questions than it solves.  Its highest function is to lead to Jesus.  He is Lord of the sciences, as of all that belongs to man; and notwithstanding all the appearances to the contrary at present, we may be sure that the true scope of all knowledge, and its certain end, is to lead to the recognition of Him.

May we not see in these Magi, too, a type of the inmost meaning of heathen religions?  These faiths have in them points of contact with Christianity.  Besides their falsehoods and abhorrent dark cruelties and lustfulnesses, they enshrine confessions of wants which the King in the cradle alone can supply.  Modern unbelieving teachers tell us that Christianity and they are alike products of man’s own religious faculty.  But the truth is that they are confessions of need, and Christianity is the supply of the need.  At bottom, their language is the question of the wise men, ‘Where is He?’ Their sacrifices proclaim man’s need of reconciliation.  Their stories of the gods coming down in the likeness of men, speak of his longing for a manifestation of God in the flesh.  The cradle and the cross are Heaven’s answer to their sad questions.

II.  The contrast of these Gentiles’ joyful eagerness to worship the King of Israel, with the alarm of his own people at the whisper of his name, is a prelude of the tragedy of his rejection, and the passing over of the kingdom to the Gentiles.  Notice the bitter and scornful emphasis of that ‘Herod the king’ coming twice in the story in immediate connection with the mention of the true King.  He was a usurper, caricaturing the true Monarch.  Like most kings who have had ‘great’ tacked to their names, his greatness consisted mainly in supreme wickedness.  Fierce, lustful, cunning, he had ruled without mercy; and now he was passing through the last stages of an old age without love, and ringed round by the fears born of his misdeeds.  He trembles for his throne, as well he may, when he hears of these strangers.  Probably he does not suppose them mixed up with any attempt to unseat him, or he would have made short work of them; unless, indeed, his craft led him to dissemble until he had sucked them dry and had used them to lead him to the infant rival, after which he may have meant to murder them too.  But he recognises in their question the familiar tones of the Messianic hope, which he knew was ever lying like glowing embers in the breast of the nation, ready to be blown into a flame.  His creatures in the capital might disown it, but