equally safe and the likelihood is, that the innocents of Bethlehem would not have been slain. The probability seems vastly on the side of the supposition, that Herod would have ascertained that the child whom he sought had escaped, and he would not then, with all his cruelty, have perpetrated an act by which he could not have been benefited. This, we perceive, is the most remarkable point of view under which the transaction presents itself. It seems to have been designed by Providence that Herod should be left without the knowledge which would have prevented the massacre; though that knowledge might have been conveyed, without, as it would appear, endangering the safety of Christ. And we are tempted to ask why this should have been-why the Magi should have been forbidden to carry intelligence which, without detriment to the newborn Messiah, might have preserved from the sword the infants of Bethlehem. We should think little that numbers died for Him who came to die for the world, had the sacrifice been apparently demanded for his safety: but when that safety might have been secured without the bloody offering, we are tempted to marvel that the birth of the Prince of Peace should have brought death to so unoffending a company.

Now, we have several considerations to advance on the history before us, when thus regarded as presenting a transaction which seems at variance with the known mercy of God. It will be further unavoidable in discoursing on the slaughter of the innocents, that we shall refer generally to the death of children : so that it will be well that we employ the remainder of our time in examining, in the first place, the consequences of this slaughter, so far as others were concerned; and, in the second place, its consequences so far as the innocents themselves were concerned.

We begin by observing, that it is in no sense necessary to the vindication of God's dealings, that we should always be able to give reasons for their every part. We keep fast to certain principles, which we are sure, from the nature of God, are never violated by any permission or proceeding. But we have no right to expect of their non-violation, that it should always be matter of sight and never of faith. It is one of these principles, that whatever evil God permits, he overrules for good; but it would be asking what does not consist with a state of probation, if we required that we might always be able to discern the good produced from the evil permitted. It is a fine expression which the Psalmist uses in speaking of God: "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep." The righteousness, you observe, of the Almighty, stands forth as one of the huge mountains of the earth, not to be over-looked by any who admit his existence. But then the judgments which this righteousness directs, are all the while as the vast ocean from which the mountain rises, not to be estimated by finite scrutiny. We have no right, therefore, to be staggered by any proceeding, even should it seem to us productive not of good, but of unmixed evil. It is only confessing our own short-sightedness, and no impeachment of the righteousness of God, when we admit, in respect of a providential dispensation, that its wisdom and its goodness lie far beyond our penetration. So that if unable to discover that the slaughter of the innocents were a means to ensure wise ends, we shall be confident, from the actual occurrence of the thing, that there was such an end, though not to be

ascertained by our limited faculties. We do not, however, allow of the transaction in question, that no reason can be discovered for its permission. We believe, on the contrary, that they who inquire at all carefully, will find enough to remove all surprise, that Herod was not restrained from the murder. Let it be first observed, that the prophecy had fixed Bethlehem as the birth-place of the Christ, and had determined, with considerable precision, the time of the nativity. It were easy, therefore, to prove, that no one could be the Messiah who had not been born at Bethlehem, and about the period when the Virgin became a mother. How wonderfully, then, did the slaughter of the innocents corroborate the pretensions of Jesus. If no one could be Messiah unless born at Bethlehem, and at a certain time, why the sword of Herod did almost demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah: for removing, perhaps, every other, who could have answered to the test of the time and place of birth, there seems only Jesus remaining in whom the prophecy could be fulfilled. We regard this as a very striking reason why the slaughter may have been permitted. God was providing for the conviction of those who should search into the pretensions of Jesus, or of leaving all inexcusable who should reject these pretensions. There was an universal agreement that Messiah was to be born at Bethlehem, and about the time of the slaughter; and what then did the slaughter do, if only Jesus survived, but prove distinctly that Jesus must be the Messiah?

Besides, it should be carefully remarked, that Jesus was to live in comparative obscurity, until thirty years of age; he was then to burst suddenly upon the world, and to amaze it by displays of omnipotence. But brought up as he had been at Nazareth (Bethlehem, though his birth-place, not being the residence of his parents), it was very natural that, when he emerged from long seclusion, he should have been regarded as a Nazarite. Accordingly we find so completely had his birth-place been forgotten, that many objected his being of Nazareth, against the possibility of his being the Messiah. "Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scripture said, that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was ?" They argued rightly, you observe, that no one could be the Christ who had not been born at Bethlehem, but then they rashly concluded, that Jesus wanted this sign of Messiahship, because they knew him to have been brought up in Galilee. And what made them inexcusable? Why the slaughter of the innocents. They could not have been uninformed of this event; bereaved parents were still living, who would be sure to tell the story of their wrongs; and this event marked, as with a line of blood, the period at which the Christ was supposed to have been born. How, easy, then to ask whether the parents of Jesus had been then at Bethlehem; how easy to determine it, seeing the period was that at which the Roman Emperor required every Jew to repair to his own city. So that there was not needed any laborious investigation, any searching into genealogies and records, in order to the deciding where Jesus was born: the massacre of the innocents was a proof, known to the most illiterate, that thirty years before there had been born a child at Bethlehem, whose nativity had been attended by such signs as disturbed the king on the throne. A moment's inquiry would have proved to them that Jesus was this child, and removed the doubt which attached to him as a supposed Galilean. And therefore not in vain was the mother stirred from her sepulchre

by the cry of her infant offspring; the echo of her lament might still be heard in the land, and those who listened not to the witness of the birth-place of Jesus stood self-condemned, while rejecting him on the plea, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"

This is, however, not the whole of what we have to advance as to the reason why God permitted this slaughter of the innocents: we think, indeed, that you can no longer pronounce it unintelligible why Herod should have been allowed, when it was clearly unnecessary for the safety of Christ, to stain his hand with the blood of these innocents. But we go on to remark, that, very possibly, it would not have sufficed that Christ should have left Bethlehem, and that his escape should have been known to the tyrant. We may believe that when Herod had destroyed all the children, he supposed his object gained, and made no further search; but if assured that Christ had foiled him, there would have been inquiry and pursuit. Of course we do not say, that the inquiry and the pursuit would have succeeded, so that the Lord's anointed would have been slain ere his work had been accomplished; but certainly the inquiry and the pursuit, carried on, as they probably would have been, by Archelaus as well as Herod, would have fixed that attention on Christ from which, for wise ends, God designed to withdraw him, and destroy that undisturbed privacy in which it was appointed his earlier years should be spent. Therefore, brethren, there seems something quite admirable-we had almost said beautiful-in the arrangement. Supernatural signs attend the birth of Christ, sufficient, when he shall have entered on his ministry, to attest his pretensions : but his ministry is not to commence until he is thirty years old; and during this long season he is not to excite the jealousy of rulers, and thus prematurely stir feelings which might interfere with the business of his mission. Even his birth had already done this. How then can he remain hidden, and fail to attract the notice which he desired to shun? Why, Herod is left to follow his cruel devices: he supposes himself successful; he has slain all the infants at Bethlehem, and therefore, as he thinks, the child of miracle amongst the number: he desists from further search, and the Messiah may grow up comparatively unobserved. And thus we think that the slaughter at Bethlehem was just that event which allowed of Christ being born with all the signs which were necessary to the proving him God's Son, and yet to withdraw him from that public observation which he was not to attract till he entered on his ministry. So that, however at first sight this massacre of the children may appear to us to have been unnecessary, a crime whose permission was overruled to no ends not equally subserved by its prevention-we gather from a careful examination, that reasons of great importance may be assigned why God allowed this signal act of cruelty.

Neither have we touched in our foregoing remarks on reasons which are more obvious, and which we may suppose would have suggested themselves to your own minds. We may believe that God was leaving Herod to fill up the measure of his guilt, that he might exhibit in his instance a great display of retributive justice. Within a very short time Herod perished by a complication of plagues as amazing as his unparalleled crimes. You may remember he is described in the Acts of the Apostles as smitten by the angel of God; and we learn from history that his diseases were terrible beyond what thought could conceive:

and, designing at the outset of Christianity to give a fearful proof that even in this world wickedness shall not always go unpunished, God allowed the tyrant to become notorious by his endeavour to destroy the Christ, that his fall might be a warning to persecutors of the Church.

Add to all this, that God was unquestionably disciplining the parents by the slaughter of the children. We know nothing of the fathers and mothers thus cruelly bereaved of their offspring; but we can have no difficulty in supposing that in every case the affliction was just that which was needed. "Indeed," you may say, "could so painful a visitation have been more required by the families of Bethlehem, than by those of other towns?" We pretend not to be exactly able to answer this question. No man can tell me why fierce diseases sharp as Herod's sword, are allowed to enter on households or on cities, and sweep away the suckling, whilst other households, or other cities, escape the dispensation. The sword only took the place of fever: and, as we readily believe that, in desolating one district by sickness, and sparing another, God suits his dealings to the moral wants of the individuals, we must also believe that when massacre, and not sickness, was his engine, he consulted best for the parents of Bethlehem by smiting, and for those of Jerusalem by sparing. Neither does it seem to us difficult to conjecture, that the death of these little ones may have been morally more required by the Bethlehemites than by others. There was at this time a great and general expectation of the Messiah, and the Jewish mothers must have more than ever hoped for the honour of giving birth to the deliverer: but of course such hope must have been stronger in Bethlehem than in any other town, seeing that prophecy was supposed to mark it as the birth-place. Hence we may readily believe that the infants of Bethlehem were objects of extraordinary interest to their parents-objects in which their ambition centred, as well as their affection. And if such were the fact, it is manifest, even to our imperfect faculties, that these fathers and mothers stood specially in need of that discipline which God administers to parents by the death of their children; and we can understand that there was a suitableness in the dispensation as allotted to Bethlehem, which might not have been discovered had another town been its object.

Now, if you combine the reasons thus advanced, they quite remove all appearance of strangeness from God's permission of the slaughter of the innocents. We are not insensible to the pitiableness of the spectacle; and, we readily admit that, at first sight, it seems almost unaccountable, that, since Christ's safety could have been equally provided for, Herod was not told of the escape, and thus kept back from the massacre. Why this fierce eruption into the families of the city? Can it consist with the attributes of God to allow, where there is apparently no end to be served, that the little ones of a whole town shall be rudely torn from the breast of the mother, or the knee of the father; and that those who were yet too unacquainted with evil to do any thing but smile in the face of their murderer, should be the hecatomb offered at the birth of the Redeemer? We deny that no end is subserved by the permission. and when we have observed that the slaughter of the innocents gave so strong a proof that Jesus was the Christ, as left inexcusable the infidelity of his countrymen—that it helped to secure that seclusion and privacy of the Saviour which was the appointed preliminary to his public ministrations; when we yet further observe,

that God was about to make Herod the signal monument of his vengeance, and that he might well therefore be expected to allow him to follow the bent of his own passions; and add to all this, that undoubtedly the children died that the parents might be disciplined; and add that, probably in Bethlehem there was extraordinary need that fathers and mothers should be spectators to those sufferings of their little ones; when, we say, these reasons are combined, though we may be as sensible as we please to the horrors of the massacre, and shrink from the picture of the desolated town, we can no longer pronounce it inexplicable, or unworthy of God, that cause should have been given for so universal a shriek in the streets of Bethlehem, as might be said to have raised the dead mother from her tomb, and compel Rachel, long ago set free from sorrow, to return and take part in the wretchedness of her family.

Now, we are quite aware that all this reasoning would be invalidated, if it could be shown that a real and everlasting injury were done to the innocents themselves. We know that God visits on children the iniquities of their fathers; and we vindicate such visitation from the charge of injustice, by maintaining that no eternal punishment falls on the offspring for the crime of the ancestor; and that as to temporal punishment, those who receive it will be vastly more benefited. But, if the children were necessarily everlastingly injured, we know not how the apparent injustice could be denied, or excused; and thus in the instance under review, we may show ends answered by the massacre of the innocents, but if the innocents themselves were in the fullest sense to suffer, it would be hard to prove that God's permission was just.

This leads us to the second point which we proposed to examine the consequences of the slaughter as far as the innocents themselves were concerned.

Now, there is much under this head of discourse to require and repay careful examination. We have an unhesitating belief in respect of all children admitted into God's church, and dying before they know evil from good, that they are saved by the virtues of Christ's propitiation. We are prepared to state nothing but our ignorance in respect of unbaptized children; those who have never been brought outwardly into the covenant of redemption. We are far enough from saying that such children perish; but their condition is that of heathenism. Baptism it is which converts the Gentile into the Christian, so that the unbaptized child, as not being included within the visible church, can only be regarded as a heathen; and we know not its condition if it die, simply because we know not the exact laws by which the heathen shall be judged. Now, of all baptized children, dying ere old enough to commit actual sin, we are thoroughly persuaded that they enter into heaven, and are made partakers of everlasting blessedness. An adult person has in him the guilt both of original sin and of actual, but the infant only of original. The infant has, indeed, this guilt of original sin; else why does it die whilst yet at its mother's breast, and thus share in the mortality which only sin has provoked? We know not how any one can question original sin who has marked the sufferings of a babe, or seen its little coffin borne to the church-yard. But, if the infant has certainly the guilt of original, just as certainly it has not that of actual transgression. There can be no transgression where there is no knowledge of law; and the faculties must be opened ere the knowledge can be gained. But, what