Page 145 - New English Book L
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Bethlehem only at a few miles’ distance from Jerusalem,
and, lo! the old guiding star again appears and leads them
on until it stops exactly above the spot where the infant
was born. The prodigious rapidity with which the long
journey from Persia to Bethlehem was completed while
the babe was still in the stable (Luke ii. 4-7) shows the
importance of the miracle.

     Another miracle connected with the birth of Christ is
the fact, or the fiction, that after all those demonstrations at
the Court of Herod and in the educated classes at Jerusalem,
nobody knew the address of the Holy Family; and that
this mystifying ignorance cost the massacre by Herod of
hundreds of infants at Bethlehem and its suburbs. The last
but not the least miracle insinuated in this narrative in the
fulfilment of another prophecy from Jeremiah (xxxi. 15),
where Rachel is represented as weeping and lamenting
over the slaughter of the Ephraimites at Ramah and not
at Bethlehem, and this, too, some seven hundred years
ago, when the descendants of Rachel were deported into
Assyria while she herself was dead long before Jacob her
husband descended into Egypt! St. Matthew, who alone
among all the ancient archivists and historians knows
this event, does not tell us what the impressions of King
Caspar and his astrologers after their visit of pilgrimage to
the manger of Bethlehem were. Were they convinced that
the son of Mary was a king, or were they not? If they were
persuaded that Jesus (pbuh) was a king, why then did Persia,
persecute Christianity until it was converted to Islam in the
seventh century? Is it not true that the Persians received no
light and information about Jesus (pbuh) of Nazareth from
their magicians, but only from the Muslim army sent by
Hazrat Omar, the second caliph?
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