Page 148 - Demo

144Bethlehem only at a few miles’ distance fromJerusalem, 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, orthe fiction, that after all those demonstrations at theCourtofHerodandinthe educatedclasses atJerusalem, 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, persecuteChristianity until it was converted to Islam in the seventh century? Isit not true that the Persiansreceived 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?