1857.] A Psalm of Life. 3 and near, The Guardian hails with a hearty shout: "A Happy New Year." To all others it preaches, in John the Baptist style, repentance from luxury, extravagance, and folly, on pain of ruined health, empty pockets, a guilty conscience, and final wo. A PSALM OF LIFE. BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. TELL me not, in mournful numbers, Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, In the world's broad field of battle, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, Footprints, that perhaps another, Let us, then, be up and doing, THE FIRST CHRISTMAS. BY REV. PATRICK POWER. THE impious empire, as the Jews called the Roman nation, had planted her eagles at the very extremities of the globe. The Romans had made themselves masters of the oriental world: Sarmatia to the very interior of her deserts trembled before them, and the peaceable Chinese, the most remote people of Asia, deputed an ambassador to Cæsar, to court his powerful friendship. Egypt and Syria were already subject to Roman sway; Judea even was become a tributary province, and its king, having purchased a capricious protection, was no more than a crowned slave. The time marked out was come; the oracles regarding the Messiah were about being accomplished; the power of Rome was at its apogee, as Balaam had foretold; and, according to the grand prophecy of Jacob, the scepter was departed from Judea, for the phantom of royalty which still hovered over the holy city, was not even a national phantom. Then it was that an edict of Augustus Cæsar was published in Judea, that a census should be taken of all the people subjected to his sceptre. This enrolling, much more complete than that which had taken place in the sixth consulship of the nephew of Julius Cæsar, comprised not only persons, but even properties, and the very nature and description of such properties; it was the ground-work on which the tribute of slavery was to be laid. The Roman governors were charged, each in his own department, with the execution of the imperial edict. Sextius Saturninus, governor of Syria, first commenced through Phenicia and Syria, rich and populous cantons, and so requiring long and patient labor. That which was done a thousand years later in England, by order of William the Conqueror, in order to prepare the famous registry, known among the English as the Domesday-book, can alone give us an idea of the nature of that census. After the execution of the orders of Cæsar, in the Roman province, as well as in the different kingdoms and tetrarchies tributaries to it, and about three years from the date of the decree, the census opened at Bethlehem, just at the memorable time of the birth of the Redeemer. Cæsar and his agents were, without knowing it, the docile and blind instruments of Providence; the pride and ambition of the Romans came in to aid the prophecies: Man proposes, but God disposes. It appears that, in conformity with an old custom, the Jews were enrolled by families and tribes. David being born at Bethlehem, his descendants considered this little town as their native place, and the cradle of their family; here it was, then, that they assembled to give in, conformably to the edict of Cæsar, their names and the nature and the particulars of their possessions. The autumn was just closing; the torrents were roaring along the valleys; the northern blast was whistling through the branches of the high firs, and the sky lowering with heavy grayish clouds, indicating the 1857.] The First Christmas. 5 approach of snow. On a heavy gloomy morning, in the year 748 of Rome, a Nazarene might be seen engaged in hasty preparations for setting out on a journey, which, it would appear from the unpromising aspect of the day selected, could not admit of delay. A young woman cautiously sitting on a quiet and gentle ass-a beast still highly valued by the women of the East-appeared to be his companion for the journey, though far advanced in her pregnancy. To the saddle of the beautiful animal, on which the young Galilean was sitting, a palm basket was tied, containing provisions for the journey: dates, figs, raisins and barley biscuits; in it was also an earthen vessel of Ramla, for the purpose of drawing up water from a cistern or well. A leather bottle of Egyptian workmanship, was suspended from the other side. The traveler throwing over his shoulder a bag in which some clothes were packed, girded up his loins, enveloped himself in his goat-hair cloak, and holding his crooked staff with one hand, seized with the other the bridle of the ass, on which the young woman was sitting. In this way they quitted their poor and now lonely home, and descended the narrow streets of Nazareth, accompanied by the blessings of their relatives and friends, wishing them a prosperous journey and a safe return, and crying out to them on all sides, Peace be with you. These travelers, setting out on their journey on a gloomy winter's morning, were no other than Joseph and Mary, the humble descendants of the princes of Judea, who were going, in obedience to a pagan and foreigner, to inscribe their obscure names alongside the most illustrious names in the kingdom. Painful, indeed, must this journey be to the Virgin, taking into account both the peculiar circumstances of her condition at the time, and the rigorous season of the year, together with the nature of the country through which she had to pass. But yet she makes no complaint. Though young, with a tender and delicate frame, yet her mind was strong and resolute, and her lofty soul could neither be puffed up by prosperity, nor daunted by adversity. Noble Mary! Joseph walking pensively by her side, was revolving in his mind the ancient oracles which gave promise, after the lapse of a thousand years, of a Saviour to the world. On his way towards Bethlehem, he was pondering on those words of Micah: "But thou, BETHLEHEM Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judea, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel: whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting." Then casting a look on his poor, unpretending equipage, and fixing a glance on his unassuming companion, whose simple attire was just suited to her condition, he began to reflect on the grand oracle of Isaiah: "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not." And the patriarch seemed to understand God's designs, regarding his Christ. After a fatiguing journey of five days, the travelers distinguished in the distance Bethlehem, the city of kings, seated on high, amidst smiling vineyards, olive groves, and clusters of oaks. Camels bearing women enveloped in purple cloaks and wearing white veils; Arabian nakas forced on a full speed by young and gorgeously dressed cavaliers; old men riding beautiful white asses, and conversing in solemn tones, like the ancient judges of Israel; all were ascending to the town of David, where had already arrived, during the preceding days, a great number of Hebrews. Without the precincts of the town a square built edifice arose, surrounded with a green paling of olive-trees; a Persian caravansary it might have been. Through the open gate a great number of servants and slaves were seen going from and coming into, a large court-yard; and here was the inn. Joseph, quickening the pace of the animal on which the Virgin was seated, hurried on with the expectation of obtaining one of those narrow cells which belonged, by right, to the first comer, and which of course could not be refused. But the caravansary was overcrowded with merchants and travelers, and not a vacant space remained; gold perhaps might have procured a place, for the porter was a Jew, and more, a Jew of Bethlehem, but no gold had Joseph to offer. The patriarch, with a dejected mien, returns to Mary, who receives him with a smile of resignation, and then laying hold of the bridle of the poor animal which had almost fallen down through fatigue, he wanders up and down through the streets of the little town, hoping, but in vain, that some charitable Bethlemite would offer him a night's lodging for the love of God. But no one there was to make such an offer. The night wind was blowing sharp and cold on the young Virgin. She made no complaint, but her countenance was becoming every moment more wan and pallid; she was scarcely able to support herself. Joseph in despair still persevered in his fruitless attempts; and more than once, alas! he saw the very door which had been rudely closed against him opened for a richer applicant. Self-interest, the ruling passion of the Hebrews, must have indeed hardened every heart, when the position of Mary could not excite the slightest pity in the breasts of those of her own country. Joseph and Mary, seeing themselves rejected by the whole world, and abandoning every hope of being able to procure a place of refuge in the city of their forefathers, departed from Bethlehem without knowing whither to direct their steps. Accidentally they gained the open country, now glimmering with the fading twilight, and resounding with the cries of the jackals roaming about in search of their prey. To the south of, and not far distant from the inhospitable town, the mouth of a gloomy cave cut out of the rock presented itself. This grotto, looking towards the North, and becoming narrower as you enter it, served as a common stable to the Bethlehemites, and sometimes as a place of refuge to the shepherds during stormy nights. Joseph and Mary returned thanks to heaven for having guided them even to this wild and savage place of shelter, and the wife, supported on the arm of the husband, took her seat at the end of the grotto, on a naked rock, a seat indeed narrow and inconvenient. It was here, on that cold stone, at the very time when the stars were telling the midnight hour, that the innocent and immaculate Virgin, without assistance and without pain, brought forth a Being, tender, patient, compassionate like herself; wise, mighty, powerful, and eternal as God: the Shiloh of Jacob, the Messiah of the oracles, the Christ of 1857.] The Old and the New. christians, he whom David called his Lord, and whom, veiling their faces with their wings, the angels adore in the highest heavens. The Redeemer of the human race, not provided even with a wicker cradle, as Moses had been, was lying in a manger, on a handful of damp straw, providentially forgotten by some camel driver of Egypt or Syria, setting off hurriedly before dawn. God had provided for the bed of his only Son in no other way than that by which he provides for the nests of the birds of the air. "Ah! Mary,” cries out St. Bernard, "cover over the splendor of this new sun, place him in a manger, envelope in mean swaddling clothes, this infant God; these swaddling clothes are our riches; the swaddling clothes of my Saviour are more precious than purple, and this manger is more glorious than the thrones of kings; the poverty of Jesus Christ is richer than all other treasures.' St. Basil, removing the veil thrown over the raptures of Mary, points her out to us as equally divided between the deep affectionate love of the mother, and the ecstatic adoration of the saint. "How can I call thee," cries out the daughter of the patriarchs, bending over her infant God, "a mortal? but can it be that I have conceived by the divine operation . . . . . . a God? but thou hast a human body! Shall I offer thee incense or present thee with my milk? Shall I tend thee as a mother or as a slave? Shall I wait on thee with my head bowed down to the earth ?" Thus it was that the predestined Virgin, verifying the prediction of Isaiah, brought forth her first begotten Son, and thus it was that the WORD was made flesh, to repair every thing, and to suffer every thing. |