be sent to a woman of Israel, but that she should be the one — she, a lowly maid, not married yet, and bound by solemn vow never to be known of man. How did her gentle heart flutter and her spirit glow with love and thankfulness when from the angel's lips she heard that virginity and motherhood are not things incompatible in her whose offspring is a God; that He who made the barren Elizabeth conceive, could of Mary's flesh and blood alone build Him a body for His indwelling. " Behold," she says, " the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word," and in that very instant the hopes of ages were fulfilled; the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.
Brethren, Mary's first impulse was to be away from Nazareth, to open her overflowing heart to some sympathetic woman, and so with haste she sped to whisper her secret to her cousin Elizabeth. Supposing even that some vague doubts still haunted Mary's mind, they must have been utterly dispelled by Elizabeth's greeting of her as the Mother of her God, and the bound the Baptist gave at the approach of his unborn Saviour. There Mary spent three happy months, and then the sword began to pierce her gentle heart. The Baptist's birth was nigh, and soon the friends and neighbors would gather round to congratulate his parents and celebrate his circumcision. What would they think of Mary? With the sublimest faith and trust in God she had bowed her will to His, but now there stared her in the face suspicion, calumny and death. Back to Nazareth she fled, and
