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motherhood. Aye, women, mothers themselves, came to their doors and looked and answered, no! Ah! when the tramp of Herod's soldiers and the clash of their arms are heard in the streets of Bethlehem — when the innocents are torn from their mothers' arms and slaughtered before their eyes — let these mothers not wonder if the pale, beseeching face of a would-be lodger flit across their remembrance. Poor Mary! in a vain attempt to retrace her steps to Jerusalem, she sinks down by the way, and then, assisted by her husband, by one last effort she totters to a cave where cattle and sheep are stalled. How natural it all is, and how pitiful! The young wife utterly exhausted and alone; her husband gone to fetch a cup of water and assistance; one instant of semi-conscious ecstasy, and she clasps to her breast her newborn babe — born without the pains of child-birth — as miraculously born as was the newly risen Saviour transferred when He appeared in the midst of His Apostles, the doors being closed. There, then, in the crib before us is the group, Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Who does not love to ponder on that picture of which the utter simplicity is the chief est charm? The scanty swaddling-clothes, the stable, the manger, His dire poverty — these do not repel, but rather seem most fitting, for round Him earthly splendor would be as tawdry tinsel, while these are like the clothing of the lily that rivals Solomon's garb. No fear that in the contemplation of the intensely human in Christ we lose sight of His divinity, for already outside the cave the night is all aglow and the air filled with heavenly