But behold one day Mary heard from Elisabeth.There was to be a baby in the family,and could Mary come and take care of her kinswoman?for there was a lot of work to be done and Elisabeth needed a little attention.
Mary went to Juttah,the suburb of Jerusalem in which her people lived,and stayed there until her little cousin John lay safely tucked away in his cradle.
Then she returned to Nazareth where she was to marry Joseph.
But ere long she had been called upon to undertake another journey.
In distant Jerusalem,wicked Herod was still King.
But his days were numbered and his power was waning.
In still more distant Rome,Caesar Augustus had taken hold of the reins of government and had turned the Republic into an Empire.
Empires cost money and subjects must pay.
Therefore almighty Caesar had decreed that all his beloved children from east and west and north and south should duly enroll their names upon certain official registers that henceforth the taxgatherers might know who had paid their just shares of all dues and who had failed to do their duty.
It is true,both Judaea and Galilee were still nominally part of an independent kingdom.But when it came to a question of revenue,the Romans were apt to stretch a point or two,and far and wide the order went forth that the people must present themselves at a given date at the particular spot which happened to be the original home of their family or tribe.
Joseph,as a descendant of David,therefore had travelled to Bethlehem and his wife,faithful Mary,had gone with him.
It had been no easy journey.
The road had been long and tiring.
And when at last Joseph and Mary had reached Bethlehem,all the rooms in the city had already been occupied by those who had arrived earlier.
It had been a very cold night.
Kind people had taken pity upon the poor young wife.
They had made her a bed in the corner of an old stable.
And there Jesus had been born,while outside in the fields,the shepherds were guarding their flocks against thieves and wolves,and were wondering when the long-promised Messiah should set their unhappy land free from those foreign masters who mocked at the power of Jehovah and laughed at all that was sacred to the heart of the Jews.
All this had occurred long ago.
It was rarely mentioned,for it had been followed by that hasty and terrible flight into the wilderness,which had been caused by the cruelty of Herod the King.
One evening,Mary had been nursing her baby in front of the old stable which served her and Joseph as a home.
Suddenly there had been a great noise in the street.
A caravan of Persian travellers was passing by.
With their camels and their servants and their rich clothes and their golden rings and the bright colours of their turbans,they were a sight which brought all the village to its wondering doorsteps.
The young mother and her child had attracted the attention of these strange men.They had halted their camels and they had played with the little boy and then,when they left,they had given his pretty mother some presents from among their bales of silk and their boxes of spices.
All this had been innocent enough,but Judaea was a very small country,and news travelled fast.
In Jerusalem,in his gloomy palace,Herod was sitting in dark dread of the future.He was old and he was sick and he was very miserable.
The memory of his murdered wife was forever with him.
The shadows were falling fast.
Suspicion was the companion of his last days,and fear for ever followed him with silent tread.
When his officers began to talk about the visit of the Persian merchants to Bethlehem,Herod became panic-stricken.Like all men of that age,the King of Judaea firmly believed that the dark-skinned Magi could perform such miracles as had not been seen since the wondrous days of Elijah and Elisha.
They could not be just ordinary merchants.They must have some special mission,Were they to avenge the evil deeds of the usurper who now sat on the throne,which centuries before had belonged to David,a native of that selfsame village of Bethlehem where the Magi had created such a stir?
King Herod had asked for details.He had heard of many other strange occurrences in connection with the mysterious child.
A short time after his birth,the boy,being the oldest son,had been taken to the Temple,and there,when the offering had been completed,an old man by the name of Simeon,and a very old prophetess called Anna,had spoken strange words about the coming of the day of deliverance,and Simeon had asked Jehovah to let him die in peace now that he had seen the Messiah who should lead his people back from the path of wickedness and depravity.
Whether all this was true or not did not interest Herod.It had been said and it was being believed by great numbers of people.That was enough.Herod had given orders that all boys born in Bethlehem within the last three years should be killed.
In this way he had hoped to rid himself of any possible rival for his throne.But the plan had not been entirely successful.
Several of the parents,warned by the officers or by their friends in Jerusalem,had been able to escape.Mary and Joseph had gone southward and tradition (which loved to connect the early story of Jesus with that of Abraham and Joseph)long maintained that they had gone as far as Egypt.
As soon as the massacre had come to an end by the welcome death of Herod,they had returned to Nazareth.
Joseph once more had opened his carpenter shop and Mary found her bands busy tending the ever increasing nursery.
For she became the mother of four other boys who were called James and Joseph and Simon and Judas,and of several girls,who lived to see the triumph and the death of that strange older brother who was to include all mankind in the tender affection which he had learned at the knees of his mother.
