The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1891-01-08
|TUE STAR IN THE EAST.
c,-ie4mastide Discourse by Rev
T. Dewitt Talmage.
t..sons to be Learned by the Con-
temptation of the Divine Advent
Come, See the Place where
the Infant Jesus Lay.

Come, See the Place where
the Infant Jesus Lay.
The following discourse, appropriate
.ho Cbristmastide festivities, was de-
ii,ered by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage in
n,oolxlvn and New York City from the
4 text
o,rsnow 90 even unto Bethlehem.-Luke
IL, l5
Amid n thousand mercies we give each
o,ber holiday congratulations. BY long
established custom we exhort each other
20 bealthful merriment. BY gift, by
Christmas trees which blossom and fruit
,n one night, by early morning surprise,
Nv clusters of lighted candles, by chill
iren's procession, by sound of instru-
ments sometimes more blatant than
musical we wake up the night and pro-
long the day. l wish you all, in the
orandest, noblest and best sense, a merry
christmas. The event commemorated
Is the gladdest of the centuries. Christ's
cradle was as wonderful as His cross.
Persuade me of the first and | am not
surprised at the last. The door by which
He entered was as tremendous as the
door by which He went out.
was last winter at the house where
Jesus lived while lie was in Africa. 1t
was in Cairo, Egypt, the terminus of
that terrible journey which He took
when Joseph and Mary fled with Him
from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the
massacre of Herod. All tradition as
we'll as all history point out this house
IN Cairo as the one in which these three
fuyitiyes lived while in Africa. The
room is nine steps down from the level
of the street. | measured the room, and
found it twenty feet long and seven and
one-half feet high. There are three
shelvings of rock, one of which think
was the cradle of our Lord. There is
no window. and all the light must have
come from lantern or candle. The three
arrived here from Bethlehem, having
crossed the desert.
On the Mediterranean steamer going
from Athens to Alexandria l met the
Lansing, who for thirty-five years has
been resident of Cairo, and he told me
that he had been all over the road that
the three fugitivcs took from Bethlehem
to Egypt. lie says it is a desert way,
and that the forced journey of the in
FAINT Christ must have been n terrible
journey. Going up from Egypt, DIR.
lansing met people from Bethlehem,
their tongues swollen and hanging out
from the inflammation of thirst, and al
though his party had but one goat-skin
Of water left, and that was important
for themselves, he was SO moved with
the spectacle of thirst in these poor pill
grims that, though it excited the indig-
nation of his fellow-travelers, he gave
water to the strangers. Over this
dreadful route Joseph and Mary
started for this land of Egypt. No
time to make much preparation. Herod
was after them, and what were these
peasants before an irate King. Joseph,
the husband and father, one night
sprang up from his mattress in great
alarm, the beads of sweat on his fore
head and his whole frame quaking. He
had dreamed of massacres of his wife
and babe. They must be off, that
night, right away. Mary put up few
things hastily, and Joseph brought to
the door the beast of burden, and helped
his wife and child to mount. Why,
those lOaves of bread are not enough:
those bottles of water will not last for
such long way. But there is no time
TO get any thing more. Out and on.
Good-bye to the dear home they expect
never again to see. Their hearts break.
II does not need that ours be a big
house in order to made us sorry to leave
It,
Over the hills and down through the
deep gorge they urge their way. BY He
oron by GAIA, through hot sand, under a
ollsterlng sun, the babe crying, the
mother faint, the father exhausted. How
slowly the days and weeks pass. Will
tne weary three ever reach the banks of
tne Nile? Will they ever see Cairo?
VIII the desert ever end? When at last
they cross the line beyond which old
herod has no right to pursue, their joy
unoounded. Free at last. Let them
ulSmount and rest. Now they resume
cheir way with less anxiety. They will
ma place somewhere for shelter and
tne earning of their bread. Here they
are at Cairo, Egypt.
Ihey wind through the crooked
sTeets' which are about ten feet wide,
ana enter the humble house where l
nave been to-day, But the terminus of
sle journey of these three fugitives
was not as humble as their starting
punt at bethlehem. If that journey
soross the desert ended in a cellar, it
started from a barn. In and around
day.
Every thing humble around the barn,
cut every thing glorious overhead.
St advent was in the history called
S sae mouse OF Chin Ham; the night with
u,amonded finger pointing down to the
p.ace, The door of Heaven set wide open
~ LOOK out; from orchestral batons of
e n' tripping the oratorios of the "Mes-
' al on lowest doorstep of Heaven the
S'rels ana OF God discoursing of glory
nu good will. Soon after the white
,Sed Iearoed astrologists kneel, and from
ea,nern pouch chink the sheckels,
su from open sacks cxhale the
sSanhincense and rustic out the
ahoies OF myrrh. The loosened star;
Io @ escaped doxolcgy of celestials;
@ ehal December night afiush
sn May morn; our world a lost star,
s ua another star rushing down the sky
a: hlght to beckon the wanderer home
Christmas.
. are there no new lessons from the