The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-12-24
WISE MEN Of THE EAST
AS Wise as Those Wise With
Vau:ted Modern Wisdom.
WHAT THE MANGER MEANS
TaImage INDUCES in Flights
of Christmas Fancy

New York, Dec 16.-In the Journal
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage writes the fol-
lowing thoughts on Christmas:
Two plain people, centuries ago, hoteled
in a village barn after a walk Of eighty
miles Too long a trudge for one in poor
health. No lords of state awaiting in
antechamber as when other kings are
born. No messenger mounted at the door
way ready to herald the advent from
city to city. No medical skill in attend
ance. No satin-Iined cradle to receive the
infantile guest. But a monarch born In
the hosiery, called the house Of Chin
Ham; the night with diamond finger
pointing down to the place; the door OF
heaven set wide open to look out; from
orchestral batons of light dripping the ora
torios Of the Messiah on the lowest door
step Of heaven the Ministries Of God dis
coursing of glory and good will Soon af-
ter the white-bearded astrologists kneel,
and from leathern pouch clink the shekels
and from open sack exhale the frank
incense and rustic out the bundles or
myrrh The loosened star, the escaped
doxology of ceIestials, the chill Deem
Der night afush with May morn, our
world lost star, and another star rush
ing down the sky that night to beckon
the wanderer home again, shall yet make
all nations keep Christmas.
The unusual appearance that night
may have been a, strange conjunction OF
worlds AS the transit of Venus in our
day was foretold many years ago by
1o,sc n
what will he the conjunction of worlds
thousand years from now, 80 they can
calculate backward, and even infidel
astronomers are compelled to testify that
about the year one there was very
unusual appearance in the heavens. Inc
Chinese record, of course entirely indie
pendent of the Bible, gives as matter
Of history that about the year one there
was a strange and unaccOuntable ap-
pearance in the heavens. But it may
have been a meteor such as you and
have seen flash in the horizon.
Only a few nights ago I saw in the
northern sky star shoot and fall with
such brlIiancy and precision that IL 1
had been on a hill as high as that Of
Bethlehem, on which the shepherds stood,
I could have marked within a short dis
lance the place Of alighting. The Uni
versity of Iowa, and the British Museum
have specimens of nreteoric stones picked
up in the fields, framgents flung off from
other worlds, leaving a fiery trail on the
| sky. So that it is not to me at all i'm
probable that the stellar or meteOriC ap-
pearance at night of which I write can
| be accounted for scientifically. I only
| care to know that it was bright that it
| was silvery, that it flashed and swayed
and swung and halted with Joy celestial,
as though Christ in haste to save our
world had rushed down without His coro-
net and the angels Of God had hurled it
| after Him. a
But this scene also frnpresses me with
! the fact that the wise men OF the east
| came to Christ. They were not fools,
they were not imbeciles. The record dis
| tinctly says that the wise men came to
! Christ We say that they were the
! magi. or they were the alchemists, or
| they were the astrologists, and We say it
with depreciating accentuation. Why,
| they were the most splendid and magnifi-
| cent men Of the century. They were the
| knew all that was known. You must re-
member that astrology was the mother Of
| astronomy, and that alchemy was the
| mother Of chemistry, and because child
rem may be brighter than the mothers,
| you do not despise the mothers. 1t was
| the lifelong business of these astrologers
| to study the stars Twenty-Five hundred
| and fifty years before Christ was born the
wise men knew the procession Of the
| equinexes, and they had calculated the
| orbit and the return of the comets. Pro-
| fessor Smith declares that he thinks they
understood the distance of the sun from
! the earth. We find In the book of Job
that the men of olden time did not sup
pose the world was fat, as some have
/ said, but that he knew and the men of
| his time knew the world was globular.
| The pyramids were built for astrological
and astronomical study.
Then the alchemists spent their lives in
the study of metals and gases and liquids
and solids and in filing the worlds IL
! brarv with their wonderful discoveries:
/ they were vastly wise men who came to
! the east. They understood embalming as
| our most scientific men cannot under
| stand it, After this world has gone on
| studying hundreds of years it may come
up to the point where the ancients began
to forget. I believe the lost arts are as
mighty as the living arts. They were
/ wise men that came from the east and
tradition says the three wisest men-Cas-
! par. a young man: Bslthazar. a man in
mid-life. and Melchior. an octosenarian-
the three wisest men of all the century.
! They came to the manEer. SO Il has al
ways been-the wisest men came to
! Christ. the brainiest men come TO the
/ manser. Who was the greatest me
/ taphysician this country ever produced?
! Jonathan Edwards, the Christian. Who
was the greatest astronomer of his age?
/ Herschel the Christian. Who was the
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