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The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the
Gospel story. We may however content ourselves with the more simple
rendering. We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the
reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when they came we cannot tell; but
we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her
year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene
of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was
born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of Herod,
and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts
and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."
We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary through
all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child. What is
written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept all these and
pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of God had been hers for
so many months now--wonder, with devout meditation upon their meaning.
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