very budding and blossoming and flowering season of Palestine. The morning sun showed us what we had seen but dimly by moonlight; and as we looked down into the deep valley below, the field of Boaz was green with the freshness of the early Spring. All around, the terraced hillsides were covered with vineyards or with orchards, on whose varied colors the eye rested with delight — the tender green of the olive and the red flowers of the pomegranate, mingled with fig trees, which were swelling with their young fruit. Surely this was the season of all the round year for the advent of Him who was, in another and a higher sense, to renew the face of the earth. So it seemed to us, and indeed if we could but follow the fancies of this inspiring hour, we should think it most in harmony with the event, that our Lord should have come into the world in the early dawn, when the morning star was just above the horizon, and the Light of the rising sun began to glow over the distant mountains of Moab, and to touch the crests of this hill country of Palestine. But what matters it whether the Lord came at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning, so that He came? It is the event which concerns us rather than the season, whether Spring or Summer, or Autumn or Winter. What imports the season of the year to Him who "has all seasons for His own"? What matters it whether the star in the East shone on harvest fields or on wintry snows, so that it but led the wandering Magi till it came and stood over where the young child was? As to the month or the day, that is a minor point on which we are not careful to answer — content to accept the day which has been observed for centuries as that of our Redeemer's birth. When the year comes round and brings the happy Christmas time; and the bells are ringing in every Christian land, we would join with universal Christendom in celebrating an event
