The Innocents' Day, DECEMBER 28. As rays around the source of light Set the clear heavens on fire; One presses on, and welcomes death : And some, the darlings of their Lord, The Christian Year: St. Stephen's Day. 10 the early Church it seemed fit that the commemorations of the representatives of the various orders of martyrdom should follow as closely as possible upon the celebration of the Nativity of their Lord, the degree of nearness to which anniversary was determined by their rank in the 'noble army.' For, according to ancient classification, martyrs are of three kinds. The first grade are martyrs both in will and deed, as St. Stephen, who was not only willing to suffer for Christ, but was, in fact, put to death for His sake. Others are martyrs in will, but not in deed; as St. John the Evangelist, who was ready to die for Christ, but did not undergo act ual martyrdom. And lastly, others are martyrs in deed, although HISTORY OF THE FESTIVAL. 65 not in will, as the Innocents, who were slain for Christ before they had attained to the use of reason." *-* The festival of St. Stephen, as that of the most illustrious representative of the highest order of martyrdom, was, by way of a peculiar honour, transferred from the historical anniversary of his passion-or, to speak ecclesiastically, of his nativity-to the day next succeeding the anniversary of the birth of Jesus; and a transfer, for a similar purpose, of the true day of the death of St. John the Evangelist, the typical martyr of the second order, was made to the day following the feast of St. Stephen. To these, on the third day after Christmas, was at length added the solemnity of the representative martyrs of the third order, those sweet flowers of martyrdom' the Jewish children who were put to death by order of Herod (Matthew ii. 16-18). We have no means of determining, precisely,' Mr. Riddle observes, at what time these three commemorations began to be connected with the festival of the Nativity. The dates of the several commemorations themselves are various; and some of them may have existed before the celebration of the Nativity as a distinct festival. The first of the three which was placed in connection with the Nativity appears to be St. Stephen's day. The feast of the Innocents is connected with that of our Lord's birth by Augustine, Leo, and Fulgentius; but it is observable that it is mentioned in their homilies for the Epiphany, not in homilies for Christmas. Bernard of Clairvaux is the earliest writer in whose works we find mention of the four feasts in conjunction.'§ The tender age of the infant martyrs leaves no virtue to be expressly celebrated on their anniversary, except that after which they are named. Spotless and innocent lambs, they were fit to be folded in the fold of God; spotless and innocent flowers, they were fit be planted on the terraces of Heaven. In his 'Steps to the Temple,' and in a very short poem 'Upon the Infant Martyrs,' Crashaw thus alludes to their typical virtue : To see both blended in one flood, The mother's milk, the infant's blood, There has been some amount of speculation as to the number of martyred Innocents; one computation, common to the Greek and * Durandus: Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. The Nativity and the Epiphany of Christ were at first conjoined in one celebration. See the Paper on Epiphany. See extracts from the Homilies by Gregory Nyssen and St. Augustine, in which the festival of St. Stephen alone is connected with the Nativity; pp. 42 and 43. § Manual of Christian Antiquities. Ethiopian churches, making it reach to fourteen thousand. So high a number is open to two objections-first, as being too large for the locality to furnish; and, second as being too large even for the insane cruelty of a monster so reckless and insatiable as Herod. They who care to argue for the credibility of so vast a number, emphasize and extend the fact that it was the children 'from two years old and under,' not of Bethlehem only, but of all the coasts thereof' who were collected within a practicable area, possibly under pretence of taxation; whilst the second objection falls self-answered on a moment's consideration of the ascertained achievements of Herod in the way of arbitrary and senseless bloodshed. It was that HEROD,' Neander observes, whose crimes, committed in violation of every natural feeling, ever urged him on to new deeds of cruelty, whose path to the throne, and whose throne itself, were stained with human blood; whose vengeance against conspirators, not satiated with their own destruction, demanded that of their whole families (Joseph. Archæol. xv. viii. § 4); whose rage was hot, up to the very hour of his death, against his nearest kindred whose wife, Mariamne, and three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater, fell victims to his suspicions, the last just before his death; who, in a word, certainly deserved that the Emperor Augustus should have said of him, Herodis mallem porcus esse, quam filius. It was that HEROD, who, at the close of a bloodstained life of seventy years, goaded by the furies of an evil conscience, racked by a painful and incurable disease, waiting for death, but desiring life, raging against God and man, and maddened by the thought that the Jews, instead of bewailing his death, would rejoice over it as the greatest of blessings, commanded the worthies of the nation to be assembled in the Circus, and issued a secret order that, after his death, they should all be slain together, so that their kindred, at least, might have cause to weep for his death. Can we deem the crime of sacrificing a few children to his rage and blind suspicions too atrocious for such a monster ?'* Whether the number of the massacred infants were greater or less, it was such as to suggest to the Evangelist a fulfilment of 'that which was spoken of by Jeremy the Prophet, saying, "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not (Matt. ii. 17, 18). And the Church, who, as a spiritual mother, has adopted these infants, followed in her offices for the day the example of Rache!, the typical mother of the prophet. She has forgotten her accustomed joy and exultation at the triumphs of the martyrs, in the maternal grief that so many buds of promise should never have opened upon her lap. 'The * Neander's Life of Jesus Christ. |