VIITHE BLOSSOMS OF MARTYRDOM
Buteven at that first Christmastide, Bethlehem must again be the scene of innocent suffering in another’s place, as for the Christ-child’s sake some twenty baby boys in the little town are put to death by order of King Herod, whose diseased, suspicious mind trembles at the thought of even an infant claimant for his throne.
Five hundred years before, when the strong young men of Bethlehem had been sent away into Babylonian exile, the loud wailing from bereaved, heart-broken homeshad recalled to Jeremiah that other sad mother buried there by the lonely roadside. So now again, the awful outrage, perpetrated almost within sight of that venerable tomb, seems to be linked across the long centuries with the first Bethlehem grief; and once more, in the words of the Lamenting Prophet, there is
“Weeping and great mourning,Rachel weeping for her children;And she would not be comforted,Because they are not.”
“Weeping and great mourning,Rachel weeping for her children;And she would not be comforted,Because they are not.”
“Weeping and great mourning,Rachel weeping for her children;And she would not be comforted,Because they are not.”
“Weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;
And she would not be comforted,
Because they are not.”
The Blossoms of Martyrdom—so a fourth century poet calls these little ones who were the first of all to suffer death for Christ’s sake. And in that countless throng of those who “have come out of great tribulation” there must surely stand in the foremost rank the little band of Bethlehem children whoseblood was shed because an infant Saviour had been born into an unwelcoming world.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from