250 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

what greater joy could they have than to minister to Christ
from the first hour to the last—from Bethlehem to the
Mount of Ascension—through all the earthly sojourn of the
Son of God? As Henry Ward Beecher says—‘‘We could
not imagine the Advent stripped of its angelic love. The
dawn without a twilight, the sun without clouds of silver
and gold, the morning on the fields without dew-diamonds—
but not the Saviour without his angels! They communed
with him in the glory of his transfiguration, sustained him
in the anguish of the garden, watched at the tomb; and as
they had thronged the earth at his coming, so they seem to
have hovered in the air in multitudes at the hour of his
ascension. Their very coming and going is not with earthly
movement. They are suddenly seen in the air as one sees
white clouds round out from the blue sky in a summer’s
day, that melt back even while one looks at them. They
vibrate between the visible and the invisible. They come
without emotion. They go without flight. They dawn and
they disappear. Their words are few, but the Advent
chorus—‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will toward men’—is still sounding its music through
the world.”

As the time drew near for the birth of Christ, the
decree went forth from Cesar Augustus that all the world
should be taxed. In other words there was to be a general
census taken, and the Jews—both men and women—had to
go to their own city to be taxed. It was this mandate that’
caused Joseph and Mary, who were of the house and lineage
of David, to take the long journey from Nazareth to Beth-
lehem, a distance of about eighty miles. It was a tedious
journey at best, and probably at this time of the year
would be as inclement as it was tedious. To David’s royal