that he saw this or did that, and
you find it impossible to believe him, you lose patience with him, and
are disposed to doubt everything in his autobiography. Do not forget,
then, that Matthew is Holinshed and not Benvenuto. The very first pages
of his narrative will put your attitude to the test.

Matthew tells us that the mother of Jesus was betrothed to a man of
royal pedigree named Joseph, who was rich enough to live in a house in
Bethlehem to which kings could bring gifts of gold without provoking any
comment. An angel announces to Joseph that Jesus is the son of the Holy
Ghost, and that he must not accuse her of infidelity because of her
bearing a son of which he is not the father; but this episode disappears
from the subsequent narrative: there is no record of its having been
told to Jesus, nor any indication of his having any knowledge of it.
The narrative, in fact, proceeds in all respects as if the annunciation
formed no part of it.

Herod the Tetrarch, believing that a child has been born who will
destroy him, orders all the male children to be slaughtered; and Jesus
escapes by the flight of his parents into Egypt, whence they return to
Nazareth when the danger is over. Here it is necessary to anticipate a
little by saying that none of the other evangelists accept this story,
as none of them except John, who throws over Matthew altogether, shares
his craze for treating history and biography as mere records of the
fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies. This craze no doubt led him to
seek for some legend bearing out Hosea's "Out of Egypt have I called my
son," and Jeremiah's Rachel weeping for her children: in fact, he says
so. Nothing that interests us nowadays turns on the credibility of the
massacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt. We may forget them,
and proceed to the important part of the narrative, which skips at once
to the manhood of Jesus.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

At this moment, a Salvationist prophet named John is stirring the
people very strongly. John has declared that the rite of circumcision
is insufficient as a dedication of the individual to God, and has
substituted the rite of baptism. To us, who are accustomed to baptism
as a matter of course, and to whom circumcision is a rather ridiculous
foreign practice of no consequence, the sensational effect of such a
heresy as this on the Jews is not apparent: it seems to us as natural
that John should have baptized people as that