There was a great lull and hush all
over the world, for the time was come at last. But the King was neither
Herod in Judea, nor Augustus at Rome! Nay Herod, as a son of Edom, was
but proving that the Sceptre had departed from Judah; and the reign of
Augustus was a time when darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness
the people, for the Greeks and Romans had lost all the good that
had been left in them, and were given up to wicked cruelty and foul
self-indulgence; when one of their own heathen oracles was caused to
announce to Augustus that the greatest foe of the Roman power should be
a child born among the Hebrews.
LESSON XX.
THE GOSPEL.
"It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel."--_Gen_. iii.
15.
It was in the 4004th year of the world, the 30th of the empire of Caesar
Augustus, the 37th of the reign of Herod the Edomite, that Augustus,
wishing to know the number of his subjects, so as to regulate the taxes
paid by the conquered countries, to provide corn for the poorer Roman
citizens, sent out an edict that each person should enroll his name at
his native place, and there pay a piece of money.
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