Our pagan ancestors observed their sacred festival at this season, in honour of their unknown gods, and of a mystic mythology, founded on the attributes of the Deity; but corrupted in the course of ages into a mass of fables and idolatry: but we keep it in commemoration of Him, who, as at this time, mercifully revealed Himself to us; who is omniscient and omnipresent, and of whom my lamented and learned friend, Dr. Macculloch, has emphatically said, referring to the true Christian, “Not an object will occur to him, in which he will not see the hand of God, and feel that he is under the eye of God; and if he but turn to contemplate the vacancy of the chamber around him, it is to feel that he is in the presence of his Maker; surrounded, even to contact, by Him who fills all space. Feeling this, can he dare to be evil?” [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. THE subjects of the offerings at the Epiphany, with the accompanying legend of the Three Kings or Magi, and that of carol singing, require so much space that it has been thought preferable to devote particular chapters to them, rather than interrupt the narrative of Christmas festivities. The offerings on the day of the Epiphany were in remembrance of the Manifestation of our Saviour to the Gentiles, and of the gifts made to Him by the Magi, or Wise Men of the East; when “the kings of Tarshish and of the isles brought presents; the kings of Sheba and Saba offered gifts,” or, as the ‘Bee Hive,’ of the Romish Church, states it, “Kings came out of the Moor’s land to worship Christ.” The king of the bean was the forerunner of our Twelfth-Day King; in the Saturnalia a king was elected, and as some say by beans, by way of lot, and he was invested with full power over the guests, and from him the lord of Misrule, under his various names, may take his origin; but the king of the bean and Twelfth-Day king were strictly confined to Twelfth Day, and ephemeral in their rule. At the time of our Saviour’s birth, there was an expectation of his appearance among many of the heathen nations; it is said even that the initiated in the religious mysteries of the Persians, possessed as a secret handed down from the time of Zoroaster, that a divine prophet should be born of a virgin, whose birth should be proclaimed by the appearance of a bright star. The celebrated prophecy of Balaam, also made an impression on the surrounding nations; “I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh; there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.” When the star eventually appeared, the Magi, or Three Kings, as they are commonly called, eagerly followed it to the cradle of our Saviour to pay their adorations,— “See how from far upon the eastern road, The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet.”