At this remarkable crisis Mary was detained by the full accomplishment of the time for her delivery; "and she brought forth her first born Son, and wrapped him in swaddling-clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." Here then were fulfilled the prophetic descriptions of the place and circumstances of the Redeemer's incarnation. A virgin produces a son--a son who, by the exclusion of his parents from the accommodation of the inn, already began to realize the inspired declaration, "he is despised and rejected of men"--a son identified as the promised Messiah by every thing connected with his birth. Augustus issues a decree which brings Mary to Bethlehem at the precise moment when this removal was requisite; and yet Augustus, ignorant of the designs of Heaven or the condition of Mary, considers only his personal glory and the security of the imperial dominions. He has one purpose, and Providence another; but they both concur to the predestined end. Augustus knew not that his edict was to prove the appointed means of accomplishing the most important event that had ever transpired since the commencement of time, and was, in fact, the wonderful hinge upon which the numerous and concurring prophecies of past centuries were destined to turn. He knew not that his imperial edict for an universal enrolment, was the last of a series of preparatory means by which the great purposes of infinite mercy were to be developed and displayed. Why was not the same policy pursued by the emperor, when it was determined upon seven-and-twenty years before at Taracon in Spain? and why, if he were diverted at that period from the immediate execution of this project by some disturbances in the empire, was it forgotten or neglected for so many years, and revived at so critical a moment? Let infidelity stand abashed, and listen to the voice of revelation: "He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will."