concealed the communication of the angel from Joseph; and this reserve, in a matter known only to herself and to God, must be regarded as a proof of her firm trust in God. Without doubt Mary communed thus with herself: It is not without a purpose that this apparition has been made to me alone; had it been intended that Joseph should have participated in the communication, the angel would have appeared to him also (if each individual favoured with a divine revelation were of this opinion, how many special revelations would it not require?); besides it is an affair of God alone, consequently it becomes me to leave it with him to convince Joseph (the argument of indolence). Olshausen concurs, and adds his favourite general remark, that in relation to events so extraordinary the measure of the ordinary occurrences of the world is not applicable: a category under which, in this instance, the highly essential considerations of delicacy and propriety are included. More in accordance with the views of the natural interpreters, the Evangelium de nativitate Mariae, [207] and subsequently some later writers, for example, the author of the Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth, have sought to explain Mary’s silence, by supposing Joseph to have been at a distance from the abode of his affianced bride at the time of the heavenly communication. According to them Mary was of Nazareth, Joseph of Bethlehem; to which latter place Joseph departed after the betrothing, and did not return to Mary until the expiration of three months, when he discovered the pregnancy which had taken place in the interim. But since the assumption that Mary and Joseph resided in different localities has no foundation, as will presently be seen, in the canonical Gospels, the whole explanation falls to the ground. Without such an assumption, Mary’s silence towards Joseph might, perhaps, have been accounted for from the point of view of the naturalistic interpreters, by imagining her to have been held back through modesty from confessing a situation so liable to excite suspicion. But one who, like Mary, was so fully convinced of the divine agency in the matter, and had shown so ready a comprehension of her mysterious destination (Luke i. 38), could not possibly have been tongue-tied by petty considerations of false shame.