The Flight into Egypt is generally believed in the West to have occurred a few days after the birth of our Lord. The Eastern Churches on the other hand extend the interval which is supposed to have elapsed to a period of nearly two years. The considerations which influenced the choice of age for the Saviour in the picture are therefore not simply artistic. The view of the Eastern Churches can scarcely be rejected with reasonable regard to the circumstances of the visit of the Magi, and of the terms of Herod’s fiat for the murder of the male children of two years old and under, “according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.” In the Gospel of St. Luke, however, it is said that after the Purification in the Temple, which was forty days after the birth, St. Joseph and the Holy Virgin returned to Nazareth with the Child, and that there, speaking in general terms after the accomplished fact, Jesus grew up. An apparent discrepancy is thus pointed out by some critics, but it is one such as often presents itself in all honest evidence of facts; and the report in St. Matthew simply requires it to be understood that the Holy Family came back again to Bethlehem from Nazareth. Indeed, the residence in the latter city does not seem to have been chosen as a permanent one, for, on the return from Egypt, it was only accepted because safety was still not so certain in the dominion of Archelaus. The motive which had operated in bringing St. Joseph and the Virgin to Bethlehem from the north, before the birth of our Lord, is generally understood to be the securing of claim, under the enrolment of Quirinius, to the genealogy, and perhaps to some share of family inheritance. This would operate more powerfully after the birth of Jesus in influencing the parents to make the city of David their permanent home. There is therefore no contradiction between the two Gospels, but the comparison of the evidence given by the two Evangelists in my mind strongly establishes the view of the Eastern Churches, that the Saviour’s birth took place more than one year earlier than the flight. Herod’s estimate of the age of Him who was born King of the Jews was not made without careful calculation of the date from the birth, so as fully to include the Child whom he had determined to destroy, that he might thus, like the typical politician of the great reader of human nature, “Circumvent God,” and it follows accordingly that Jesus was not fully two years of age.