source of the evangelist’s information.  At all events, he speaks as if from Joseph’s point of view.  Luke, on the other hand, has most to say about Mary’s maidenly wonder and meek submission, her swift hurrying to find help from a woman’s sympathy, as soon as the Angel of the Annunciation had spoken, and the hymn of exultation which Elisabeth’s salutation heartened her to pour forth.  Surely that narrative could have come from none but her meek and faithful lips?  The two accounts beautifully supplement each other, and give two vivid pictures of these two devout souls, each sharply tried in a different fashion, each richly blessed by variously moulded obedience.  Joseph took up his burden, and Mary hers, because God had spoken and they believed.

The shock to Joseph of the sudden discovery, crashing in on him after he was bound to Mary, and in what would else have been the sweet interval of love and longing ‘before they came together,’ is delicately and unconsciously brought out in verse 18.  ’She was found’—­how the remembrance of the sudden disclosure, blinding and startling as a lightning flash, lives in that word!  And how the agony of perplexity as to the right thing to do in such a cruel dilemma is hinted at in the two clauses that pull in opposite directions!  As a ‘just man’ and ’her husband,’ Joseph owed it to righteousness and to himself not to ignore his betrothed’s condition; but as her lover and her husband, how could he put her, who was still so dear to him, to public shame, some of which would cloud his own name?  To ‘put her away’ was the only course possible, though it racked his soul, and to do it ‘privily’ was the last gift that his wounded love could give her.  No wonder that ’these things’ kept him brooding sadly on them, nor that his day’s troubled thinkings coloured his sleeping hours!  The divine guidance, which is ever given to waiting minds, was given to him by the way of a dream, which is one of the Old Testament media of divine communications, and occurs with striking frequency in this and the following chapter, there being three recorded as sent to Joseph and one to the Magi.  It is observable, however, that to Joseph it is always ’the’or ’an angel of the Lord’ who appears in the dream, whereas the dream only is mentioned in the case of the Magi.  The difference of expression may imply a difference in the manner of communication.  But in any case, we need not wonder that divine communications were abundant at such an hour, nor shall we be startled, if we believe in the great miracle of the Word’s becoming flesh, that a flight of subsidiary miracles, like a bevy of attendant angels, clustered round it.