THE INFANTS SLAIN BY HEROD WERE NOT THE 144,000.
Every circumstance of the case forbids such an application. A single fact, however, which the most unthinking can appreciate, is all that I will give; but it is quite decisive. Bethlehem was nothing but a small village some six miles distant from Jerusalem. The village of Bethlehem and the coasts of that village, i. e., the vicinity or neighborhood of that village, was the scene of that massacre. Had Herod killed every human being in the whole field of the massacre it is not likely that 5,000 persons would have been slain in all. But he slew only the children two years of age and under. And of these only male children were the objects of his vengeance. Can any exposition be devised more absolutely devoid of reason and more completely in contradiction of all the facts in the case, than that which makes the 144,000 to consist of the infants slain by Herod? Probably less than 200 children were then slain. It would be a most extravagant estimate to set it 1,000, but if we should, we only find one in 144 of the whole number. When men try to fight the truth, it seems, often times, as though they were bereft of their senses. The location of the 144,000 in one small village, and that too, when it embraced a small minority of its inhabitants, is a striking instance of the readiness with which men will receive unreasonable errors for the sake of avoiding unwelcome truths. The following from “Milman's History of Christianity,” being a note contained in appendix to chapter ii, may interest the reader. He says: “The murder of the innocents is a curious instance of the reaction of legendary extravagance on the plain truth of the evangelic history. The Greek church canonized the 14,000 innocents; and another nation, founded on a misrepresentation of Revelation (xiv, 3), swelled the number to 144,000. The former, at least, was the common belief of the church, though even in our liturgy the latter has in some degree been sanctioned, by retaining the chapter of Revelation as the epistle for the day. Even later, Jeremy Taylor, in his “Life of Christ,” admits the 14,000 without scruple, or, rather, without thought. The error did not escape the notice of the acute adversaries of Christianity, who, in preaching this extravagant tale, attempted to bring the evangelic narrative into discredit. Vossius, I believe, was the first divine who pointed out the monstrous absurdity of supposing such a number of infant children in so small a village. Matt. ii, 13–18.”