In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Here is opened the mystery of iniquity which lay brooding in the heart of Herod, all the while he put on the apparent regard he proposed to shew to the new born King. But, can the imagination form an idea so horrid, as that of the destruction of such a number of little harmless children, in order to he sure of the One? Alas! what is the human heart, in a state of unrenewed nature! But, Reader, be not offended. Your heart, my heart, every man's heart by nature is the same. And we read this account of Herod to little profit, if we do not see in him the portrait of every son and daughter of Adam, by the fall. For there can be no difference in the same nature, but what sovereign grace hath wrought. What one man's nature hath done, every man's nature is capable of doing; yea, and would do, if the same corresponding causes, temptations, and opportunities, led to it, and grace did not restrain. Oh! who shall calculate, who shall tell, to what a desperate state of wickedness the whole nature of man is fallen, by the original apostasy of our first father? Reader! do you believe this? I do from my very heart. And I bless GOD the HOLY GHOST for the merciful discovery. For never should I have known the want of salvation, neither rightly valued that salvation, but for this divine teaching. Never should I have loved thee, or wouldest thou have been so endeared to my soul, blessed, precious LORD JESUS, as thou now art, had not God the HOLY GHOST, as thou didst promise concerning him, convinced me of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. John 16:8-11; Jeremiah 17:9; 2 Kings 8:11-13
Concerning the murder of those babes: if the Reader will turn to Jeremiah 31:15-40; he will, I think, behold the sweet consolation that is there pointed out in CHRIST, as the everlasting remedy to this, and all other bereaving providences. And in relation to the infants themselves; they were only removed from the evil to come. Had they lived to old age, they would have lived to have seen the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, which the Lord Jesus so mournfully foretold, Matthew 20:4; Mark 13:1; Luke 21:1 when they would have said; blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. If those sweet babes who died for CHRIST died also in CHRIST; were they not such as John heard a voice from heaven concerning, saying, blessed are the dead which die in the LORD, Revelation 14:13. And is it not said, precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. Psalms 116:15. And may we not without violence to the words suppose, that these little ones of CHRIST'S fold, were among that holy army John saw on Mount Zion, when he said, I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Zion, and with him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having his FATHER'S name written in their foreheads. See Revelation 14:1-5. See also 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.