and it has been noticed that the loathsome disease of which he died is hardly mentioned in history, except in the case of men who have been rendered infamous by an atrocity of persecuting zeal. On his bed of intolerable anguish, in that splendid and luxurious palace which he had built for himself under the palms of Jericho, swollen with disease and scorched by thirst-ulcerated externally and glowing inwardly with a 66 soft slow fire"-surrounded by plotting sons and plundering slaves, detesting all and detested by all-ionging for death as a release from his tortures, yet dreading it as the beginning of worse terrorsstung by remorse, yet still unslaked with murder-a horror to all around him, yet in his guilty conscience a worse terror to himself— devoured by the premature corruption of an anticipated grave-eaten of worms as though visibly smitten by the finger of God's wrath, after seventy years of successful villany-the wretched old man, whom men had called the Great, lay in savage frenzy awaiting his last hour. As he knew that none would shed one tear for him, he determined that they should shed many for themselves, and issued an order that, under pain of death, the principal families in the kingdom and the chiefs of the tribes should come to Jericho. They came, and then, shutting them in the hippodrome, he secretly commanded his sister Salome that at the moment of his death they should all be massacred. And so, choking as it were with blood, devising massacres in its very delirium, the soul of Herod passed forth into the night.

In purple robes, with crown and sceptre and precious stones, the corpse was placed upon its splendid bier, and accompanied with. military pomp and burning incense to its grave in the Herodium, not far from the place where Christ was born. But the spell of the Herodian dominion was broken, and the people saw how illusory had been its glittering fascination. The day of Herod's death was, as he had foreseen, observed as a festival. His will was disputed; his kingdom disintegrated; his last order was disobeyed; his sons died for the most part in infamy and exile; the curse of God was on his house, and though, by ten wives and many concubines, he seems to have had nine sons and five daughters, yet within a hundred years the family of the hierodoulos of Ascalon had perished by disease or violence, and there was no living descendant to perpetuate his name.

If the intimation of Herod's death was speedily given to Joseph, the stay in Egypt must have been too short to influence in any way the human development of our Lord. This may perhaps be the reason why St. Luke passes it over in silence.

It seems to have been the first intention of Joseph to fix his home

in Bethlehem. It was the city of his ancestors, and was hallowed by many beautiful and heroic associations. It would have been easy to find a living there by a trade which must almost anywhere have supplied the simple wants of a peasant family. It is true that an Oriental rarely leaves his home, but when he has been compelled by circumstances to do so, he finds it comparatively easy to settle elsewhere. Having once been summoned to Bethlehem, Joseph might find a powerful attraction in the vicinity of the little town to Jerusalem; and the more so since it had recently been the scene of such memorable circumstances. But, on his way, he was met by the news that Archelaus ruled in the room of his father Herod. The people would only too gladly have got rid of the whole Idumæan race: at the worst they would have preferred Antipas to Archelaus. But Augustus had unexpectedly decided in favour of Archelaus, who, though younger than Antipas, was the heir nominated by the last will of his father; and as though anxious to show that he was the true son of that father, Archelaus, even before his inheritance had been confirmed by Roman authority, "had," as Josephus scornfully remarks, "given to his subjects a specimen of his future virtue, by ordering a slaughter of 3,000 of his own countrymen at the Temple." It was clear that under such a government there could be neither hope nor safety; and Joseph, obedient once more to an intimation of God's will, seeking once more the original home of himself and Mary, "turned aside into the parts of Galilee," where, in remote obscurity, sheltered by poverty and insignificance, the Holy Family might live secure under the sway of another son of Herod—the equally unscrupulous, but more indolent and indifferent Antipas.

CHAPTER V.

THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS.

THE physical geography of Palestine is, perhaps, more distinctly marked than that of any other country in the world. Along the shore of the Mediterranean runs the Shephelah and the maritime plain, broken only by the bold spur of Mount Carmel; parallel to this is a long range of hills, for the most part rounded and featureless in their

character; these, on their eastern side, plunge into the deep declivity of El Ghôr, the Jordan valley; and beyond the Jordan valley runs the straight, unbroken, purple line of the mountains of Moab and Gilead. Thus the character of the country from north to south may be repre sented by four parallel bands-the Sea-board, the Hill country, the Jordan valley, and the Trans-Jordanic range.

The Hill country, which thus occupies the space between the low 'maritime plain and the deep Jordan valley, falls into two great masses, the continuity of the low mountain-range being broken by the plain of Jezreel. The southern mass of those limestone hills formed the land of Judea; the northern, the land of Galilee.

Galil, in Hebrew, means "a circle," and the name was originally applied to the twenty cities in the circuit of Kedesh-Naphtali, which Solomon gave to Hiram in return for his services in transporting timber, and to which Hiram, in extreme disgust, applied the name of Cabúl, or "disgusting." Thus it seems to have been always the destiny of Galilee to be despised; and that contempt was likely to be fostered in the minds of the Jews from the fact that this district became, from very early days, the residence of a mixed population, and was distinguished as "Galilee of the Gentiles." Not only were there many Phoenicians and Arabs in the cities of Galilee, but, in the time of our Lord, there were also many Grecks, and the Greek language was currently spoken and understood.

The hills which form the northern limit of the plain of Jezreel run almost due east and west from the Jordan valley to the Mediterranean, and their southern slopes were in the district assigned to the tribe of Zebulun.

Almost in the centre of this chain of hills there is a singular cleft in the limestone, forming the entrance to a little valley. As the traveller leaves the plain he will ride up a steep and narrow pathway, broidered with grass and flowers, through scenery which is neither colossal nor overwhelming, but infinitely beautiful and picturesque. Beneath him, on the right hand side, the vale will gradually widen, until it becomes about a quarter of a mile in breadth. The basin of the valley is divided by hedges of cactus into little fields and gardens, which, about the fall of the spring rains, wear an aspect of indescribable calm, and glow with a tint of the richest green. Beside the narrow pathway, at no great distance apart from each other, are two wells, and the women who draw water there are more beautiful, and the ruddy, bright-eyed shepherd-boys who sit or play by the wellsides, in their gay-coloured Oriental costume, are a happier, bolder,

brighter-looking race than the traveller will have seen elsewhere Gradually the valley opens into a little natural amphitheatre of hills, supposed by some to be the crater of an extinct volcano; and there clinging to the hollows of a hill, which rises to the height of some five hundred feet above it, lie, "like a handful of pearls in a goblet of emerald," the flat roofs and narrow streets of a little Eastern town. There is a small church: the massive buildings of a convent; the tall minaret of a mosque; a clear, abundant fountain; houses built of white stone, and gardens scattered among them, umbrageous with figs and olives, and rich with the white and scarlet blossoms of orange and pomegranate. In spring, at least, everything about the place looks indescribably bright and soft; doves murmur in the trees; the hoopoe flits about in ceaseless activity; the bright blue rollerbird, the commonest and loveliest bird of Palestine, flashes like a living sapphire over fields which are enamelled with innumerable flowers. And that little town is En Nâzirah, Nazareth, where the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, spent nearly thirty years of His mortal life. It was, in fact, His home, His native village for all but three or four years of His life on earth; the village which lent its then ignominious name to the scornful title written upon His cross; the village from which he did not disdain to draw His appellation when he spake in vision to the persecuting Saul. And along the narrow mountain-path which I have described, His feet must have often trod, for it is the only approach by which, in returning northwards from Jerusalem, He could have reached the home of His infancy, youth, and manhood.

What was His manner of life during those thirty years? It is a question which the Christian cannot help asking in deep reverence, and with yearning love; but the words in which the Gospels answer it are very calm and very few.

Of the four Evangelists, St. John, the beloved disciple, and St. Mark, the friend and "son" of St. Peter, pass over these thirty years in absolute, unbroken silence St. Matthew devotes one chapter to the visit of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt, and then proceeds to the preaching of the Baptist. St. Luke alone, after describing the incidents which marked the presentation in the Temple, preserves for us one inestimable anecdote of the Saviour's boyhood, and one inestimable verse descriptive of His growth till He was twelve years old. And that verse contains nothing for the gratification of our curiosity; it furnishes us with no details of life, no incidents of adventure; it tells us only how, in a sweet and holy childhood, “the

child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him." To this period of His life, too, we may apply the subsequent verse, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." His development was a strictly human development. He did not come into the world endowed with infinite knowledge, but, as St. Luke tells us, "He gradually advanced in wisdom." He was not clothed with infinite power, but experienced the weaknesses and imperfections of human. infancy. He grew as other children grow, only in a childhood of stainless and sinless beauty-" as the flower of roses in the spring of the year, and as lilies by the waters."

There is, then, for the most part & deep silence in the Evangelists respecting this period; but what eloquence in their silence! May we not find in their very reticence a wisdom and an instruction more profound than if they had filled many volumes with minor details?

In the first place, we may see in this their silence a signal and striking confirmation of their faithfulness. We may learn from it that they desired to tell the simple truth, and not to construct an astonishing or plausible narrative. That Christ should have passed thirty years of His brief life in the deep obscurity of a provincial village; that He should have been brought up not only in a conquered land, but in its most despised province; not only in a despised province, but in its most disregarded valley; that during all those thirty years the ineffable brightness of His divine nature should have tabernacled among us, "in a tent like ours, and of the same material," unnoticed and unknown; that during those long years there should have been no flash of splendid circumstance, no outburst of amazing miracle, no "sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies" to announce, and reveal, and glorify the coming King-this is not what we should have expected-not what any one would have been likely to imagine or to invent.

We should not have expected it. but it was so; and therefore the Evangelists leave it so; and the very fact of its contradicting all that we should have imagined is an additional proof that so it must have beer. An additional proof, because the Evangelists must inevitably have been—as, indeed, we know that they were-actuated by the same à priori anticipations as ourselves; and had there been any glorious circumstances attending the boyhood of our Lord, they, as honest witnesses, would certainly have told us of them; and had they not been honest witnesses, they would-if none such occurred in reality— have most certainly invented them. But man's ways are not as