God's ways; and because the truth which by their very silence the Evangelists record is a revelation to us of the ways of God, and not of man, therefore it contradicts what we should have invented; it disappoints what, without further enlightenment, we should have desired. But, on the other hand, it fulfils the ideal of ancient prophecy, "He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground;" and it is in accordance with subsequent allusion, “He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant."

We have only to turn to the Apocryphal Gospels, and we shall find how widely different is the false human ideal from the diviņe fact. There we shall see how, following their natural and unspiritual bent, the fabulists of Christendom, whether heretical or orthodox, surround Christ's boyhood with a blaze of miracle, make it portentous, terrorstriking, unnatural, repulsive. It is surely an astonishing proof that the Evangelists were guided by the Spirit of God in telling how He lived in whom God was revealed to man, when we gradually discover that no profane, no irreverent, even no imaginative hand can touch the sacred outlines of that divine and perfect picture without degrading and distorting it. Whether the Apocryphal writers meant their legends to be accepted as history or as fiction, it is at least certain that in most cases they meant to weave around the brows of Christ a garland of honour. Yet how do their stories dwarf, and dishonour, and misinterpret Him! How infinitely superior is the noble simplicity of that evangelic silence to all the theatrical displays of childish and meaningless omnipotence with which the Protevangelium, and the Pseudo-Matthew, and the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy are full! They meant to honour Christ; but no invention can honour Him; he who invents about Him degrades Him; he mixes the weak, imperfect, erring fancies of man with the unapproachable and awful purposes of God. The boy Christ of the Gospels is simple and sweet, obedient and humble; He is subject to His parents; He is occupied solely with the quiet duties of His home and of His age; He loves all men, and all men love the pure, and gracious, and noble child. Already He knows God as His Father, and the favour of God falls on Him softly as the morning sun-light or the dew of heaven, and plays like an invisible aureole round His infantile and saintly brow. Unseen, save in the beauty of heaven, but yet covered with silver wings, and with its feathers like gold, the Spirit of God descended like a dove, and rested from infancy upon the Holy Child.

But how different is the boy Christ of the New Testament Apo

crypha! He is mischievous, petulant, forward, revengeful. Some of the marvels told of Him are simply aimless and puerile-as when He carries the spilt water in His robe; or pulls the short board to the requisite length; or moulds sparrows of clay, and then claps His hand to make them fly; or throws all the cloth into the dyer's vat, and then draws them out each stained of the requisite colour. But some are, on the contrary, simply distasteful and inconsiderate, as when He vexes and shames and silences those who wish to teach Him; or rebukes Joseph; or turns His playmates into kids: and others are simply cruel and blasphemous, as when He strikes dead with a curse the boys who offend or run against Him, until at last there is a storm of popular indignation, and Mary is afraid to let Him leave the house. In a careful search through all these heavy, tasteless, and frequently pernicious fictions, I can find but one anecdote in which there is a touch of feeling or possibility of truth; and this alone I will quote, because it is at any rate harmless, and it is quite conceivable that it may rest upon some slight basis of traditional fact. It is from the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, and runs as follows:

"Now in the month of Adar, Jesus assembled the boys as if He were their king; they strewed their garments on the ground, and He sat upon them. Then they put on His head a crown wreathed of flowers, and, like attendants waiting upon a king, they stood in order before Him on His right hand and on His left. And whoever passed that way the boys took him by force, crying, 'Come hither and adore the King, and then proceed upon thy way.'

Yet I am not sure that the sacredness of the evangelic silence is not rudely impaired even by so simple a fancy as this: for it was in utter stillness, in prayerfulness, in the quiet round of daily dutieslike Moses in the wilderness, like David among the sheep-folds, like Elijah among the tents of the Bedawîn, like Jeremiah in his quiet home at Anathoth, like Amos in the sycamore groves of Tekoa-that the boy Jesus prepared Himself, amid a hallowed obscurity, for His mighty work on earth. His outward life was the life of all those of His age, and station, and place of birth. He lived as lived the other children of peasant parents in that quiet town, and in great measure as they live now. He who has seen the children of Nazareth in their red caftans, and bright tunics of silk or cloth, girded with a manycoloured sash, and sometimes covered with a loose outer jacket of white or blue-he who has watched their noisy and merry games, and heard their ringing laughter as they wander about the hills of their little native vale, or play in bands on the hill-side beside their sweet

and abundant fountain, may perhaps form some conception of how Jesus looked and played when He too was a child. And the traveller who has followed any of those children-as I have done to their simple homes, and seen the scanty furniture, the plain but sweet and wholesome food, the uneventful, happy patriarchal life, may form a vivid conception of the manner in which Jesus lived. Nothing can be plainer than those houses, with the doves sunning themselves on the white roofs, and the vines wreathing about them. The mats, or carpets, are laid loose along the walls; shoes and sandals are taken off at the threshold; from the centre hangs a lamp which forms the only ornament of the room; in some recess in the wall is placed the wooden chest, painted with bright colours, which contains the books or other possessions of the family; on a ledge that runs round the wall, within easy reach, are neatly rolled up the gay-coloured quilts, which serve as beds, and on the same ledge are ranged the earthen vessels for daily use; near the door stand the large common water-jars of red clay with a few twigs and green leaves-often of aromatic shrubs-thrust into their orifices to keep the water cool. At meal-time a painted wooden stool is placed in the centre of the apartment, a large tray is put upon it, and in the middle of the tray stands the dish of rice and meat, or libban, or stewed fruits, from which all help themselves in common. Both before and after the meal the servant, or the youngest member of the family, pours water over the hands from a brazen ewer into a brazen bowl. So quiet, so simple, so humble, so uneventful was the outward life of the family of Nazareth.

The reverent devotion and brilliant fancy of the early medieval painters have elaborated a very different picture. The gorgeous pencils of a Giotto and a Fra Angelico have painted the Virgin and her Child seated on stately thrones, upon floors of splendid mosaic, under canopies of blue and gold; they have robed them in colours rich as the hues of summer or delicate as the flowers of spring, and fitted the edges of their robes with golden embroidery, and clasped them with priceless gems. Far different was the reality. When Joseph returned to Nazareth he knew well that they were going into seclusion as well as into safety; and that the life of the Virgin and the Holy Child would be spent, not in the full light of notoriety or wealth, but in secrecy, in poverty, and in manual toil.

Yet this poverty was not pauperism; there was nothing in it either miserable or abject; it was sweet, simple, contented, happy, even joyous. Mary, like others of her rank, would spin, and cook food, and go to buy fruit, and evening by evening visit the fountain, still called

after her "the Virgin's fountain," with her pitcher of earthenware carried on her shoulder or her head. Jesus would play, and learn, and help His parents in their daily tasks, and visit the synagogues on the Sabbath days. "It is written," says Luther, "that there was once a pious godly bishop, who had often earnestly prayed that God would manifest to him what Jesus had done in His youth. Once the bishop had a dream to this effect. He seemed in his sleep to see a carpenter working at his trade, and beside him a little boy who was gathering up chips. Then came in a maiden clothed in green, who called them both to come to the meal, and set porridge before them. All this the bishop seemed to see in his dream, himself standing behind the door that he might not be perceived. Then the little boy began and said, 'Why does that man stand there? shall he not also eat with us?' And this

so frightened the bishop that he awoke." "Let this be what it may," adds Luther, "a true history or a fable, I none the less believe that Christ in His childhood and youth looked and acted like other children yet without sin, in fashion like a man."

St. Matthew tells us, that in the settlement of the Holy Family at Nazareth, was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophets, "He shall be called a Nazarene." It is well-known that no such passage occurs in any extant prophecy. If the name implied a contemptuous dislike—as may be inferred from the proverbial question of Nathanael, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? "-then St. Matthew may be summing up in that expression the various prophecies so little understood by his nation, which pointed to the Messiah as a man of sorrows. And certainly to this day "Nazarene " has continued to be a term of contempt. The Talmudists always speak of Jesus as "Ha-nozeri;' Julian is said to have expressly decreed that Christians should be called by the less honourable appellation of Galilæans; and to this day the Christians of Palestine are known by no other title than Nusâra. But the explanation which refers St. Matthew's allusion to those passages of prophecy in which Christ is called "the Branch" (nétser, ?) seems far more probable. The village may have derived this name from no other circumstance than its abundant foliage; but the Old Testament is full of proofs that the Hebrews-who in philology accepted the views of the Analogists-attached immense and mystical importance to mere resemblances in the sound of words. To mention but one single instance, the first chapter of the prophet Micah turns almost entirely on such merely external similarities in what, for lack of a better term, I can only call the physiological quantity of sounds. St. Matthew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, would without any hesitation

have seen a prophetic fitness in Christ's residence at this town of Galilee, because its name recalled the title by which He was addressed in the prophecy of Isaiah.

"Shall the Christ come out of Galilee?" asked the wondering people. "Search and look!" said the Rabbis to Nicodemus, "for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet" (John vii. 41, 52). It would not have needed very deep searching or looking to find that these words were ignorant or false; for not to speak of Barak the deliverer, and Elon the judge, and Anna the prophetess, three, if not four, of the prophets -and those prophets of the highest, eminence, Jonah, Elijah, Hosea, and Nahum-had been born, or had exercised much of their ministry, in the precincts of Galilee. And in spite of the supercilious contempt with which it was regarded, the little town of Nazareth, situated as it was in a healthy and secluded valley, yet close upon the confines of great nations, and in the centre of a mixed population, was eminently fitted to be the home of our Saviour's childhood, the scene of that quiet growth "in wisdom, and stature, and favour with God and man."

CHAPTER VI.

JESUS IN THE TEMPLE.

EVEN as there is one hemisphere of the lunar surface on which, in its entirety, no human eye has ever gazed, while at the same time the moon's librations enable us to conjecture of its general character and appearance, so there is one large portion of our Lord's life respecting which there is no full record; yet such glimpses are, as it were, accorded to us of its outer edge, that from these we are able to understand the nature of the whole.

Again, when the moon is in crescent, a few bright points are visible through the telescope upon its unilluminated part; those bright points are mountain peaks, so lofty that they catch the sunlight. One such point of splendour and majesty is revealed to us in the otherwise unknown region of Christ's youthful years, and it is sufficient to furnish us with a real insight into that entire portion of His life. In modern language we should call it an anecdote of the Saviour's confirmation.