wisdom and favour with God and man, she could rest upon that wisdom and grace, never to be disappointed, never to be thrown back upon herself. The most blessed years ever lived by woman were those of Mary, in the humble home in Nazareth.
It lay in the heart of the mountains, at the end of a little valley hardly a mile long, and not more than half a mile broad, with the barren slopes of hills shutting it in on every side. The valley was as green and fertile as a garden; and the village clung to the side of one of the mountains, half nestling at its foot From the brow of the hills rising behind the village a splendid landscape was to be seen, westward to the glistening waters of the Mediterranean, with Mount Carmel stretching into them; northward as far as the snowy peaks of Hermon; and southward over the great plain of Jezreel, rich in cornfields; all the country being dotted over with villages and towns. The landscape is there still, and the deep blue sky hanging over all, and the clear atmosphere through which distant objects seem near, and the sighing of the wind across the plains, and the hum of insects, and the songs of birds; all is as it was when Jesus Christ climbed the mountains, as He loved to do, and sat on the summit, with a heart and spirit in full harmony with the loveliness around Him, and with no secret sadness of the conscience to make Him feel that He was not worthy to be there.
It was no lonely life that Jesus led. We read again and again of His brethren and sisters; and though it is not generally thought that these could have been Mary’s children,* but the children of her sister, they were so associated with Him that all His life long they acted as His own brethren and sisters. With them He would go to school, and learn to read and write, for all Jews were carefully educated in these two branches. The books He had to study we know and possess in the Old Testament Very probably He would own one of them, though they would be so costly as to be almost beyond His means, or those of His supposed father. We should like to know that He had the Book of Psalms, those Psalms which Mary knew so well and had sung to Him so often; or the prophecy of Isaiah, in which His young, undimmed eyes, that had hardly looked upon sorrow yet, and had never smarted with tears of penitence, would read and read again the warning words of the Messiah’s sufferings, ‘a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief.’ When He was alone yonder on the breezy summit of the mountain, did He ever sing, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd?’ And did He never whisper to Himself the awful words, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’
Besides His cousins there were His neighbours all about Him, quite commonplace people, who could not see how innocent and beautiful His life was. They were a passionate, rough race, notorious throughout the country, so that it had become almost a proverb, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Jesus dwelt amongst them as one of them; Joseph the carpenter’s son. He could not yet heal the sick; but is there no help and comfort in tender compassion for those who suffer? The widow’s son at Nain was not the first He had seen carried out for burial. The man born blind was not the only one groping about in darkness, who felt His hand, and heard the pitying tones of His troubled voice. We may be sure that amongst His neighbours in Nazareth Jesus saw many a form of suffering, and His heart always echoed to a cry, if it were but the cry of an animal in pain.
In one other way Jesus shared the common lot of boys. He had to take to a trade which was not likely to have been His choice. Whether as the eldest son of a large family, or the only son of a woman left a widow, He had to learn the trade of His supposed father. The little workshop, where neighbours could always drop in with their trifling gossip, or at work in their own houses, where they could grumble and find fault; this must have been irksome to Him. The long, monotonous hours, the insignificant labour, the ceaseless buzz of chattering about Him; we can understand how weary and worn His spirit must have felt as well as His body. If He could have been a shepherd, like Moses, the great lawgiver, and David, his only kingly ancestor, how far more fitting that would have seemed! How His courage and tenderness towards His flock would have been a type of what He would be in after life! The solitude would have been sweet to Him, and the changing aspects of the seasons from year to year. In after life He often compared Himself to a shepherd, but never once is there any reference to His uncongenial calling in the hot workshop of Nazareth, where the only advantage was that it did not separate Him from His mother.
Does a blameless life win favour among any people? There was one man in Galilee, one only in the wide world, who never needed to go up to Jerusalem to offer any sacrifice for sin. Neither sin-offering nor trespass-offering had this man to bring to the altar of God. The peace-offering He could eat in the courts of the Temple as a type of happy communion with the unseen God, and of a complete surrender of Himself to His will. But, let the people scan His conduct as closely as village neighbours can do, not one among them could say that Jesus, the son of Joseph, had need to carry up to Jerusalem an offering for any trespass. Did they love Him the better for this? Did He find honour among them? Nay, not even in His father’s house.
* I agree in this opinion, chiefly for the reason that when Jesus died he committed Mary to the care of His young disciple John, which would seem unnatural to any tender-hearted, good mother, who had at least four other sons and two daughters living. Our Lord would hardly throw so much discredit upon such relationships.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST PASSOVER.
There is one incident, and only one, given to us of the early life of our Lord.
It was the custom of His parents to go up to Jerusalem once a year, to the Feast of the Passover. For the Jews living in Galilee it was a long journey; but the feast came at the finest time of the year for travelling, after the rains of winter, and before the dry heat of summer. It was a great yearly pilgrimage, in which troops from every village and town on the road came to swell the numbers as the pilgrims marched southward. Past the corn-fields, where the grain was already forming in the ear; under the mountain slopes, clothed with silvery olive trees and the young green of the vines; across the babbling brooks, not yet dried by heat; through groves of sycamores and oak trees fresh in leaf, the long procession passed from town to town; sleeping safely in the open air by night, and journeying by pleasant stages in the day, until they reached Judea; and, weary with the dusty road from Jericho to Jerusalem, shouted with joy when they turned a curve of the Mount of Olives, and saw the Holy City lying before them.
Jesus was twelve years old when, probably, He first made this long yet joyous march up to Jerusalem. We can fancy the eager boy ‘going on before them,’ as He did many years later when He went up to His last passover; hastening forward for that first glorious view of Jerusalem, which met His eye from Olivet, the mount which was to be so closely associated with His after life. There stood the Holy City, with its marble palaces crowning the heights of Zion; and the still more magnificent Temple on its own mount, bathed in the brilliant light of the spring sunshine. The white wondrous beauty of His Father’s house, with the trembling columns of smoke ever rising from its altars through the clear air to the blue heavens above, rose opposite to Him. We know the hymn that His tremulous, joyous lips would sing, and that would be echoed by the procession following Him as they too caught sight of the house of God, ‘How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God!’ Thousands upon thousands of pilgrims had chanted that psalm before Him; but never one like that boy of twelve, when His Father’s house was first seen by His happy eyes.
Perhaps there was no hour of perfect happiness like that to Jesus again. Joseph was still alive, caring for Him and protecting Him. His-mother, who could not but recall the strange events that had accompanied His birth, kept Him at her side as they entered the Temple, pointing out to Him the splendour and the sacred symbols of the place. The silvery music of the Temple service; the thunder of the Amens of the vast congregations; the faint scent
