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 neighbors 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 among 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 Nam 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 neighbors 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 neighbors 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 labor, 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 own kingly ancestor, how far more fitting that would have seemed! How his courage and tenderness toward 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 favor 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 neighbors 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 honor among them? Nay, not even in his father's house.
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 cornfields, 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 Judaea; 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 Olives, the mount which was to be so closely associated with his afterlife. 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 splendor 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 of incense wafted towards him; all fell upon the vivid, delicate senses of youth. And below these visible signs there was breaking upon him their deep, invisible, spiritual meaning; though not yet darkened with the shadow of that awful burden to be laid upon himself, when he, as the Lamb of God, was to take away the sins of the world. This was the time, perhaps, when " he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows " more than at any other season of his life.
The temple had been rebuilt by Herod in the vain hope of winning popularity among his people. The outer walls formed a square of a thousand feet, with double or treble rows of aisles between ranks of marble pillars. These colonnades surrounded the first court, that of the Gentiles, into which foreigners might enter, though they were forbidden to go further upon pain of death. A flight of fifteen steps led from this court into that of the Women, a large space where the whole congregation of worshippers assembled, but beyond which women were not allowed to go, unless they had a sacrifice to offer. The next court had a small space railed off, called the Court of Israel; but the whole bore the name of the Court of the Priests, in which stood a great altar of unhewn stones forty-eight feet square, upon which three fires were kept burning continually, for the purpose of consuming the sacrifices. Beyond these courts stood the actual temple, containing the Holy Place, which was entered by none but a few priests, who were chosen by lot daily; and the Holiest of Holies, open only to the high-priest himself, and to him but once a year, on the great day of atonement.
It was here, in the temple, that Jesus loved to be during his sojourn in Jerusalem; but the feast was soon ended, and his parents started homewards with the returning band of pilgrims. Probably Jesus set off with them from the place where they had lodged; and
