eads.
Here Mary often came tenderly leading the Holy Child. Perhaps He
gathered the bright wild flowers that grew thick around the fountain
and along the stream flowing from it. When he grew a little older He
could climb the rocks around His home, or go with His mother and Joseph
to the top of the hill from which they could see the snowy peak of
Hermon, or the long line of shining blue sea beyond the hills on the
west, or they would point out a slowly moving caravan of heavy-laden
camels from Tyre and Sidon by the sea on their way to Damascus.

Sometimes He would go with Joseph to the woods when a certain piece of
wood was needed, for Joseph was a carpenter, and in a lower room of his
humble house of rough white stone there was a long bench and the tools
of a wood-worker. Here, perhaps, the Holy Child played with the curled
shavings that fell from the bench, and watched the making of the plows,
the yokes, the doors, and the lattices until He was old enough to help
in the making of them.

He learned to read and write while a young child at home, as Jewish
children did, and His reading book was the Old Testament, which was the
Jews' Bible. Then He went to school at the Synagogue, which was the
Jews' Church, and there, we may be sure, He was a gentle, obedient
pupil, and a loving, unselfish playmate. While he read He may have had
many strange thoughts about the prophecies in the Book that were
promises of the Messiah, the King that was to reign in righteousness.

When He was twelve years old His parents took Him with them to the
Feast of the Passover at Jerusalem. Great companies of people went
from all parts of the Jews' country, and from every country in which
they had settled, to keep the feast that the Lord had commanded when
they were led out of Egypt. The very journey to Jerusalem was a
festival, for their friends joined the company from almost every house
in Nazareth, and on horses, and camels, and asses, the men walking
beside them, a happy group set forth from home to keep the Passover
week in the city of the great King. It was the first visit of the boy
Jesus to Jerusalem, and as He walked strong and beautiful beside
Joseph, what tender and holy thoughts, what questions about the future
must have filled the mind of Mary. He was going to see His Father's
House, the beautiful Temple where the thousands of Israel gathered
every year for worship and of which He had read in the Book of the Law,
for He was