g them and played with their
children. They thought some evil thing had entered into Him disturbing
His mind. But when He began to tell them that no prophet was accepted
in his own country, and that the Lord was obliged to send them to
strangers, as He sent Elijah and Elisha, they were angry with Him.
Some of the men wished to teach Him a lesson, and they took Him by
force to the edge of a cliff, for Nazareth was built high up among the
hills, and were about to cast Him over among the limestone rocks below,
but turning away from them, Jesus walked quietly down the hill to the
path that led into the valley--and no one was able to lay a hand upon
Him to harm Him. "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not,"
and He went away to preach the good tidings in other towns. The heart
of Mary must have been full of sorrow when she saw her Son "despised
and rejected of men" as Isaiah prophesied, but she hid her sorrow, and
remembered the words of the Lord brought to her by the angel before her
Son was born.

And so Jesus went down to Capernaum where he had friends and disciples,
and afterward His mother and His brothers went to Him there, but
Nazareth knew him no more.

It was about this time that it is supposed that Jesus went alone to a
religious feast at Jerusalem, and while there cured a poor man who
could not walk. He lay on his mat near a spring called Bethesda. It
was covered by a roof, and had five porches. Here the sick were
brought by their friends that they might, when they saw the waters
bubble up, step in and be cured. They believed then an angel came down
and made the moving of the waters, but it was probably one of the kind
called intermittent springs. There is one at Jerusalem now called the
"Fountain of the Virgin" which rises at certain times.

Jesus saw the poor friendless man who had waited for thirty-eight years
for the chance of stepping into the waters when they were moving, and
had been disappointed for others stepped in before him. Looking at
him, He said,

"Wilt thou be made whole?"

The man explained why he could not be cured, for there was no man to
help him. Then Jesus said,

"Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

He rose at once, and walked, carrying the mat on which he lay.

The Jews were angry when they heard of it for the man had been cured on
the Sabbath, but Jesus told them that they were all refusing eternal
life because of their unbelief, saying,

"Ye will not come u