not think it was all growing up in that house
and in that shop? Or did he never tell a story--he who tells them so
charmingly--till he wanted parables? We have to note, at the same
time, some elements of criticism of the elder brother in the family
attitude, some defect of sympathy and failure to understand him,
even if kindness prompted their action in later days (Mark 3:21,
31).

Nazareth lies in a basin among hills, from the rim of which can be
seen to the southward the historic plain of Esdraelon, and eastward
the Jordan valley and the hills of Gilead, and westward the
Mediterranean. On great roads, north and south of the town's girdle
of hills, passed to and fro the many-coloured traffic between Egypt
and Mesopotamia and the Orient. Traders, pilgrims, Herods--"the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" (Matt. 6:8)--all within
reach, and travelling no faster as a rule than the camel cared to
go--they formed a panorama of life for a thoughtful and imaginative
boy. More than one allusion to king's clothes comes in his recorded
teaching (Matt. 6:29, 11:8), and it was here that he saw them--and
noticed them and remembered. One is struck with the amount of that
unconscious assimilation of experience which we find in his words,
and which is in itself an index to his nature. We are not expressly
told that he sought the sights that the road afforded; but it would
be hard to believe that a bright, quick boy, with genius in him,
with poetry in him, with feeling for the real and for life, never
went down on to that road, never walked alongside of the caravans
and took note of the strange people "from the east and from the
west, from the north and from the south" (Luke 13:29)--Nubians,
Egyptians, Romans, Gauls, Britons, and Orientals.[8] In the one
anecdote that survives of his boyhood, we find men "astonished at
his understanding" (Luke 2:47), his gift for putting questions, and
his comments on the answers; and all life through he had a genius
for friendship.

When we consider how Jesus handles Nature and her wilder children in
his parables, another point attracts attention. Men vary a great
deal in this. To take two of the Old Testament prophets, we find a
marked difference here between Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Ezekiel "puts
forth a riddle and speaks a parable" about an eagle--a frankly
heraldic eagle, that plants a tree-top in a city of merchants (Ezek.
17:2-5). Jeremiah is obviously country-bred. He might have been
s