lve is cutting some boards and slats, and putting them neatly
together. We ask him what he is making. "A box," he answers, "a box for
some doves"--and then bends his head over his absorbing task. Even so
Jesus must have worked at the shop of Joseph, the carpenter, and learned
His handicraft.

[Illustration: The Virgin's Fountain, Nazareth.]

Let us walk up, at eventide, to the top of the hill behind the town.
Here is one of the loveliest views in all Palestine. The sun is setting
and the clear-obscure of twilight already rests over the streets and
houses, the minarets and spires, the slender cypresses and round
olive-trees and grotesque hedges of cactus. But on the heights the warm
radiance from the west pours its full flood, lighting up all the
flowerets of delicate pink flax and golden chrysanthemum and blue
campanula with which the grass is broidered. Far and wide that roseate
illumination spreads itself; changing the snowy mantle of distant
Hermon, the great Sheikh of Mountains, from ermine to flamingo feathers;
making the high hills of Naphtali and the excellency of Carmel glow as
if with soft, transfiguring, inward fire; touching the little town of
Saffuriyeh below us, where they say that the Virgin Mary was born, and
the city of Safed, thirty miles away on the lofty shoulder of Jebel
Jermak; suffusing the haze that fills the Valley of the Jordan, and the
long bulwarks of the Other-Side, with hues of mauve and purple; and
bathing the wide expanse of the western sea with indescribable
splendours, over which the flaming sun poises for a moment beneath the
edge of a low-hung cloud.

On this hilltop, I doubt not, the boy Jesus often filled His hands with
flowers. Here He could watch the creeping caravans of Arabian merchants,
and the glittering legions of Roman soldiers, and the slow files of
Jewish pilgrims, coming up from the Valley of Jezreel and stretching out
across the Plain of Esdraelon. Hither, at the evening hour, He came as a
youth to find the blessing of wide and tranquil thought. Here, when the
burden of manhood pressed upon Him, He rested after the day's work, free
from that sadness which often touches us in the vision of earth's
transient beauty, because He saw far beyond the horizon into the
spirit-world, where there is no night, nor weariness, nor sin, nor
death.

For nearly thirty years He must have lived within sight of this hilltop.
And then, one day, He came back from a journey to the Jordan an