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BOOK I. THE CARPENTER

CHAPTER I. The Holy Land.

Very far away from our own country lies the land where Jesus Christ was born. More than five thousand miles stretch between us and it, and those who wish to visit it must journey over sea and land to reach its shores. It rests in the very heart and center of the Old World, with Asia, Europe, and Africa encircling it. A little land it is, only about two hundred miles in length, and but fifty miles broad from the Great sea, or the Mediterranean, on the west, to the river Jordan, on the east. But its hills and valleys, its dusty roads, and green pastures, its vineyards and oliveyards, and its village-streets have been trodden by the feet of our Lord; and for us, as well as for the Jews, to whom God gave it, it is the Holy Land.

The country lies high, and forms a table-land, on which there are mountains of considerable height. Moses describes it as " a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness. A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year." The sky is cloudless, except in the end of autumn and in winter, and no moisture collects but in the form of dew. In former times vineyards and orchards climbed up the slopes of every hill, and the plains were covered with wheat and barley. It was densely peopled, far more so than our own country is now, and over all the land villages and towns were built, with farm-houses scattered between them. Herds of sheep and goats were pastured in the valleys, and on the barren mountains, where the vines and olives could not grow.

There are two lakes in Palestine, one in the northwest, the other southwest, with the river Jordan flowing between them, through a deep valley, sixty miles long. The southern lake is the Dead sea, or Sea of Death. No living creature can exist in its salt waters. The palm-trees carried down by the floods of Jordan are cast up again by the waves on the marshy shore, and lie strewn about it, bare and bleached, and crusted over with salt. Naked rocks close in the sea, with no verdure upon them; rarely is a bird seen to fly across it, whilst at the southern end, where there is a mountain, and pillars of rock-salt, white as snow, there always hangs a veil of mist, like smoke ascending up forever and ever into the blue sky above. As the brown and rapid stream of Jordan flows into it on the north, the waters will not mingle, but the salt waves foam against the fresh, sweet current of the river, as if to oppose its effort to bring some life into its desolate and barren depths.

The northern lake is called the sea of Galilee. Like the Dead sea, it lies in a deep basin, surrounded by hills; but this depth gives to it so warm and fertilizing a climate, that the shores are covered with a thick jungle of shrubs, especially of the oleander, with its rose-colored blossoms. Grassy slopes here and there lead up to the feet of the mountains. The deep blue waters are sweet, clear, and transparent, and in some places the waves ebb and flow over beds of flowers, which have crept down to the very margin of the lake. Flocks of birds build among the jungle, and water-fowl skim across the surface of the lake in myriads, for the water teems with fish. All the early hours of the morning the lark sings there merrily, and throughout the live-long day the moaning of the dove is heard. In former times, when the shores of the lake were crowded with villages, hundreds of boats and little ships with white sails sailed upon it, and all sorts of fruit and corn were cultivated on the western plain.

The Holy Land, in the time of our Lord, was divided into three provinces, almost into three countries, as distinct as England, Scotland, and "Wales. In the south was Judaea, with the capital, Jerusalem, the Holy City, where the temple of the Jews was built, and where their king dwelt. The people of Judaea were more courtly and polished, and, perhaps, more educated than the other Jews, for they lived nearer Jerusalem, where all the greatest and wisest men of the nation had their homes. Up in the north lay Galilee, inhabited by stronger and rougher men, whose work was harder and whose speech was harsher than their southern brethren, but whose spirit was more independent, and more ready to rebel against tyranny. Between those two districts, occupied by Jews, lay an unfriendly country, called Samaria, whose people were of a mixed race, descended from a colony of heathen who had been settled in the country seven hundred years before, and who had so largely intermarried with the Jews that they had often sought to become united with them as one nation. The Jews had steadily resisted this union, and now a feeling of bitter enmity existed between them, so that Galilee was shut off from Judaea by an alien country.

The great prosperity of the Jewish nation had passed away long before our Lord was born. An unpopular king, Herod, who did not belong to the royal house of David, was reigning; but he held his throne only upon sufferance from the great emperor of Rome, whose people had then subdued all the known world. As yet there were no Roman tax-gatherers in the land, but Herod paid tribute to Augustus, and this was raised by heavy taxes upon the people. All the country was full of murmuring, and discontent, and dread. But a secret hope was running deep down in every Jewish heart, helping them to bear their present burdens. The time was well-nigh fulfilled when, according to the prophets, a King of the house of David, greater than David in battle, and more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, should be born to the nation. Far away in Galilee, in the little villages among the hills, and the busy towns by the lake, and down in southern Judaea, in the beautiful capital, Jerusalem, and in the sacred cities of the priests, a whisper passed from one drooping spirit to another, "Patience! the kingdom of Messiah is at hand."

As the land of our Lord lies many hundreds of miles from us, so his life on this earth was passed hundreds of years ago. There are innumerable questions we long to ask, but there is no one to answer. Four little books, each one called a gospel, or the good tidings of Jesus Christ, are all we have to tell us of that most beautiful and most wondrous life. But whenever we name the date of the present year we are counting from the time when he was born. In reality, he was born three or four years earlier, and though the date is not exactly known, it is now most likely 1894, instead of 1891, years since Mary laid him, a new-born babe, in his lowly cradle of a manger in Bethlehem.