Christ still a Jew. Is the Child's escape at Bethlehem still a secret? Performing wonders. A strange age. Rome still in the thrall of Heathendom. Augustus dead. Tiberius the Awful. Palestine itself half Heathen. A Religious Enthusiast. Jesus is ceasing to be a Jew. A church tyranny. Subjects of Caesar. Human suffering counted for nothing with the Romans. The Jews are longing for the New Time when God might come and rule the world in Pity. An age of Superstitions and Magic. Laws of Science unknown. Nobody even knew that the world was round.

But let us go back there to Galilee and stay yet a while with the village carpenter. The youth is older now. Perhaps He is going back and forth between Galilee and the solitude of the wilderness. This so-called "wilderness" is nothing more than the secret hills beyond the Jordan, or the mysterious edge of the near-by desert coming up to them like a speechless sea. At this moment He is again in Nazareth, and the wondering villagers again see Him at His daily toil. He is still learning by rote the striking maxims and proverbs of the Jewish masters. He is yet a Jew. Like all Israel He is counting on the completion of prophecy; a new world is sure to come soon—and with it a king from Heaven. It will be a glorious thing, that new world, that great king. The villagers familiarly call Him Jesus—but they know nothing of the beautiful tradition of His birth—how an angel had announced it to Mary, and how His name was fixed in Heaven.

No—Mary had meditated much on the angel's visit and on what the angel had said to her, but steadily she had kept the great secret in her own heart. She had not even whispered to the villagers about the shepherds and the star at Bethlehem, nor the sudden flight of herself and the child to far-off Egypt. Why, her secrecy is just now hard to guess. Is it possible that Herod or his successor, who would have slain the child, is still watching for Him—not knowing even of the return from Egypt years ago? Even now one indiscreet word from her might cause His death. We wonder if now, on this day, there in His father's workshop, the youth dreams that some day He is to be a king, and that of his kingdom there will be no end? I think not. He is not publicly preaching now. That, Luke says, will come much later. But what delightful whisperings go about Galilee concerning Him already. Possibly these beautiful heart-stories about Himself were as familiar to the young carpenter then as they now are to every reader of the sacred book. He may have known of them, thought of them, but He, too, kept them largely to Himself. It was an age of prophecies, of dreams, of visions, of fables, and of superstitious tales. Perhaps He was waiting to see if the angel's words to Mary were to be fulfilled. Two thousand years have not dimmed the beauty of the wondrous tale told of Mary and the child. If parts of it were only the longings of a few persons' imaginations, we may never clearly know, nor is it of the least importance that we should know. The happenings at the birth of the world's great ones have little to do with the grandeur of their lives.

Yes, the young carpenter, with the tender eyes and the radiant face, may have known of some of these wonderful sayings about Himself. Mary must have told Him some of them; and Joseph working at His side must have told Him how, on His account, the little children had been murdered at Bethlehem, and how narrow His own escape had been when he and Mary and the child had hurried away to Egypt. We can imagine the wonderful incidents told by Joseph of that strange flight into a foreign country. Our Testament barely mentions it. His birth is almost the only bit of history the Testament gives us of almost twenty-five years of the Galilean's life. They went to Egypt to escape the wrath of the tyrant Herod. Old writings tell us of two, even seven, years in Egypt, and of child-miracles in that far-away land. Of all this our accepted Testament tells us nothing. Hearing that the tyrant was long dead, Joseph and Mary and the child secretly returned to the old home in Galilee.

Are they living there in secret yet—and is the new king at Jerusalem wondering if they are alive—and does he too want the child's blood in case He was not killed that night at Bethlehem, and does he wonder what became of the wise men of the east who saw the child, but dared not go back to tell it? Does he wonder if they are somewhere in hiding yet? Does he dream that this youth in Galilee is possibly the child the shepherds told of that wonderful night? Just now we still see Him standing by the little carpenter shop, ax in hand, possibly thinking of what His father has told Him of His youth; or of what Mary hinted to Him of the bright Angel of the Annunciation? Who knows? We only guess at the secret, for history, sacred and profane, has left it all a blank. We only know that it was a feeling of the whole Jewish race that an aspirant to leadership must, first of all, retire to the desert and live for years in solitude, just as Elias had done. It has been said that a retreat to the desert was the condition of and the prelude to high destinies. The Galilean knew all about these men, from Moses and Elias down to John, who found their inspiration on the desert, or in secret places. If He was not much in the desert in these unknown years, where then was He, that no one tells of Him? Was there indeed nothing for Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, nor John, nor Josephus, nor anybody else to write about Him? Was it all a blank these long years? If secrecy from Herod, or from his successor Archelaus, was needed—that would account for everything, even for the whole world's silence.

This retreat for meditation would not hinder that at far intervals He return a little to His home in Galilee, where we see Him now with that ineffable smile of kindness on His face and tenderness shining in His eyes. The peasants passing by are uplifted, moved by His tender compassionate look. They wonder why. They wonder too where He has been so long, and before they are done wondering He is gone. Sometimes He disappears so suddenly—it was just as if a spirit had come and gone. Is He again in His hermit cave now beyond the Jordan? Sometimes when there at home, as now, He has quietly taught the villagers of truth; He has blessed the poor; He has healed the sick; He has performed wonders, and they know not how it is done. Some day He will tell them all.

It is a strange age He has been living in. Let us look at it for a little while. This Palestine boy had been just fourteen years old when the news came that the great Augustus at Rome was dead, and that the awful and licentious emperor Tiberius was governing the Roman empire. Just now the Galilean is twenty-six, and other news comes—that Tiberius has gone to the heavenly little island of Capri in the Mediterranean sea, and is there holding a court that shall shock the world. No wonder the youth begins to think, with all His people, that God must soon send somebody to put an end to the wickedness of kings. Antipater, the idle and licentious favorite at Rome, still rules over little Galilee as governor, or king. The Roman empire is still in the thrall of perfect heathendom. There are half as many Gentiles as Jews in Palestine itself. All over the land beautiful monuments are erected by Rome to the heathen gods. The young Nazarene can walk across the hills to Sidon by the sea any day and hear the people chanting hymns to Jupiter and Apollo. As for Himself, He is still a Jew, like most of His countrymen; only now, like Philo and like Hillel, and like John and others, He is more than a Jew; He is passing out of the old doctrines of the Jewish church into the broad daylight of truth. He will yet help to do away with the Mosaic law. In a private way, yet unheard of outside of little Galilee, He himself is teaching that God is a spirit, and must be worshiped in spirit and not in form, and not in heathen idols, nor in the way they are doing it at Jerusalem. God had already become tired of the burnt offering of rams and of the blood of beasts. Isaiah had told them that, long ago. This Galilean will go on repeating it so long as He shall live. Like the great Hillel, He would teach common justice to man—love for one another—charity to all. This was to be the great commandment.

We are not sure, but in a vague way this young Galilean already feels the mantle of a prophet falling about Him. He is saying nothing exactly new to His Galilean neighbors—but He is saying it in a new and gracious way, and they listen to Him as He converses in the shop, or on the street. He sees and feels God in the beautiful nature all about Him there in Galilee, yet more He feels God in himself.

Man holds in himself tremendous hidden powers. Science is rapidly unveiling them. They were being unveiled to a degree by the Greeks even in the time of this young carpenter; but the Jewish people neither believed in nor heeded a school that gave an explanation of things marvelous. They were set in their superstition. No book that described certain fixed laws of nature was, for one moment, to take the place of Moses and the prophets. Even the Galilean himself is clinging to these old Bible poems. It is the wrong interpretation of them, possibly, by Himself sometimes, that is driving Him to a religious rebellion.

The great church doctors might not like it, were they to hear it—this young carpenter with the soft words, and the radiance in His face, slipping back and forth from Galilee to the desert and from the desert to Galilee, proselyting the peasants, and telling them that God is not to be worshiped in the semi-heathen manner in which they are doing it at Jerusalem. Yet, no matter. What care the great religious doctors at the Sacred City? Who ever heard of this Galilean carpenter anyway, or of His reforms? Some day, and soon, they will hear of Him. They have already heard of John, but they are about to settle the score with John. His extremeness and his violence of speech have attracted the attention of the king of Galilee, and soon news will come that John's head on a platter has paid for the lascivious dancing of a girl at court. Some old writers say it was the king's own daughter who did the dancing that night in Antipater's palace by the Dead sea. Anyway, the voice of him who called in the wilderness, is soon to be stilled forever.

No, the carpenter's name has not yet reached outside His Galilee. Aside from an occasional journey to Jerusalem when He was younger and His foot tramps to the solitude by the desert, there is little to tell that He has been outside the little province where He was born. His life in His home village, aside from His carpenter work, is that of a religious enthusiast. Some will call Him even a visionary. He has heard so much of a coming king and an overturning of everything in the world that He himself almost begins to look for something extraordinary. Why not? He is yet a Jew, and the teaching of the rabbis and of the Old Scriptures has been the coming of some kind of a king—a great Messiah, who, from out little Palestine, shall rule the world in an age of gold. The age, perhaps, is taking something out of the Bible that is not in it. Our own age has done that many times. Is it doing it to-day? Never in this world did imagination reach so high a pitch as it did among the Jews in that wonderful time. Nothing was talked of or thought of, but the coming golden age and the new king, riding in a chariot of the clouds. It was not only a very expectant, superstitious age, it had been a troubled one. The world had been full of disorder, conflict. Everywhere had been war and tyranny. Especially, the whole Jewish race, the especial people of God, had known too often only of tyranny and sorrow. Even their own church, and church was the government with them, had drifted into a religious tyranny—the worst tyranny of all. It was, too, hemmed in by the awfullest form and ceremony. No one in this twentieth century who is not familiar with the Jewish Talmud and the earlier writings, can have the remotest conception of the thousand formalities, ceremonies, mummeries even, imposed upon the people of the church in the olden days. Later, ten volumes of the Talmud will be required to explain, to interpret, establish, and to write down the manner in which the commonest things of life might be done. The great Sanhedrin, or Supreme Court and Senate of the Jews at Jerusalem, together with the scribes and priests about the temple, seemed banded together to make religion an awful, unbearable burden, and life a farce.

Though all Palestine was a Roman province the Romans interfered but little with this religious despotism. The Romans had enough wrongs of their own to inflict upon the people. The whole race of Jews in their home government had their own laws, their own Jewish customs, habits, and religion. The Romans simply made them subjects of CÆsar, and they rendered unto CÆsar only that which was CÆsar's, as this youth of Galilee, later, would suggest their doing.

The empire collected taxes, very heavy ones, from the people, and occasionally forced them into its armies. The Roman eagles and the Roman soldiers were familiar sights in every town and village of Palestine. The Romans usually had enough to do at home to disincline them from bothering themselves too much with the religion of the Jews. Wars they had had everywhere. But just now, at the time of the Master's coming, there was a sort of peace in the world—a truce for breath, as it were. That is to say, the Roman empire that has its foot on almost the whole earth is resting a little. Rome's untold horrors, wars, corruptions, its licentiousness, its inhumanity to man, its blood and outrages have stopped their course at the eternal city for a little while. It is almost out of victims. Violence has ceased, only because violence has done its work.

The social conditions at Rome just before Augustus came to the throne were too terrible to be believed. That some of this outrage and terror had spread into the provinces of Palestine through governors and petty kings, appointed by, and tools of Rome, is only too well known. Herod himself was bloody enough to have served as an example for the worst the Roman empire, even, could endure. In Palestine, however, the great Jewish church served somewhat as a little hindering-wall to the element that had been almost crushing decent humanity out of the world.

All the states, like Palestine, bordering on the Mediterranean, says a distinguished historian, simply looked at one another—partakers of a common misfortune. They were tranquil, but it was the silence of despair. Man was not being considered as an individual by the Romans any more; he was only a "thing." Human suffering in the provinces counted for nothing, if only Rome had some political gain. If Palestine, or any other province, had some advantage by the presence of Roman legions, it was purely incidental, and scarcely intended. At this very moment Palestine is groaning under awful taxes paid to Rome, one-third of all produced, the writers say. No wonder the Jews were longing for the new time, the great time, the king, the Old Scriptures had told about. They are so afflicted, so depressed. The government of man had been a failure with them. Would not the day soon be at hand when God himself, through some vicegerent, would come to the world and rule in pity? Then the wicked would no longer thrive, the just would live in delight, the very face of the world would be changed, all would be transformed into love and beauty, and Palestine would be the heart of the new world, and Jerusalem the capital of a perfected humanity. The Scriptures had said it. The prophets had said it.

Nursing these lovely and lofty expectations the Jews patiently waited, bearing with many wrongs. All classes shared alike in the great delusion, rich and poor, high and low, priest and peasant. That a mighty king on his chariot was coming in the clouds was the common belief. The too literal reading of the old-time prophets had led a whole race into a futile misconception. The world was not coming to an end at all. The Jews were a people easily mis-led. Their confidence in the supernatural was overwhelming. It was a quality inherited from their pagan ancestors. Their very neighbors were heathen and worshiped mystical gods. Tens of thousands, mostly foreigners, had set up heathen temples and consulted heathen oracles right there in Galilee. Every time the young carpenter went to Jerusalem His eyes fell on some vast edifice dedicated to Jove or Juno, and strange gods were worshiped almost in the shadow of the great temple. This was not all. The very books read by the Jewish priests in the synagogue, or village churches, were filled with superstitious tales, with dreams and visions. In these books the people were told of times when angels walked upon the earth—they would walk again was the belief. The outcome of their wonderful superstitions, teachings, and their surroundings was an abject belief in marvels and impossibilities. If the most cultured and thinking persons lost their confidence in the marvelous, they kept it quiet. It was, besides, a day of jugglers, sleight of hand performers, and magicians. The peasants, mostly half-educated, could believe in anything. There was no knowledge of science available to show them the utter falsehood of things their eyes seemed to behold. The commonest laws of nature were not understood. The priests themselves did not know that the world was round. The common people were sufficiently credulous to accept the most astounding things. In short, the astounding things were to them the natural things, the expected. No wonder they misunderstood the old prophets of the Bible, and the signs of the times. No wonder they were believing and alarmed when John, hurrying from the wilderness, shouted to them to be ready, to hurry to the Jordan river, confess, and be baptized.