with more harmonious outlines, or inspire higher thought.  Jesus seems to have had an especial love for them.  The most important events of his divine career took place upon the mountains.  This beautiful country in his time was filled with prosperity and gaiety.  There Jesus lived and grew up.  True, every year he knew the sweet solemnity of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and it is believed that early in life the wilderness had some influence on his development, but it was when he returned into his beloved Galilee that he once more found his Heavenly Father in the midst of green hills and clear fountains, and women and children who with joyous soul awaited the salvation of Israel.

A CHARACTER TO LOVE

Jesus followed the trade of his father, which was that of a carpenter.  In this there was nothing irksome or humiliating.  The Jewish custom required that a man devoted to intellectual work should learn a handicraft.  Jesus never married.  His whole capacity for love was concentrated upon that which he felt was his heavenly vocation.  He was no doubt more beloved than loving.  Thus, as often happens in very lofty natures, tenderness of heart was in him transformed into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, a universal charm.

Through what stages did the ideas of Jesus progress during this obscure early period of his life?  A high conception of the Divinity, the creation of his own great mind, was the guiding principle to which his power was due.  God did not speak to him as to one outside of himself; God was in him; he felt himself with God, and from his own heart drew all he said of his Father.  The highest consciousness of God which ever existed in the heart of man was that of Jesus; but he never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God.  From the first he looked upon his relationship with God as that of a son with his father.  Herein was his great originality; in this he had nothing in common with his race.  Neither Jew nor Musselman has understood this sweet theology of love.  The God of Jesus is our Father.  He is the God of humanity.  The Jesus who founded the true Kingdom of God, the kingdom of the humble and meek, was the Jesus of early life—­of those chaste and simple days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer tones.  It was then, for some months, perhaps a year, that God truly dwelt on earth.

A STIMULATING ACQUAINTANCE

An extraordinary man, whose position remains to some extent enigmatical, appeared about this time and unquestionably had some intercourse with Jesus.  About the year 28 of our era there spread through the whole of Palestine the reputation of a certain John, a young ascetic, full of fervour and passion.  The fundamental practice which characterised his sect was baptism; but baptism with John was only a sign to impress the minds of the people and to prepare them for some great movement.  There can be no doubt he was possessed