CHAPTER LI.

Nazareth is wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about it of being precisely as Jesus left it, and one finds himself saying, all the time, “The boy Jesus has stood in this doorway—­has played in that street—­has touched these stones with his hands—­has rambled over these chalky hills.”  Whoever shall write the boyhood of Jesus ingeniously will make a book which will possess a vivid interest for young and old alike.  I judge so from the greater interest we found in Nazareth than any of our speculations upon Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee gave rise to.  It was not possible, standing by the Sea of Galilee, to frame more than a vague, far-away idea of the majestic Personage who walked upon the crested waves as if they had been solid earth, and who touched the dead and they rose up and spoke.  I read among my notes, now, with a new interest, some sentences from an edition of 1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament. [Extract.]

“Christ, kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures her.  A leprous girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ was washed, and becomes the servant of Joseph and Mary.  The leprous son of a Prince cured in like manner.

“A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule, miraculously cured by the infant Savior being put on his back, and is married to the girl who had been cured of leprosy.  Whereupon the bystanders praise God.

“Chapter 16.  Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates, milk-pails, sieves or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not being skillful at his carpenter’s trade.  The King of Jerusalem gives Joseph an order for a throne.  Joseph works on it for two years and makes it two spans too short.  The King being angry with him, Jesus comforts him—­commands him to pull one side of the throne while he pulls the other, and brings it to its proper dimensions.

“Chapter 19.  Jesus, charged with throwing a boy from the roof of a house, miraculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him; fetches water for his mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously gathers the water in his mantle and brings it home.

     “Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and the
     schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers.”

Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in the churches and considered genuine fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago.  In it this account of the fabled phoenix occurs: 

     “1.  Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection, which
     is seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia.