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