XVI.

THe BrrtH AND BoyHoop oF JESUS.

“ Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid;
Star of. the East the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
Cold on his cradle the dew drops are shining,
Low lies his head with the beasts of the stall
Angels adore him in slumber reclining,
Maker, and Monarch, and Saviour of all.”
—Reginald Heber.

The world knows but little of its best and greatest
men. Men have lived whose names will be famous as long
as the world endures, and yet all that is known of them
would not fill a column in a newspaper. Of the life of the
Lord Jesus Christ we know but little, of his childhood and
youth, least of all. The records of that divine life contained
in the four gospels are brief and fragmentary. Thankful as
we are for the mere outlines of this sacred story, we often
find ourselves longing to know more of what

“He did and said
And suffered for us here below,”
and particularly of the romantic period of his boyhood and
youth.

It is remarkable that, concerning this whole period of
the birth and early years of Jesus, John the Evangelist, the
most intimate friend and companion of our Lord in “the
disciple whom Jesus loved,” speaks not one word. The same

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