hour when with complete consciousness and perfected powers he should begin to work the works of his Father, is a lesson for all time to all mankind.

It was during this period of the youth of Jesus, tradition says when he was nineteen years of age, that Joseph died. Soon after, Jesus and his widowed mother went to live with the family of her sister-in-law Mary, the wife of Clopas of Nazareth, and such was the intimacy of the families that their children were called his brothers and sisters. In this union of families for the ten years following, he supported his mother by his labor as a mechanic. She had an own sister, Salome, the wife of Zebedee, whose home was at Capernaum, and whose two sons, James and John, became prominent in the subsequent history.

In the year 14 A. D., Augustus Caesar died, and Tiberius Cæsar, the appointee of Satan, assumed the imperial purple. He reigned twenty-three years, seven beyond the death of Jesus in 30 A. D. Tiberius sent Pontius Pilate to be governor of Judea in 26 A. D., the year before that in which Jesus began his public ministry, and he continued in office until the decease of the emperor.

For many years, Philip I, Herod's eldest surviving son, lived disinherited in Rome as a private citizen. Antipas, his younger half-brother, was tetrarch of Galilee throughout the lifetime of Jesus. He built or rebuilt a city on the southwest coast of the lake, and naming it Tiberias in honor of the new emperor, took up his residence in it, thus locating near the centre of his realm. Philip II, the younger half-brother of Antipas, was during the same time tetrarch of the region north and east of the

lake. On taking possession of his realm, he renovated the town Bethsaida (house of fish) on the north coast of the Sea of Galilee, which he surnamed Julias after the daughter of Augustus, and occupied it for some years as the seat of his government. Afterwards he rebuilt a city twelve miles south of Mt. Hermon, called Paneas after the sylvan god Pan, and renamed it Cæsarea in honor of Augustus. It was known as Cæsarea Philippi, to distinguish it from the Cæsarea on the Mediterranean coast. Personally Philip II was the best of the Herods; Antipas the worst.

Herod the Great had in succession ten wives, the first five and their children are the only ones that figure in history. The following table exhibits these and will serve to clear the somewhat intricate relations of the Herodian family.

VI

THE INAUGURATION

HALF year before the birth of Jesus at Bethle hem, John was born at Hebron. Both births were miraculous. The one child was of royal, the other of priestly lineage. They were kindred. The childhood of the one at Nazareth, and that of the other at Hebron, were contemporary. Both were early taught lessons of practical piety. Except once while infants, it is probable they never met until mature manhood, and so were unknown to each other by sight.

The boy John grew and waxed strong in spirit. His parents already aged could hardly, in the order of nature, have lived much beyond his childhood. What would the orphan boy do? The angel of his annunciation, while divinely naming him The Gift of Jah, and promising an early and constant fullness of the Spirit, decreed for him an abstemious life. He was to be a Nazirite from his mother's womb, as were the reforming judges, Samson and Samuel. The law of the Nazirite forbade drinking wine, shaving the hair, and touching a corpse. In pursuance of the ascetic life to which he was thus devoted, he retired in early youth from Hebron, and took up his abode in the Wilderness of Judea.

The great and terrible wilderness of Mts. Horeb and Seir, in which the tribes wandered and suffered for forty years, was prolonged northward into Judea along the west coast of the Dead Sea, even beyond Jericho. This

prolongation occupies fully one-fourth of the district of Judea, of which another fourth is the Philistine plain along the shore of the Mediterranean, and the remainder is the hill country of Judea lying between, and crowned with Hebron at its summit. The eastern region along the Dead Sea is desert and desolate, unhabited and almost unhabitable save by wild beasts and reptiles. It is not wholly destitute of vegetation, having here and there spots of pasture and clumps of stunted trees. But the rocky ground is untillable, and abounds in pits of slime. The deadly influence of the asphalt sea spreads over it like a pall. It is the valley of the shadow of death.

In this dreary desert John spent at least fifteen years before his showing unto Israel. His food was locusts and wild honey, his raiment a sackcloth shirt. A life of abstinence, of exposure, of hardships; a seclusion, a thoughtful silence, a solitary self-communion; a patient, contemplative preparation of fifteen years for less than one year's ministry. In him patience had her perfect work.

At last when he was thirty and a half years old, the summons came, and John emerged from his solitude. Taking his stand on a rock overlooking the frequented highway between Jerusalem and Jericho, he cried aloud to those passing by:

"Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." "

"18

A crowd soon collected, drawn at first by curiosity. A strange figure, on his lofty pulpit of rock, outlined against the blue sky, clothed only in a sackcloth shirt girdled by a leathern strap, his legs and arms naked, his head bare, his long black hair and beard unkempt, a

staff in his hand which he waved as he cried again and again:

Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Men of our time and clime would say, a lunatic at large, a Meg Merriles, or perhaps the Wandering Jew. But the Jews of that day recognized the rebuking garb and cry of a reforming prophet, their ideal of Elijah, and they said, Is it indeed he, the promised of Malachi ?

The nation was then groaning under the oppression of Tiberius Cæsar, emperor, and of his creature Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, and of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, and of Caiaphas and Annas, irregularly appointed by the Roman power high priests in the desecrated Temple at Jerusalem. The land swarmed with hungry Roman soldiers whose meat was violence, and with thirsty Jewish publicans whose drink was extortion. The languishing people knew that their sacred books foretold a deliverer, a Messiah, an anointed King, who in the hour of their deepest need should appear, reestablish the throne of David, and reign in righteousness. Expectation was now rife, for the time was ripe. The sudden startling proclamation by the wayside stranger of a heaven-born kingdom, enlivened the long deferred hope, and they asked one another, Is not this he, the Christ?

John led the swelling crowd down the steep road past Jericho to the Jordan ford. Standing there by the edge of the stream, he preached to the multitude gathered under the shade of the tamarisks and overhanging willows, the baptism of repentance unto the remission of sins; and many were baptized of him in the river Jordan confessing their sins. The preaching and baptizing was protracted day after day, for many days. A revival of religion stirred the hearts of the people. It spread