and at this very season, he witnessed a scene which must often have been the experience of the villagers when Joseph and Mary were there. "The thunder-pillars, which had been piled over the dark slate-coloured ridge of Carmel, gradually approached; the effect was magnificent, with a mid-distance of low hills covered with oak woods. The storm burst suddenly, the rain descending with violence, hissing on the ground as if not able to come down fast enough, and accompanied with gusts of wind, thunder and lightning. . . . In the evening the lightning over Carmel, in broad sheets and vivid forks, was equally fine.”1 And then he adds a touch of colour to the picture which never fails to strike a Western eye, as it cannot but have struck those who in every age have beheld the same spectacle of resurrection: "The face of the country was soon changed; crocuses, narcissus, lilies, and red anemone appeared; the grass soon began to sprout, and the birds to arrive, and the yellow wagtail appeared by the springs; long wreaths of cloud formed on the hills, and bursts of sunlight or of rain alternated." Our English children, when the summer days have been weary, hail the fresh, cool drops of a passing shower with delight, and share in all the gladness of the garden refreshed; and surely it can hardly be fancy that, after the first downfalls of the early rains in Nazareth, a Boy might have been seen scanning many a favourite nook, and bringing again to His mother, in fragrant bunches, some of the firstlings of the awakened year.

As the weeks pass and December approaches, the rains fall with greater frequency and volume; the nights grow chillier, and the days more wintry and dark. But though the skies overhead are gloomier, the earth has changed marvellously for the better. With wonderful suddenness, and with freshest green, the grass has sprung up, and now many a slope and hollow, which a month or two ago was brown or grey, is in colour like an emerald. But the hills are still bare, save where an oak tree breaks the 1 "Tent Work in Palestine," p. 82.

monotony; and there is, perhaps, no great risk in saying that the last month of our English year was always one of the wintriest in the Eastern valley.

But there are changes near; for, if the season has been ungenial, it has prepared the ground for the future harvest; and all through January, as well as before and after, the valleys around Nazareth are busy with the sower and the seed some falling among the freshly-springing brambles, some on the thinly-covered rock, while for some the hungry birds are watching with keenest eyes. And from this period and onward every day will yield some new discovery, for now the beautiful almond tree is beginning to blossom, and doubly attractive are its pink and creamy flowers after the long drought; and with it the violet, the lovely narcissus, tulips of various tints, the pretty wood anemone; and with them many a common but welcome weed -the crane's bill, the meadow saffron, the shepherd's purse, the dandelion, with its disk of gold. And though. neither rain nor thunder-bursts are yet over, the heat is growing steadily through March and April. How often, while these months wore over in His earlier youth, did our Lord explore day by day the hollows and the hills so fast enriching themselves, in every meadow and watercourse, with a wreath of new vegetation! How often must He have marked the apple-blossom, fresh in spring loveliness, and noticed the greening fig, or gathered, while He distinguished and compared their forms, some of the hundred field-flowers which during this season cover and decorate the slopes which used to be so dead! How often may He have risen the earlier to lengthen the delightful day, nor turned His face from the mountain or neighbouring glade till the orange skies of sunset warned Him the night was near! Assuredly these months of earlier summer are the year's freshest crown ; and when, in those vanished days, they came to the village among the hills while care was yet unknown, and life was young, none could have greeted them with so natural a welcome as the grave and generous

Boy, who, summer by summer, increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man.

As May fades into June, and again June and July into August, there is a certain reversal of the process of the earlier months. Then, with fresh life and growing vitality, each week was richer than the last; there was many a new bloom to notice, and few to fade and disappear. But after the barley and wheat harvest in April is over; when the apricots and melons have been gathered in May; when the figs and cherries and plums of June are off the tree, and the rose-gardens of Jerusalem and Damascus have been rifled of their treasures, the spectacle is rather one of sweetness sinking into the arms of decay. The more delicate flowers have withered under the burning heat, and now, with sorely-thinned ranks, the hardier are drooping on their stems. In June and July the rock-rose "sheds its fugitive and fairy flowers over the mountain sides, varied by lavender and marjoram; while the plains are decked with flax, blue, rose-coloured, and yellow; scarlet poppies, salvias, vetches, and many composite plants." The crowning month of the fruit season is August, when the grape, fig, and peach are in perfection, and the hill-sides are busy with the vintage; but in the meantime the grass has withered and the flower faded. But still in the dry water-courses you may find the handsome oleander: "In shadowy nooks, and in the chinks of overhanging rocks, the glossy leaves and strongly-scented pendent white flowers of the Schubertia;" there are white and crimson everlastings, and on every fragment of ruined house and tower the hyssop, that springeth out of the wall. At length these also, as the season changes, disappear, till, as in our own land, winter, "ruler of the inverted year," brings the annual history of the seasons to its close, and October mellow, dun and darkening with the "former" rains, is the precursor of another cycle of renewal, maturity, and decay.

In many respects the spectacle of the year which, from month to month, our Lord witnessed in His secluded home

It

was different from that which is familiar to ourselves. can scarcely be said to have had, as we know them, either spring or autumn. The winter, with its drenching rains, passes, as if by forced marches, into the sultry summer. The gradual and broken passage from icy chill to genial days of April is unwitnessed, save in a very abbreviated form, in Nazareth; and, especially, there is no autumn. Those long dreamy weeks of pensive, yet lovely decay—

"The grace of forest woods decayed

And pastoral melancholy,"

the Eastern valley does not know. In England we have, with different scenery, a different year.

In one point, however, there is scarce any difference. If it is more sudden, still the birth of flowers-that wondrous renewal of life—is the same; and all the more the same because the flowers are those we know. The hollyhock, the crocus, the violet, the pretty blossoming weeds of our roadsides, were all familiar to the Lord Jesus. It is delightful to find the common favourites of our fields suggestive of a common experience. To Him they spoke of His Father's care: let them so speak to us, and also of the great Teacher who taught us to interpret their meaning. It is no trivial gain to be led, as we watch the children of the spring, to think of the Beloved of the Father, and drawn, by the simple and unvalued things of daily life and of the seasons, to the knowledge and the love of things unseen and eternal.

GEORGE WILSON, M.A., F.L.S.

44

The Blood of Jesus Christ His Son

cleanseth us from all Sin."

1 John i. 7.

Is I was standing one day by the brink of a swiftlyrunning stream of water, idly casting in stones which I picked up from the bank, an illustration of this text was forcibly suggested to my mind; and, as it gave me great comfort, perhaps it may comfort some reader of these lines. I noticed, for instance, that no matter how muddy and filthy the stones were, the swiftlyrushing stream, in a few moments, completely cleansed them. Then I saw the words of the text as in a picture: "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." The soul of man is by nature like the muddy stones, foul and unclean; but the moment "the cleansing fountain" is allowed to rush over it, that instant is it made perfectly clean. What bright hope is there in this illustration of the subject! The deep sense of the guilt of sin is prone to produce despair. I can never expect to be forgiven; my sin is too great, too awful, to be pardoned! The stream of water washed away every kind of filth, and made no distinction whatever; swept it away out of sight, remaining itself pure and bright. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," and it only needs the sinner's belief in and acceptance of that which God Himself has declared to be sufficient, in order to experience its power.

But the text is one for those who "walk in the light,” and a further thought of great comfort was thus suggested. I endeavoured to render the stones which I had thrown into the water, and which were quite cleansed by the water, foul again, by throwing mud and refuse upon them, but I could not succeed. A mere temporary cloud was created as the water swept it onward; but I was unable to make any filth rest for one moment upon the cleansed surface.

There dawned upon my soul then a bright light, which