CONTENTS


PAGE

CHAPTER I 7

Palestine two thousand years ago. The Little
Land of Galilee. An Oriental Village. The
Boy Carpenter.

CHAPTER II 12

A Boy of Babylon. The Founder of Judaism.
Philo, the Philosopher. An out-door Man. The
Poet-Carpenter. Staying in the Desert. The
Silence of History. Where was Jesus in these
silent years?

CHAPTER III 23

Christ still a Jew. Is the Child's escape at
Bethlehem still a secret? Performing wonders. A
strange age. Rome still in the thrall of Heathendom.
Augustus dead. Tiberius the Awful.
Palestine itself half Heathen. A Religious
Enthusiast. Jesus is ceasing to be a Jew. A
church tyranny. Subjects of Cæsar. Human
suffering counted for nothing with the Romans.
The Jews are longing for the New Time when
God might come and rule the world in Pity.
An age of Superstitions and Magic. Laws of
Science unknown. Nobody even knew that the
world was round.

CHAPTER IV 41

The Fairy Prince. His Home is everywhere.
John the Baptist is preaching down by Jericho.
The young Jesus hears of him and goes a hundred
miles on foot to see him. A stranger
steps down to the River to be baptized. Look
quick, it is the Lamb of God! John is put to
death in a palace by the Dead Sea. A
Woman's Revenge.

CHAPTER V 55

An Oriental Wedding, and the first miracle.
Jairus. "Little Maid, Arise." The Light of
the World. The Poet of the Lord. Do we know
what a Miracle is?

CHAPTER VI 67

A wandering Teacher. Lives in a borrowed house
at Capernaum. The Testament Books, fragments
written from memory. The whole Law of
Life boiled down to Seven Words. He visits
Tyre by the Ocean. Walking on the Sea. A
hard saying, and not understood. His friends
begin to leave Him. They demand Wonders,
Miracles. Raffael's great picture.

CHAPTER VII 82

Jesus goes alone and on foot to Jerusalem, to try
and prove Himself. In six months they will kill
Him. The rich Capital no place for Socialism.
"If thou be Christ, tell us, plainly." He is a
fugitive from a city mob. The Raising of
Lazarus. Again the people are following Him.
The great Sanhedrin is alarmed. "This Man
has everybody believing on Him. He will create
a Revolution yet." Jerusalem is in political
danger, anyway; so is the Roman Empire.
Everything seems going to pieces. "This
Man has too many Followers; we must kill
Him." Judas is hired to betray Him.

CHAPTER VIII 94

The last supper. Leonardo's great picture. Betrayal.
With a rope around his neck the Savior of mankind is
dragged before a Roman Judge. The scene at Pilate's
palace. Pilate's wife warns him. The awful murder and
the End.




A Layman's Life of Jesus




CHAPTER I

Palestine two thousand years ago. The Little Land of
Galilee. An Oriental Village. The Boy Carpenter.


One of the beauty spots of the world, a couple of thousand years ago,
was the little land of Galilee, in upper Palestine. That was a land
for poets and painters.

Lonesome, deserted, and little inhabited as it seems now, there was a
time when this little paradise of earth had many people and many
handsome cities. "In my time," says Josephus, "there were not less
than four hundred walled towns in Galilee." Nature, too, was lavish in
its gifts to this little land. There were green valleys there,
picturesque mountains, clear blue lakes, running brooks, and grassy
fields. An Eastern sun shone on the province almost all the time.
There was no winter there. Like a diamond in the very heart of this
beautiful land sat the town of Nazareth, "The Flower of Galilee."
Close by the village were the hills that fenced in the upper end of
the plain of beautiful Esdralon. Figs grew there at Nazareth, and
oranges, and grapes luscious and bountiful as nowhere else. The
flower-lined lanes stretched from the village clear down to the blue
lake of Galilee, only a dozen miles or so away. It must have been a
delight to live in a climate so delicious, in a land so lovely.

It all belonged to Rome then, as did t