To-day I am in Nazareth, the home of Christ’s boyhood. Here He was brought as a baby after the flight into Egypt to escape the bloodthirsty Herod, and here He spent all but about four years of His life. The town is situated high up in the mountains of Galilee, within sixty miles of Jerusalem as the crow flies and sixty-seven miles from Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. It is within a day’s ride on horseback of Mount Carmel and within four hours of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee from which our Saviour called His apostles and where He first preached.

Nazareth lies in a nest in the mountains. It is in a little amphitheatre of hills with a rough and ragged arena. The houses extend up the sides of the hills and there is hardly a level spot in the whole town. It has altogether less than twelve thousand inhabitants of whom about half are Mohammedans. The rest of the population is made up of Greek Catholics, Latins, and about two hundred Syrians of the Protestant faith. The town is full of churches and convents, and there are some great monasteries and hospices where pilgrims may stop over night.

The homes of the people are rectangular structures, which look more like great stone boxes than houses. They are usually of one story, with a door and two windows, and most of them have flat roofs, which in the summer nights are used as resting and sleeping places. A number of the buildings are in gardens. Some have cactus hedges about them and others are shaded by cypress trees. There are many olive orchards, and figs grow here as luxuriantly as they did when Christ was a boy.

The buildings of Nazareth are ugly, but as a whole the city and its surroundings are beautiful. I doubt whether there is more beautiful scenery to be found in England or Scotland, or even in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, for which God has done much. There are many fine views. One can stand in the city or near it and look out over the plain of Esdraelon, and by climbing the hills he can see Mount Carmel, where Elijah hid the prophets and later on slew the false prophets of Baal. It is only a few hours’ ride from Nazareth over the hill to the Sea of Galilee, where the Nazarene boys even now sometimes go fishing.

I shall not soon forget a bird’s-eye view I had of the town last night. The moon was at its full, and its great round silver disk changed the night into day. Its rays mellowed the yellow limestone of the houses and transformed them to ivory. They softened the glare of the white, rocky roads, and made a fairyland of the mountains and valleys. From the top of the hills I could see the plain of Esdraelon, which in its fertility vies with the Nile Valley; and away off at the west lay the mighty Mediterranean, which stretches on for two thousand miles to Gibraltar and the Atlantic.

Nazareth by moonlight is wonderfully peaceful. At sunset all business stops, and within an hour or so afterward everyone is in bed. There are few places that seem so far from the strife of the world. Business is swallowed up in the beauties of nature. The scenery is that of old Greece, and the stars shine gloriously out of skies which are perfectly clear.

The sunsets are surpassingly beautiful. The other night the golden beams of the sinking sun seemed to form a halo over this the home of our Saviour. There were many white clouds in the sky, which changed, first to rose and then to gold, the colour growing stronger and stronger, until the whole west was one blaze of fire and molten copper.

Coming down into the town, after watching one of these sunsets, I met many Nazarene children. As I stopped a few minutes, the little ones gathered around me, and it was not hard to imagine similar groups playing in these streets nineteen hundred years ago with the boy Jesus. The little Nazarenes wore gowns of brown, red, or yellow. Most of them were in their bare feet; the boys had caps of red felt, while the girls wore handkerchiefs or shawls tied around their heads. All were running and dancing and laughing and playing. Some of the girls were quite pretty. I remember a rosy-cheeked baby carried by a roguish, bright-eyed maid of eighteen. I admired the baby and chucked it under the chin, telling the girl I would like to take it home with me to America. She promptly said I could have it and thrust it out toward me. My face fell and I ran.

There is no doubt that this is the Nazareth of Jesus, and that the hills and valleys about here were hallowed by His footsteps. It was here that the Angel Gabriel appeared unto Mary when she was engaged but not yet married to Joseph and told her that she would be the mother of Jesus, and it was here that she came with Joseph after the flight into Egypt. She waited only until King Herod was dead, and then came to Nazareth, the child Jesus being still an infant in arms. It was from Nazareth that Jesus went to the Jordan to be baptized by John, and it was here that after He had begun His work our Lord came and preached in the synagogue. Whereupon the Nazarenes cried out:

The Roman Catholics now own what is said to be the site of the shop where Joseph worked as a carpenter. The place is in the Mohammedan quarter, not far from a bazaar where the Moslem merchants sit cross-legged and sell to the Christians. When I visited it I met Father Kersting, who came here to superintend excavations on the site of an old church built by the Crusaders.

Under his direction a grotto was uncovered which many believe to be the place where Joseph had his carpenter shop, and where, if this is true, the little Christ must have played among the shavings.

The various sects here make all sorts of claims. The Latins allege that they own the table upon which Christ supped with His disciples both before and after the Resurrection. It is a block of hard chalk eleven feet long and nine feet in breadth. In another place in the Latin monastery is what is known as the Angel’s Chapel and the Chapel of the Annunciation, where the Virgin received Gabriel’s message. There is also an old cistern which is called the Kitchen of the Virgin, and in the centre of the town is Mary’s Well, or, as it is sometimes called, Jesus’s Spring, or Gabriel’s Spring. This is undoubtedly authentic, for it is the only spring or watering place Nazareth now possesses or ever has possessed. It is therefore certain that the child Jesus and the Virgin frequented it, and that Mary came here daily for water. This is a fountain rather than a well. The water gushes forth in two streams into a stone basin, whence it flows into a stone-inclosed pool. There are always women with water jars about it, and the scenes of to-day are probably the same as those of Christ’s time.

Thousands of pilgrims come to Nazareth every year to visit the places hallowed by the Saviour, and it is also on the main route from the mountains of Lebanon to Jerusalem. Caravan routes from Damascus to Egypt wind about it, and it has always been an important point on the chief travel routes.

The bazaars are of about the same character as they were in Jesus’s day. They are narrow, cave-like stores lighted only from the front. The merchants sit there walled around with goods, while the customers stand out in the cobblestone roadway and bargain. The streets are dirty and camels and Bedouins are continually moving through them. The men wear turbans and gowns, and the women are veiled or unveiled, according to whether they are Mohammedans or Christians.

I was interested in the mechanical work going on in these bazaars. I stopped in a carpenter’s shop, and photographed a workman of just about the age Joseph must have been when our Lord was a boy and passed as his son. I asked about carpenter’s wages, and was told they ranged from fifty cents to one dollar per day. In another business street I stopped awhile with the blacksmiths who were making knives, razors, plough points, and the long, thin, crescent-shaped sickles used here for harvesting. The sickles have teeth like a fine saw. I lingered to watch a blacksmith shoe a horse. He used a plate of iron the shape of the hoof about an eighth of an inch thick. With the exception of a hole as large as a finger ring in the centre, it was solid. There were three small holes on each side for the nails, which were driven into the hoof. When shod the horse’s foot was entirely covered by iron except for the small hole in the centre.

Since I have been here I have paid especial attention to the children. They are the best part of the Holy Land and are as full of fun and as delightful as our children at home. I have seen families which recall that of Joseph and Mary, and many boys with innocent faces which suggest that of Jesus. Here in Nazareth I see the little ones everywhere playing. There is a threshing-floor on one side of the town, a place where the earth has been stamped down and where the grain is flailed or trodden out after harvest. This is one of the great playgrounds, where the boys come with their marbles and where they play ball. In one of their games the boys try to throw the ball so as to hit a stone mark set up for the purpose. They also strike the ball with a club and send it beyond the threshing-floor to be caught by the boys outside. They play blind man’s buff, leap-frog, and hide-and-seek, and as I went through the streets the other day I saw two little ones rising and falling on a board resting on the edge of a sharp stone, making a seesaw.

One of the games played is like our “Button, button, who has the button?” The boys stand in a row with hands folded and the one who is “it” goes along and rubs his two hands, holding the pebble over each pair of folded hands and endeavouring to drop it into one without being caught. Then the others must guess who has the pebble. We play the same game with the button.

Another game is known as the “tied monkey.” In this the boy who is “it” catches hold with one hand of a rope fastened to a peg in the ground while the others beat him with handkerchiefs or ropes in which knots are tied. If he can catch one of them without letting go his hold on the rope the boy caught takes his place.

I observe that the boys here usually play by themselves. They rather look down on their sisters, and the average family considers the girl of but little account. When a girl is born no fuss is made, but when a boy comes the friends of the family run through the streets crying out: “Good tidings! Good tidings!” The father prepares a feast, and all the friends of the family give presents of money for the benefit of the boy. Immediately after the child is born it is rubbed over with salt and then wrapped in swaddling clothes so tight that it cannot move. After it has been bound up thus for about a week, it is unfastened, washed with fresh oil, salted, and bound up again. This wrapping, oiling, salting, and re-wrapping goes on for about forty days, at the end of which time the child is ready to wear the ordinary clothing of babyhood. This usually consists of one garment, but in the summer, if the child be poor, that is omitted, although a naked baby may wear a skull cap. The usual garment is a shirt reaching to the knees, and as the children grow older they may have jackets over their shirts.

One of the important ceremonies is naming the boy. To the child’s given name that of the father is always added. In olden times if the son of James was named John, his name would be John, son of James, but now the words “son of” are omitted and he is known as John James.

I am surprised at the beauty of the Nazarene girls, and especially of the little ones. They have rosy cheeks and bright eyes and are quite as good looking as our American babies. They dress in bright colours and some have rows of coins on their headdresses and rings on their fingers.

I see many little girls at the fountain of Mary, each with a jar in which to bring water home. This is the work of almost every woman in the land. The little ones are taught by beginning with a tiny jar which they steady on the head with the hand. As they grow older they use larger jars, until at last they are able to walk through the streets carrying four or five gallons of water on the head without touching the jar. This work gives them erect figures, and there are no stooped shoulders or curved spines among them.

When a girl reaches ten or eleven years of age she begins to think of marriage, and it is not an uncommon thing for her to be a mother at thirteen or fourteen. After marriage the wife becomes a member of her husband’s family, and, for a time at least, lives with her mother-in-law. For this reason people believe in early marriages, so that the girl may be trained by her husband’s mother into a suitable wife when she grows up.

I wonder if the boys of our Saviour’s time studied as do the Nazarene boys of to-day. As half the town is Mohammedan, many of them are taught by the sheiks. They sit on the floor, swaying back and forth as they scream out the verses and texts they are trying to learn. The teacher is sometimes blind, but he knows the voices so well that when one stops he can strike with his stick the place where that boy should be sitting to start him again. In our Lord’s time the Bible was probably taught in the same way to the Jewish children. Most of the slates used here are made of cast-off kerosene oil cans, the tin being cut into squares and pounded out flat. The Arabic characters are painted upon such tins with brushes and India ink.

The chief study of the Mohammedan boys is the Koran, while the Jews learn the Psalms. At harvest time the schools close and the children go out into the fields, gardens, and vineyards. They are accustomed to work, and everywhere I go I see them herding the sheep. The boys use slings just as David did and are skilful in sending the stones just where they please.

Some of these Palestine children are polite, but others are just the reverse. When the good boy comes into a room full of older people he goes around and kisses the hand of each one and places it on his forehead. He can be so sweet that you might think him the soul of innocence and piety, but take him outside and he will fight, kick, and scratch with his fellows. A great deal of slang is used, and in a quarrel the most common expressions are those cursing your enemy’s ancestors. One boy will say to another, “Curse your father!” and the other will reply, “And your grandfather!” And so they will go on to the fourth and fifth generations, each cursing the various branches of the other’s family. Here at Nazareth we find the children very polite, but at Nablus they threw stones at me and called me a “Nazarene,” the name used by the Mohammedans of Samaria to express contempt for all not of their faith.

From Nazareth, Joseph and Mary went every year to Jerusalem. They tramped over the hills of Galilee and across the plain of Esdraelon, then climbed the mountains of Samaria. There is a trail, part of which has been made into a macadamized road. Such trips were usually made in large companies, and when I crossed Samaria a short time ago I met scores of these people from Galilee on their way to Jerusalem. The parties consisted of men, women, and children, most of whom were on foot. Now and then one found a woman riding a donkey, with her husband trudging beside her, and sometimes whole families on donkeys. It was in such a party that Jesus went to Jerusalem when He was about twelve years of age. He was then thought to be old enough to take care of Himself, for the Bible relates that when they departed Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and His mother knew not of it. They had already gone a day’s journey before they missed Him, and then turned back to find Him. Only after three days was He discovered in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions.