before Him now, and strive to bring every thought to the obedience of Christ, behave to Him as their Lord and Master, and never wilfully disobey Him; but those who refuse now to do this will be forced hereafter to acknowledge that they have contended against Him in vain, when the mightiest on earth shall say to the rocks, 'Fall on us, and to the mountains, Cover us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb.' May He keep us, my dear children, to be His obedient, loving, rejoicing subjects and children now, so that we be not His vanquished enemies hereafter!"

ST LUKE II. 36-40.

"Anna belonged to one of the ten tribes that had been carried captive," said Cecilia. "I believe Aser is the same as Asher."

"I suppose," said Mrs Dalton, "she belonged to a family that had escaped the general captivity, or had returned."

"And now we come to what is, probably, the time of the visit of the Wise Men. Either Joseph and Mary returned to Bethlehem, where, you remember, the Magi found them in a house, not in the stable where they had been at first; and the return to Galilee, mentioned here, was not till after the flight into Egypt; or else they went at once to Galilee, and returned again to Bethlehem, before the visit of the Magi.

ST LUKE II. 41-52.

"It was usually the custom for children to accompany their parents to the feasts, as soon as they were twelve years old. It was not commanded by the law that women should go up, though they frequently did so."

"It seems very strange," said Cecilia, "that they should have gone a whole day's journey on their way home without missing their child."

"Large companies set out together, so that one person might easily be supposed to be with one or other of the numerous parties who made up the whole company; and it would not be till the evening, when families assembled together, that they would discover who were the missing members. The first day's journey was usually a short one, beginning late in the day, and only lasting long enough to get well out of the city, so as to be ready for the early start on the morrow."

"What are the Doctors?" said Ellen.

"The learned men, Scribes and Rabbis, expounders of the law of Moses. It was their custom to catechise the youths who came up to the Temple, and on rare occasions, as a mark of great favour, one was invited to sit on the bench amongst them, instead of below, at their feet; and here our Lord seems to have been when He was found by His mother."

"What gentle authority there is in her words to Him!" said Mrs Dalton.

"Do you notice the quiet reproof which His answer contains-first, for calling Joseph His father, when His only Father was God; and then for interposing her authority between Him and His divine mission? There is the same meaning implied in these words as in those spoken at the beginning of His ministry-Woman, what have I to do. with thee? Mine hour is not yet come;' and afterwards 'He that doeth the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.' Christ was a human being, the son of Mary, living under the care of Joseph, and as such, He was obedient unto them; but He was obedient to a higher law, the law of His divine nature: according to that He worked miracles, and according to that He was now in His Father's house; not indifferent to His mother's anxiety-that He could not have been—but disregarding it, in the higher duty which lay before Him. This is the first intimation we have-I do not think we shall be wrong in

supposing it was the first intimation His parents had from Himself of His superhuman nature. Whether they were

reminded of it again, except by His superhuman holiness and innocence, before the time when the voice came from heaven, 'This is my beloved Son,' we do not know."

"But, after saying this, He went down to Nazareth, and was subject unto them."

"Yes; He who had said 'Honour thy father and mother,' Himself set the highest example of obedience.”

"The last verse puzzles me very much," said May. "How could Jesus increase in wisdom, when He was already God?"

"It is a perplexing question, my dear. The only explanation we can offer is, that Jesus, being perfectly man, as He was perfectly God, passed through all the stages of human nature. He was a child, with a child's unformed mind, no less than its weak body; and so He passed into the age of boyhood, where we find Him admired, but still treated like other boys, by the Doctors of the law, who, had they known what He was, would have prostrated themselves before Him; and so He continued up to the mature age of thirty, His human body and human mind passing through the various stages of man's nature. He was always perfect, but it was a perfection which changed with His age; perfect as an infant, perfect as a Man.”

"I do not think that makes it any easier to understand," said May.

"No, it does not; it only renews the difficulty: it still remains one of those mysteries which we cannot understand. But if we cease to try and investigate, there remains great comfort in this verse; it reminds us forcibly of the truth that Jesus was really and truly MAN through all the stages of human life-infancy, childhood, boyhood, up to the age of full-grown man. In the person of Jesus, the Son of God and man, we have a picture of what a perfect man should be. We see which of our desires,

emotions, feelings are innocent, and which are part of our fallen nature; and while we see and feel His sympathy with us, we also see what is the perfection which we should try to imitate.* One way of reading the Gospels is to mark the indications of our Lord's human nature, His human feelings, the links which bind Him to ourselves in the midst of His superhuman power and superhuman goodness. But we will not dwell longer on this mysterious subject, though perhaps there is no thought which will more cheer and sustain us through life than the belief that Jesus was really and truly a man; and that all that we feel was felt by Him, not merely in His sympathy for us, but as reality to Himself."

"And now," continued Mr Dalton, "we have come to the end of the chapter, and I must go; I have stayed already longer than I meant."

Warm thanks for his explanations were given by the girls, who, after lingering a few minutes talking over what their father had said, settled down to their occupations.

* Goulbourn, Pursuit of Holiness, chap. xii.

CHAPTER III.

ST LUKE III. 1-22; ST MATTHEW III. 1-17; ST MARK I. 1-11; ST JOHN I. 1–28.

"I AM afraid there is no chance of papa's coming to-day," said Cecilia.

"No; he told me to say that he was busy now,” said May, "but perhaps he might come in before we had done.” "I hope he will, for these first few verses are rather puzzling. I want him to tell us about the different places and people; and if we get down to the end of the chapter, we come to those dreadful genealogies, which I cannot understand."

"Well, perhaps he will come before we get to them; but make haste, or mamma will come and find us not ready."

A few minutes sufficed to get out the books; and the girls had hardly begun to wait, when the door opened and their mother came in.

When did Tiberius begin to reign?" asked Cecilia, when they had done reading.

"He began to reign alone A.D. 14, but he had reigned two years before in conjunction with Augustus: it is from the earlier period that this is reckoned. The real time of our Lord's birth is supposed to have been three or four years before the date which we call Anno Domini. You know, I think, that the date of the building of Rome is 753 B.C., or, in other words, that the commonly received