Nazareth is wonderfully interesting because the town
has an air about it of being precisely as Jesus left
it, and one finds himself saying, all the time, “The
boy Jesus has stood in this doorway—has
played in that street—has touched these
stones with his hands—has rambled over these
chalky hills.” Whoever shall write the
boyhood of Jesus ingeniously will make a book which
will possess a vivid interest for young and old alike.
I judge so from the greater interest we found in Nazareth
than any of our speculations upon Capernaum and the
Sea of Galilee gave rise to. It was not possible,
standing by the Sea of Galilee, to frame more than
a vague, far-away idea of the majestic Personage who
walked upon the crested waves as if they had been
solid earth, and who touched the dead and they rose
up and spoke. I read among my notes, now, with
a new interest, some sentences from an edition of
1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament. [Extract.]
“Christ, kissed by a bride made
dumb by sorcerers, cures her. A leprous
girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ
was washed, and becomes the servant of Joseph
and Mary. The leprous son of a Prince cured
in like manner.
“A young man who had been bewitched
and turned into a mule, miraculously cured by
the infant Savior being put on his back, and is
married to the girl who had been cured of leprosy.
Whereupon the bystanders praise God.
“Chapter 16. Christ miraculously
widens or contracts gates, milk-pails, sieves
or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not being
skillful at his carpenter’s trade. The
King of Jerusalem gives Joseph an order for a
throne. Joseph works on it for two years
and makes it two spans too short. The King being
angry with him, Jesus comforts him—commands
him to pull one side of the throne while he pulls
the other, and brings it to its proper dimensions.
“Chapter 19. Jesus, charged
with throwing a boy from the roof of a house,
miraculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit
him; fetches water for his mother, breaks the
pitcher and miraculously gathers the water in
his mantle and brings it home.
“Sent to a schoolmaster,
refuses to tell his letters, and the
schoolmaster going to
whip him, his hand withers.”
Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels
is an epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, which
was used in the churches and considered genuine fourteen
or fifteen hundred years ago. In it this account
of the fabled phoenix occurs:
“1. Let
us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection,
which
is seen in the Eastern
countries, that is to say, in Arabia.
