The Children Of Nazareth PDF Download

From the DEDICATION My Little Friends, Do you wish to know how the Child Jesus lived, prayed, worked, and even played at Nazareth? Read this little book. I wrote it immediately after my third stay at Nazareth, feeling convinced that it would give you all pleasure. Perhaps your mothers, and your friends, may derive pleasure from it too. That the little Jesus played with His young companions is certain. Do we not read that He grew every day " in wisdom and age and in grace with God and men"? Well, a child who is always gracious and amiable is not one who remains silent ami stiff like an archaic statue, or who would prefer to live absolutely alone. At your age, one is only agreeable when one shares in the pleasures of others, and that with the sweetness and brightness and delicious simplicity which make the charm of young natures. The Gospel expressly states that the Infant Jesus was gentle and beloved. 1 could make you understand this better if I could quote the Greek or Latin text; but these old tongues are not yet familiar to you. Not only did He play when He was young, but He was rocked in His cradle, and His mother sang to Him when He found it difficult to sleep or when it pleased Him to cry. For He certainly cried in His cradle, as you have done yourselves, and as He did, later on, when He shed tears over the grave of Lazarus, His friend, and over the unbelief of Jerusalem, His country. This may seem strange, but He willed it thus, ever since, descending from the throne of His glory, He volunteered to clothe Himself with our humanity with all its infirmities, save sin and the fruits of sin. Yes, He was cradled in the arms of a woman, this Word of God, who bore the whole world in His hand and who in His all-powerful wisdom has balanced it, Jor centuries, between His justice and His mercy. Mary sang old lullabys to Him, which came to her from popular tradition and which very probably, in Nazareth as elsewhere, are preserved and repeated in our days. Is it not natural to suppose that your mothers will like to know by what charming songs the Virgin put to sleep the Son of God? Well, then, let me own it here, that not less than you and your mothers, we men, ripened by our contact with critical and positive science, with intellectual tastes, resolved to solve the most disconcerting difficulties of history, language, and scriptural theology, obstinate workers in the religious idea, to ensure the triumph of Christian apologetics, even we find a pious interest and a sweet satisfaction in studying, after nineteen centuries, what was the early life of the little Nazarene, born to be the Light, the Saviour, and the Monarch of the world. What shall we say? A stone which is raised, an inscription which is discovered, a ruin which is identified with an old historic site, all these things excite our enthusiasm; while the study, however incomplete, of the life of old, of its usages and of its details, does not appeal to us! But in the East there is something better than dead stones; there are living customs: and to these the true archeologist has not a right to remain indifferent....