kept thus in a barn, 1856 years ago. Nobody knows the day or the month;
nay, the year itself is not certain.

After a while the parents went home to Nazareth, where they had other
sons,--_James_, _Joses_, _Simon_, and _Judas_,--and daughters also;
nobody knows how many. There the boy JESUS grew up, and it seems
followed the calling of his father; it is said, in special, that he made
yokes, ploughs, and other farm-tools. Little is known about his early
life and means of education. His outside advantages were, no doubt,
small and poor; but he learned to read and write, and it seems became
familiar with the chief religious books of his nation, which are still
preserved in the Old Testament.

At that time there were three languages used in Judea, beside the
Latin, which was confined to a few officials: 1. The Syro-Chaldaic,--the
language of business and daily life, the spoken language of the common
people. 2. The Greek,--the language of the courts of justice and
official documents; the spoken and written language of the foreign
traders, the aristocracy, and most of the more cultivated people in the
great towns. 3. The old Hebrew,--the written and spoken language of the
learned, of theological schools, of the priests; the language of the Old
Testament. It seems Jesus understood all three.

At that time the thinking people had outgrown the old forms of religion,
inherited from their fathers, just as a little girl becomes too stout
and tall for the clothes which once fitted her babyhood; or as the
people of New England have now become too rich and refined to live in
the rough log-cabins, and to wear the coarse, uncomfortable clothes,
which were the best that could be got two hundred years ago. For mankind
continually grows wiser and better,--and so the old forms of religion