of a king—a great Messiah, who, from out little Palestine, shall rule the world in an age of gold. The age, perhaps, is taking something out of the Bible that is not in it. Our own age has done that many times. Is it doing it to-day? Never in this world did imagination reach so high a pitch as it did among the Jews in that wonderful time. Nothing was talked of or thought of, but the coming golden age and the new king, riding in a chariot of the clouds. It was not only a very expectant, superstitious age, it had been a troubled one. The world had been full of disorder, conflict. Everywhere had been war and tyranny. Especially, the whole Jewish race, the especial people of God, had known too often only of tyranny and sorrow. Even their own church, and church was the government with them, had drifted into a religious tyranny—the worst tyranny of all. It was, too, hemmed in by the awfullest form and ceremony. No one in this twentieth century who is not familiar with the Jewish Talmud and the earlier writings, can have the remotest conception of the thousand formalities, ceremonies, mummeries even, imposed upon the people of the church in the olden days. Later, ten volumes of the Talmud will be required to explain, to interpret, establish, and to write down the manner in which the commonest things of life might be done. The great Sanhedrin, or Supreme Court and Senate of the Jews at Jerusalem, together with the scribes and priests about the temple, seemed banded together to make religion an awful, unbearable burden, and life a farce.

Though all Palestine was a Roman province the Romans interfered but little with this religious despotism. The Romans had enough wrongs of their own to inflict upon the people. The whole race of Jews in their home government had their own laws, their own Jewish customs, habits, and religion. The Romans simply made them subjects of Cæsar, and they rendered unto Cæsar only that which was Cæsar's, as this youth of Galilee, later, would suggest their doing.

The empire collected taxes, very heavy ones, from the people, and occasionally forced them into its armies. The Roman eagles and the Roman soldiers were familiar sights in every town and village of Palestine. The Romans usually had enough to do at home to disincline them from bothering themselves too much with the religion of the Jews. Wars they had had everywhere. But just now, at the time of the Master's coming, there was a sort of peace in the world—a truce for breath, as it were. That is to say, the Roman empire that has its foot on almost the whole earth is resting a little. Rome's untold horrors, wars, corruptions, its licentiousness, its inhumanity to man, its blood and outrages have stopped their course at the eternal city for a little while. It is almost out of victims. Violence has ceased, only because violence has done its work.

The social conditions at Rome just before Augustus came to the throne were too terrible to be believed. That some of this outrage and terror had spread into the provinces of Palestine through governors and petty kings, appointed by, and tools of Rome, is only too well known. Herod himself was bloody enough to have served as an example for the worst the Roman empire, even, could endure. In Palestine, however, the great Jewish church served somewhat as a little hindering-wall to the element that had been almost crushing decent humanity out of the world.

All the states, like Palestine, bordering on the Mediterranean, says a distinguished historian, simply looked at one another—partakers of a common misfortune. They were tranquil, but it was the silence of despair. Man was not being considered as an individual by the Romans any more; he was only a "thing." Human suffering in the provinces counted for nothing, if only Rome had some political gain. If Palestine, or any other province, had some advantage by the presence of Roman legions, it was purely incidental, and scarcely intended. At this very moment Palestine is groaning under awful taxes paid to Rome, one-third of all produced, the writers say. No wonder the Jews were longing for the new time, the great time, the king, the Old Scriptures had told about. They are so afflicted, so depressed. The government of man had been a failure with them. Would not the day soon be at hand when God himself, through some vicegerent, would come to the world and rule in pity? Then the wicked would no longer thrive, the just would live in delight, the very face of the world would be changed, all would be transformed into love and beauty, and Palestine would be the heart of the new world, and Jerusalem the capital of a perfected humanity. The Scriptures had said it. The prophets had said it.

Nursing these lovely and lofty expectations the Jews patiently waited, bearing with many wrongs. All classes shared alike in the great delusion, rich and poor, high and low, priest and peasant. That a mighty king on his chariot was coming in the clouds was the common belief. The too literal reading of the old-time prophets had led a whole race into a futile misconception. The world was not coming to an end at all. The Jews were a people easily mis-led. Their confidence in the supernatural was overwhelming. It was a quality inherited from their pagan ancestors. Their very neighbors were heathen and worshiped mystical gods. Tens of thousands, mostly foreigners, had set up heathen temples and consulted heathen oracles right there in Galilee. Every time the young carpenter went to Jerusalem His eyes fell on some vast edifice dedicated to Jove or Juno, and strange gods were worshiped almost in the shadow of the great temple. This was not all. The very books read by the Jewish priests in the synagogue, or village churches, were filled with superstitious tales, with dreams and visions. In these books the people were told of times when angels walked upon the earth—they would walk again was the belief. The outcome of their wonderful superstitions, teachings, and their surroundings was an abject belief in marvels and impossibilities. If the most cultured and thinking persons lost their confidence in the marvelous, they kept it quiet. It was, besides, a day of jugglers, sleight of hand performers, and magicians. The peasants, mostly half-educated, could believe in anything. There was no knowledge of science available to show them the utter falsehood of things their eyes seemed to behold. The commonest laws of nature were not understood. The priests themselves did not know that the world was round. The common people were sufficiently credulous to accept the most astounding things. In short, the astounding things were to them the natural things, the expected. No wonder they misunderstood the old prophets of the Bible, and the signs of the times. No wonder they were believing and alarmed when John, hurrying from the wilderness, shouted to them to be ready, to hurry to the Jordan river, confess, and be baptized.

CHAPTER IV

The Fairy Prince. His Home is everywhere. John the Baptist is preaching down by Jericho. The young Jesus hears of him and goes a hundred miles on foot to see him. A stranger steps down to the River to be baptized. Look quick, it is the Lamb of God! John is put to death in a palace by the Dead Sea. A Woman's Revenge.

The young carpenter in his pretty Galilean village was, in a way, a witness of these strange things. He heard in the synagogue the report that the world was coming to an end. He, too, had read the awful forebodings in the Old Scriptures. He may, too, have believed in the coming disaster, but it is not likely. Vaguely, He interpreted the Old Bible to mean something else. Between its lines He saw the shadow coming of a spiritual, not an earthly king. Who that king should be, He never dreamed. The voice of John He only heard in the distance—far down by Jericho, and amidst the desolation of the Dead Sea. The cry of the Baptist scarcely reached to remote little Galilee.

He had no dreams, this Galilean youth,