A Life of St. John for the Young | Page 8

side?
[Illustration: VIRGIN, INFANT JESUS, AND ST JOHN (Madonna
della Sedia) Raphael Page 31]
A great artist, Millais, painted a picture of the boy Jesus, representing
Him as cutting His finger with a carpenter's tool, and running to His
mother to have it bound up. Did John witness any such incident? How
little did he think of a deeper wound he was yet to behold in that same
hand.
We cannot answer such questions. These things were possible. They
help us to think of Jesus as a boy, like other boys. James and John
thought of Him as such only until long after the days of which we are
speaking.
While thinking of John and Jesus as cousins, we may also think of a
kinsman of theirs, a second cousin of whom we shall know more. John
was to have a deep interest in both of the others, and they were to have
more influence on him than all other men in the world.
There were some things common to them all. They were Jews.
According to Jewish customs they were trained until six years of age in
their own homes. Their library was the books of the Old Testament.
They learned much of its teachings. They read the stories of Joseph,
Samuel and David. At six they went to the village school, taught by a
Rabbi. Some attention was paid to arithmetic, the history of their nation,
and natural history. But, as at their homes, the chief study was the
Scriptures. They were taught especially about One--"Of whom Moses
in the law and the prophets did write." Let us remember those words for
we shall hear them again. That One was called the Messiah--He whom
we call Jesus, the Christ, the Saviour of the world. He had not then
come. We look back to the time when He did come: those boys looked

forward to the time when He would come. The Messiah was the great
subject in the homes of the pious Jews, and in the synagogues where
old and young worshiped on the Sabbath.
[Illustration: CHRIST AND ST. JOHN Winterstein Page 34]

CHAPTER IV _The Great Expectation in John's Day_
Moses wrote of a promise, made centuries before the days of John, to
Abraham--that in the Messiah all the nations of the earth,--not the Jews
only--should be made happy with special blessings. Isaiah and other
prophets wrote of the time and place and circumstances of His coming,
and of the wonders He would perform.
The Jews understood that the Messiah would descend from David.
They believed that He would sit "upon the throne of David," ruling first
over the Jews, an earthly ruler such as David had been, and then
conquering their enemies; thus being a great warrior and the king of the
world.
But they were sadly mistaken in many of their ideas of the Messiah.
They had misread many of the writings of the prophets. They had given
wrong meanings to right words. They made real what was not so
intended. They overlooked prophecies about the Messiah-King being
despised, rejected and slain, though God had commanded lambs to be
slain through all those centuries to remind them of the coming
Messiah's cruel death. Each of those lambs was a "Lamb of God."
Remember that phrase; we shall meet it again. They looked for
wonders of kinds of which neither Moses nor the prophets had written.
Many did not understand what was meant by the kingdom of God in
the hearts of men, as differing from the earthly kingdom of David.
They did not understand that Messiah's kingdom would be in the hearts
of all people.
With such mistaken views of the Messiah at the time of which we are
writing, the Jews had not only the great expectation of the centuries,

but the strong belief that Messiah was about to appear.
A great event had happened which made them especially anxious for
His immediate coming. The Jewish nation had been conquered by the
Romans. The "Glory of All Lands" was glorious only for what it had
been. Galilee was a Roman province which, like those of Judæa and
Samaria, longed for the expected One to free them from the Roman
yoke, and show Himself to be the great Messiah-Deliverer of the Jews.
They were prepared to welcome almost any one who claimed to be He.
Such an one was at hand.
In those days appeared a man who has been known as Judas of Galilee.
He had more zeal than wisdom. In his anger and madness at the
Romans he was almost insane. He was an eloquent man. He roused the
whole Jewish nation. Multitudes welcomed him as the promised
Messiah. Thousands gathered around him; many of them fishermen,
shepherds, vine-dressers and craftsmen of Galilee. They