As we approached nearer to Bethlehem, we met a considerable stream of people going up to Jerusalem. Probably, the fact that it was the Easterweek was drawing many to the city, and to the scenes which were being enacted in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Our notice was particularly attracted by one little company. A husband and wife, cleanly and comfortably dressed, were travelling with one beautiful child. The child was placed in a small cot or cradle on the back of a good-natured donkey, which evidently did not feel its load to be burdensome, and which was neatly adorned by a saddle covered with red morocco leather, and thickly padded in order to make the seat of the infant more comfortable. One of the parents walked on either side of the animal, watching his every motion, lest their little one should receive any harm. We liked the picture of young parental love, and of that smiling creature knitting in one the two hearts by another bond. Was it unnatural or irreverent that, in the circumstances, we should have called to mind Joseph and Mary going up with their wonderful child by the same road so long ago, to "present him before the Lord"?

We were now so near Bethlehem that we could look straight down into the broad valley that lies between the gardens of the town and a range of lofty hills which bounds it northward, the faroff purple-tinted mountains of Moab forming its apparent limit to the east. Down in the valley, there seemed to spread before us the whole scene of the inimitable story of the Book of Ruth that exquisite miniature representation of divine providence that sacred drama with its beginning, its middle, and its end. The land near us-part of which had quite recently been under the plough, while other parts were green with the braird of wheat or barley-was uninclosed, as in those olden times so many thousand years since. It scarcely required an effort of fancy to fill up the scene again with its living figures,-to picture the honest, manly Boaz down on those paternal fields; the jocund reapers plying their busy sickles; poor maidens gleaning behind them; while Ruth, the beautiful stranger from Moab, mingles silently with them, and gathers handfuls in her ample veil, to be taken home to Naomi and beaten out at nightfall. We could even imagine ourselves

to hear the kindly salutations that passed at intervals between the genial yeoman and his dependents; "The Lord be with thee," and, "The Lord bless thee," exactly corresponding with the "Allah m'akum" of ordinary greetings in the same region now. We were too early in the season to witness a Bethlehem harvest, though the barley crop was expected to ripen in a few weeks, according to the order indicated in the Book of Ruth. But we were assured that every minute custom painted on that olden canvas remains unchanged, even to the occasional rudeness of the modern fellahin to the unprotected gleaners; for those Bethlehemites are a turbulent race, and when riots occur in Jerusalem at the annual festivals, they are usually the foremost and most fearless in the fray.

And as we turned and looked on those neighbouring hills with their steep sides and craggy summits, and saw the browsing goats and sheep, how easy it was to imagine the youthful son of Jesse watching his father's flocks up yonder, and at night gazing up with his poet's eye upon the beautiful moon and the silent stars! It was quite the scenery which suited for the natural education of the future poet-king of Israel. We do not indeed believe that nature can produce a poet. It is certain that even unfavourable outward circumstances are unable to repress the "faculty divine" where it exists in much strength. The late James Montgomery wrote some of his best compositions when looking out from a dingy apartment on a dull brick wall in Sheffield. But nature can do much in developing a poet, in exercising his imagination, in storing his mind with visions of beauty and grandeur; and it is to the point to notice that the poet whom we have named, always wrote best after an excursion among the finest scenery in Warwick or Derbyshire. We cannot doubt that God silently educated David among those scenes on which we were then looking, for his great work as the chief poet and psalmist of the Church for all time; for men of his temperament receive some of their best and most lasting lessons outside the walls of schools and universities. From those hills he could see at the same moment the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; he could look down upon the scenes of soft beauty and abundance around Beth

lehem, and out upon the wild grandeur of the distant mountains; while he could witness the rapid changes of the seasons and the terrible war of the elements, and hear the voice of God in the roll and crash of the thunder, with allusions to which his psalms abound.

And there was an education by external nature beyond this. The life of a shepherd in those scenes was one of constant hardship and peril. The lion and the bear which lurked among those rocks, or down near the course of those mountain torrents, were a formidable vermin to deal with, and had often to be encountered single-handed; not to speak of occasional raids of Ishmaelites up from the desert, or of Philistines from the west stealing along those long gorges of which Bethlehem was the centre, and hungering for plunder, if not thirsting for blood. Experiences like these familiarized the young shepherd with daring adventure, and drew out in him fertility of resource; while his frequent search after a lost lamb or kid would make him acquainted with all the surrounding regions, would prepare him for the time, not many years distant, when, as the prophetic king of Israel, he would be hunted for his life by the jealous and ignoble Saul over all that part of Southern Judea, and he would find the advantage of his knowledge of every inaccessible spot, and natural hiding-place, and narrow mountain-pass where a few brave and true men would be able to resist a thousand.

It is a fact worth noting that the presents which Jesse sent by David to Saul, when he was called away from his adventurous shepherd-life to become a minstrel before the king and dispel his moods of melancholy, are the most common products of the district at this hour, such as we should expect to be sent to a sheik or chief in that neighbourhood now. "Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul."

We were now entering Bethlehem. Its name signifies "the house of bread," and it is rather curious that the first sound we heard, as we passed through its gate, was the cheerful one of the grinding of a mill. The little town is said to contain about four thousand inhabitants, the greater number of whom are Christians of the Greek Church. It is indeed the most Christian

town in Palestine, and contains so few of the followers of Mahomet, that it has not even a Moslem quarter. We were struck by its general look of respectability, the comparative superiority of its houses in respect of structure and comfort, and the many picturesque and lively groups of people whom we saw in its principal street as we rode along on our way to the convent. Was it some such group as one of these that recognized the sad and widowed Naomi, as she reappeared suddenly at some corner, after her long absence of ten years? Long before our visit to the Holy Land, Lieutenant Van de Velde had informed us of the contrast in cleanliness and comfort observable throughout all Palestine between a Christian and a Mohammedan village; and every week of our journeyings confirmed his representation. Even a very imperfect form of Christianity lifts a people far above the Moslem standard. When we compared the Christian Bethlehem with the Moslem mud-village of New Jericho, which we saw a few days afterwards, we felt that we were looking upon a state of existence as widely apart as that between a Norwegian cottage and a Hottentot's kraal.

But here we were, at last, at the door of the Church of the Nativity, beneath whose roof, it is affirmed, "Mary brought forth her first-born Son." Ten clamorous Bethlehemites offered to take charge of our quiet ultra-phlegmatic Arab horse. We had some doubts, as we selected one strong fellow for the custody of our charger, with our good saddle and bridle from Scotland, whether we should ever see them again-each of the ten seeming ready to contend for the poor animal as his own lawful prize. But there was nothing for it but to run the hazard.

An iron gate is opened cautiously, by which only one person can enter at a time; and the roof is so low at the entrance that you almost need to bend double in order to gain admission. In all this it was easy to discern precautions against sudden surprises from Bedouins and others who might have covetous thoughts about the treasures within. To diminish the danger of angry collisions between the different Churches, the sacred house is divided among the Greek, Latin, and Armenian Christians, to each of whom separate parts of the structure are assigned as places of

worship and dwellings for the monks. In the portion which has been allotted to the Greek communion, you are shown a marble star on the floor, corresponding, as the monks tell you, to the point in the heavens where the supernatural luminary shone, and directly over the scene of the nativity in the subterranean church beneath. With your curiosity quickened, you descend fifteen steps, and are conducted through a long passage into what was originally a cave or grotto cut out of a limestone rock on the ridge of the mountain against which this part of the convent abuts; and this, you are assured, is the scene of our Redeemer's birth. It is an apartment of moderate size and height, everywhere lined and floored with marble. It is illuminated by thirtytwo golden lamps, which are kept burning day and night, all of them the gift of Christian princes. The precise spot of the nativity is indicated by a glory in the floor composed of marble and jasper, and encircled by a wreath of silver, around which these words are inscribed, “Hic de Virgine Maria, Jesus Christus natus est" (Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary). An altar infixed in the rock spreads over it. The original manger is reported to have been carried to Rome; but at the distance of seven paces another manger is shown, carved out of marble, and corresponding in shape and size to the original. In front of this is the so-called altar of the Magi, on which incense is kept continually burning.

Is this then the actual spot where the Saviour of the world was born, and divinity condescended to become enshrined in our humanity? To judge dispassionately on this question, it is necessary that we first dismiss from our minds the thought of all those misplaced ornaments and monkish inventions with which the place is deformed and every sign of simplicity and humiliation so completely obliterated, and that we endeavour to reproduce the lowly picture so graphically traced for us by the pen of Luke. But when we have done this, and looked at the evidence which speaks in favour of this spot, we feel that it cannot be dismissed lightly. We must distinguish between late inventions and those early authentic documents out of which history obtains some of her most precious and reliable materials. Now, it is

a fact that Justin Martyr, writing somewhat more than a century after the event, and from his native town of Sichem, only forty miles distant,— familiar, we may presume, with the country and with its fresh local traditions, is most distinct and unhesitating in his statement that the scene of our Lord's birth was in a rock cavity in this old city of David. The fact was repeated through the following centuries by Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and others of the early Christian fathers; and many ages before the days of Jerome, this spot was marked off and enclosed within a sacred building as the shrine of the Nativity. What facts are there to set over against these and to displace them ?-more especially when it is remembered that in that region, then as now, natural or artificial caverns hewn out of the white limestone rock were frequently taken advantage of in the formation of human habitations?

As we read the inspired narrative of our Lord's birth in the light of Eastern scenes and customs, it seems to amount to this. There was a public khan or caravanserai in Bethlehem in those days for the accommodation of strangers. We never saw such a khan in modern Palestine; but we afterwards found shelter in one among the Lebanon Mountains. We remember there was a court in the centre, where our mules and horses rested and fed. Around this court there were little apartments or cells where travellers could eat and sleep. But sometimes also, as Dr. Kitto mentions, behind those apartments, and on a lower level, there were stalls or recesses where cattle could be sheltered. It was probably to such a place in Bethlehem that Joseph and Mary came, late in the evening and wearied with their long journey from Nazareth. They found every room in the house already occupied. What were they to do at that late hour, for it was the only caravanserai in the little town? There was a natural cave or arcade formed out of the rock, in which the horses and mules of strangers sometimes received their provender. This was divided into a number of recesses; and in one of these, curtained off from the rest, the young virginmother found quiet in the hour of her extremity; and her sorrow was soon turned into great joy by the birth of Him "in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed." What a scene for the