Page 79 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

78 THIRD BOOK OF
of the tyrant. After this event, he and his mother were conducted again by Joseph into the land of Is­ rael, where they resided in domestic retirement, and where "the child grew in wisdom, in age, and in grace, be re God and men." 1
5. That this wisdom was not acquired or learned in the sohools of the Jewish masters, but drawn from. the highest and purest of heaven's unts, Jesus gave: proof, when, in the twelfth year of his age, he stood in the temple of Jerusalem, and lled t e minds of all around him with wonder, at his knowledge and at his answers.
6. In the thirtieth year of his age, Jesus appeared · amongst the Jews, as the teacher and author of the Christian religion. In the mean time, John, the son· of the priest Zachary, whose birth and li had been mostwonder l,came rth omhiswilderness. _This· man, who, according to the declaration of the Most ise, as the greatest of those who had been born of women, stood as the medium-point between the 1 new and the old Testaments, and as a necessary link in the chain of divine revelation. Rejecting the pro ered honour of being reputed Elias, or even the Messias, he proclaimed aloud, with a voice from the. wilderness, that the kingdom of the Messias was at hand,-that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised : Redeemer,-that his kingdom was not national, nor of this earth. Our Lord, be re the commencement of his teaching, was baptized by Jobn, in the Jordan. His eternal Father then spoke; and whilst John, as l man, bore testimony to his divine Mission, Almighty God con rmed it by miracles from heaven. At this i period, Tiberius was emperor of Rome ; Pontius Pi­ late, governor of Judea; Ilerod Antipas, tetrarch of
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