the plain by the shepherd's tower, to glean after
the reapers of Boaz. The sequel is as familiar
to us all as is the beginning: Ruth's patience,
her gentleness, her womanly submission, her
sweetness, and her affection, and the old man's
tender love, his patriarchal care of the fair young
gleaner, his substitution of himself for the
kinsman who would not obey the law of Moses,
and then the birth of Obed, from whom came
Jesse, and from Jesse David, and from David
all that the world possesses of the divine
in man—is it not a poem known by heart by us
all?

It was in Bethlehem, too, by the Tomb of
Rachel, that Saul went to prove if the kingship
bestowed on him by Samuel was acceptable to
the Lord; and it was on the wild uplands sweeping
round the peaceful plain, that David, the
youngest of the ten sons of Jesse, and the
despised, led forth his flocks, and learned how to
drive back to their lairs the wolf and the leopard,
and the Arab robber more dangerous than the
wild beast. He learned also how to sling
stones, to some purpose—how to make lutes and
harps—how to play on them when made—and,
most of all, how to utter the thought of his own
heart in such wise as should reach the hearts of
all men, and be words of power to the end of
time. He grew familiar with every cave and
glen, with every spring and well between Mar
Elias and Engedi. Familiar with every aspect of
nature, he learned the true poetry of nature; and,
after he had been secretly anointed by Samuel,
after he had been struck by Saul, and sent forth
as an exile and a wanderer up to the day of
the king's death, all these things learnt when he
was a poor despised herd-boy in his father's
house, became precious gifts to him, and helped
him where nothing else could have done. "Every
stone about Bethlehem seems to whisper of his
adventures and escapes," and the cave of Adullam
near the Mount of Paradise, and the passes
of Engedi near the shores of the Dead Sea,
were specially to be remembered by those who
cared to recal his adventures. After his time
the town of Bethlehem was as often called the
City of David as by its former name; and hence-
forth the ideas of David and Bethlehem are
inseparable.

Mr. Dixon's next point is the House of Chimham,
which he affirms to be the same as the
house of Boaz and of Ruth.

Five hundred years after, a "host of
fugitives, soldiers and husbandmen, nobles and
priests, with their flocks and herds, their
servants and slaves, came hurrying along the
road from Gibeon, chased by a phantom; men,
women, and children, either seated on asses, or
tramping along the stony paths; flying, they
knew not whither, from the wrath of King
Nebuchadnezzar. They marched by the site of
Jerusalem, where the temple was then a ruin,
and the palaces of Zion were dust. They crossed
the ridge of Mar Elias, taking their farewell
glance of the sacred hill. But near the tomb of
Rachel and the house of Ruth they paused and
pitched their tents, that they might take counsel
for the last time together, and inquire of  the
Lord what they should do, and which way they
should wend in that day of misery and despair.
Among the flying princes was Johanan; among
the flying prophets Jeremiah."

Then came the last and greatest idyl
connected with Bethlehem: in the House of
Chimham—now become the place of reception, the
khan, or inn as we translate it in the Bible—
Mary, the daughter of Joachim and Anna, gave
birth to her child, and the world's master.
She came up with her people to be taxed. The
khan was full of wayfarers, and there was no
room for her and her husband in the guest
chamber; but in the narrow cell where the asses
were stalled, the hour of her anguish and her
triumph came; and in Bethlehem, the House
of Bread, where Rachel died, and Ruth loved,
where David suffered, sinned, and repented—
in the House of Chimham, once the House of
Boaz, and now a hospitable khan open to all
comers—was born the man JESUS, in the future
to be accepted as the Messiah, the Sent to
a lost world.

Mr. Dixon has drawn a beautiful picture
of the early life of "Marian" (not Mary),
whom we style the Blessed Virgin, as her
quiet days passed tenderly and purely among
the flowers of Nazareth." In her ways of life,
she would act no otherwise than like the
young Hebrew women of her time, and of all
times. She would rise early in the day, and
going with her creel into the market-place,
fill it with melons and fresh figs, with green
cucumbers and grapes. At the third hour
she would recite her shema, and at the ninth
hour sing a psalm of David. In the evening
she would go down with her pitcher to the
well and fill it. On the Sabbath, after washing
hands, she would go up to .the synagogue
on the hill-top, where she would sit among the
women behind the sereen, and hear the sheliach
repeat the lesson set apart for that day. For
the rest of her simple and homely life, like the
women of her class in these Syrian villages at the
present hour, she would boil her pottage over a
wood fire, lay her maize on the flat roof to dry,
spin thread for her domestic use, sweep the dust
from her lewan at dusk, and, expecting her
husband and her son to come home, spread her mats
on the floor, and set her viands for them in the
shadiest nook of her little court. Our western
fancies, working through an instinct of nature
safer than half-knowledge, have made of this
simple life a pastoral full of grace and beauty.
Hearing that the best years of her youth and
womanhood were spent, before she yet knew
grief, on this sunny hill and side slope, her feet
being for ever among the daisies, poppies, and
anemones, which grow everywhere about, we
have made her the patroness of all our flowers.
The Virgin is our Rose of Sharon, our lily of the
valley. The poetry, no less than the piety of
Europe, has inscribed to her the whole bloom,
and colouring of the fields and hedges." So the
time passed—the girl became a woman, the
Virgin a mother, and the feet which hitherto