4. Messiah's Life for Thirty Years.--What was his manner of life during those thirty years? It is a question which the Christians cannot help asking in deep reverence, and with yearning love; but the words in which the Gospels answer it are very calm and very few. * * * * * His development was a strictly human development. He did not come to the world endowed with infinite knowledge, but, as St. Luke tells us, he gradually advanced in wisdom. He was not clothed with infinite power, but experienced the weakness and imperfections of human infancy. He grew as other children grow, only in a childhood of stainless and sinless beauty--as the "flower of roses in the spring of the year and as lilies by the waters." * * * * * It was in utter stillness, in prayerfulness, in the quiet round of daily duties--like Moses in the wilderness, like David among the sheep folds, like Elijah among the tents of the Bedouin, like Jeremiah in his quiet home at Anathoth, like Amos in the sycamore groves of Tekoa--that the boy Jesus prepared himself, amid a hallowed obscurity, for his mighty work on earth. His outward life was the life of all those of his age, and station and place of birth. He lived as lived other children of peasant parents in that quiet town, and in great measure as they live now.--Canon Farrar. 5. Was John the Elias?--"Art thou Elias?" said the messengers from Jesus to John. "And he saith, I am not" (John i). Afterwards, as Jesus, Peter, James and John were descending the mountain on whose summit they had seen in vision Moses and Elias, the following conversation occurred: JESUS: Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. DISCIPLES: Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?