showing, it is of importance to learn the mind of one whose speech is so full of life, and it is happily possible to do this from even the small collections we possess of his recorded sayings. {120} Quite apart from the human interest which always clings about the childhood of a significant man, the early years of Jesus have a value of their own, for it was to them that he always returned when he wished to speak his deepest thought on the relations of God and man. In the life and love of the home he found the truest picture of the divine life. This we shall have to consider more fully at a later point. Very little is said by the evangelists of the childhood and youth at Nazareth, but in the parables we have Jesus' own reminiscences, and the scenes and settings of the stories he tells fit in easily and pleasantly with the framework of the historical and geographical facts of his life at Nazareth. The town lies in a basin among hills, from the rim of which can be seen the historic plain of Esdraelon toward the South, Eastward the Jordan valley and the hills of Gilead, and to the West the sea. "It is a map of Old Testament history."[9] On great roads North and South of the town's girdle of hills passed to and fro, on the journey between Egypt and Mesopotamia, the many-coloured traffic of the East--moving no faster than the camel cared to go, swinging disdainfully on, with contempt on its curled lip for mankind, its work and itself. Traders, pilgrims and princes--the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them--all within reach and in no great hurry, a panorama of life for a thoughtful and imaginative boy. The history of his nation lay on the face of the land at his feet, and it was in the North that the Zealots throve. Was it by accident that Joseph the carpenter gave all his five sons names that stood for something in Hebrew history? Jesus himself says very little, if anything, of the past of his people, and he does not, like some of the Psalmists, turn to the story of Israel for the proof of his thoughts upon God. But it may be more than a coincidence that his countrymen were impressed with his knowledge of the national literature; and traces of other than canonical books have been found in his teaching. It implies a home of piety, where God was in all their thoughts. [Sidenote: His early life]