To-day I am in Nazareth, the home of Christ’s boyhood. Here He was brought as a baby after the flight into Egypt to escape the bloodthirsty Herod, and here He spent all but about four years of His life. The town is situated high up in the mountains of Galilee, within sixty miles of Jerusalem as the crow flies and sixty-seven miles from Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. It is within a day’s ride on horseback of Mount Carmel and within four hours of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee from which our Saviour called His apostles and where He first preached. Nazareth lies in a nest in the mountains. It is in a little amphitheatre of hills with a rough and ragged arena. The houses extend up the sides of the hills and there is hardly a level spot in the whole town. It has altogether less than twelve thousand inhabitants of whom about half are Mohammedans. The rest of the population is made up of Greek Catholics, Latins, and about two hundred Syrians of the Protestant faith. The town is full of churches and convents, and there are some great monasteries and hospices where pilgrims may stop over night. The homes of the people are rectangular structures, which look more like great stone boxes than houses. They are usually of one story, with a door and two windows, and most of them have flat roofs, which in the summer nights are used as resting and sleeping places. A number of the buildings are in gardens. Some have cactus hedges about them and others are shaded by cypress trees. There are many olive orchards, and figs grow here as luxuriantly as they did when Christ was a boy. The buildings of Nazareth are ugly, but as a whole the city and its surroundings are beautiful. I doubt whether there is more beautiful scenery to be found in England or Scotland, or even in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, for which God has done much. There are many fine views. One can stand in the city or near it and look out over the plain of Esdraelon, and by climbing the hills he can see Mount Carmel, where Elijah hid the prophets and later on slew the false prophets of Baal. It is only a few hours’ ride from Nazareth over the hill to the Sea of Galilee, where the Nazarene boys even now sometimes go fishing. I shall not soon forget a bird’s-eye view I had of the town last night. The moon was at its full, and its great round silver disk changed the night into day. Its rays mellowed the yellow limestone of the houses and transformed them to ivory. They softened the glare of the white, rocky roads, and made a fairyland of the mountains and valleys. From the top of the hills I could see the plain of Esdraelon, which in its fertility vies with the Nile Valley; and away off at the west lay the mighty Mediterranean, which stretches on for two thousand miles to Gibraltar and the Atlantic.