Bethlehem

This Book not only represents a past in which you are as much mixed up as with that other past six years ago, but, by God's appointment, it calls up associations, which, if they are less joyous, are on that very account more tender. That Will of God, which has laid you aside and given you, apparently for life, only pain and endurance for your portion in the work of His vineyard, has disappointed many hopes and frustrated many schemes, which were more dear to us than strangers can ever understand. Yet I trust that neither of us have, even so much as in thought, rebelled against it. The various ways of dividing or regarding the Life of our Blessed Lord have always interested you with a peculiar interest, and have indeed occupied you not a little. You sent me from the Holy Land a scheme of narrating His Life, in connection with the topography of Palestine, Egypt, and the Desert, which I once fondly hoped you would have been allowed to execute. Iwill now tell you what it is that I proposed to myself in this Book. There are several ways in which we may treat of the mysteries of the Three-and-Thirty Years of our dearest Lord. We may look at each of them singly as it is in itself, full of grace and beauty, and distinctively unlike any other. Secondly, we may