The Life of Christ Author:William Hanna Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. CHRIST AND HIS RRETHREN. WE like to follow those who by their sayings and doings have filled and dazzled '.he public eye, into the seclusion of their ... more »homes. We like to see such men in their undress, when, all restraint removed, their peculiarities of character are free to exhibit themselves in the countless artless ways and manners of daily domestic life. It brings them so much nearer to us, gives us a closer hold of them, makes us feel more vividly their kinship to us, to know how they did the things that we have all every day to do, how they comported themselves in the circumstances in which we all every day are placed. Great pains have been taken by biographers of distinguished men to gratify this desire. Quite apart, indeed, from any object of this kind, we could scarcely sit John vii . 1-9. down to write out an account of what we saw and heard in the course of two or three years' close intercourse with a friend, without dropping many a hint as to the minor modes and habits of his life. Is there nothing remarkable in the entire absence of anything of this kind in the narrative of the four Evangelists ? Engrossed with, what they tell us, we think not of what they have left untold ; think not, for example, that they have left no materials for gratifying the desire that we have spoken of—one so natural and so strong. It is, as if in writing these narratives a strong bias of our nature had been put under restraint. They say not a word about the personal appearance of their Master ; there is nothing for the painter or sculptor to seize on. They give us no details of his private and personal habits, of any peculiarities of look or speech or gesture, of the times or ways of his doing this thing or that. St. Mark, the most graphic describer of the four, tells us o...« less