“How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s courts, about his business?”

Full of this new question and great wonder, Christ went home to the village in Galilee with his parents, and was subject to them; and the curtain falls for us on his boyhood and youth and early manhood. But as nothing but what is most important, and necessary for understanding all of his life which we need for our own growth into his likeness, is told in these simple gospel narratives, it would seem that this vivid light is thrown on that first visit to Jerusalem because it was the crisis in our Lord’s early life which bears most directly on his work for our race. If so, we must, I think, allow that the question, once fairly presented to the boy’s mind, would never again have left it. Day by day it would have been coming back with increasing insistency, gathering power and weight. And as he submitted it day by day to the God whom prophet and Psalmist had taught[94] every child of the nation to look upon as “about his path and about his bed, and knowing every thought of his heart,” the consciousness must have gained strength and power. As the habit of self-surrender and simple obedience to the voice within grew more perfect, and more a part of his very being, the call must have sounded more and more clearly.

And, as he was in all things tempted like as we are, again and again must his human nature have shrunk back and tried every way of escape from this task, the call to which was haunting him; while every succeeding month and year of life must have disclosed to him more and more of its peril and its hopelessness, as well as of its majesty.

We have, then, to picture to ourselves this struggle and discipline going on for eighteen years—the call sounding continually in his ears, and the boy, the youth, the strong man, each in turn solicited by the special temptations of his age, and rising clear above them through the strength of perfect obedience, the strength which comes from the daily fulfilment of daily duties—that “strength in the Lord” which St. Paul holds up to us as possible for every human being. Think over this long probation, and satisfy yourselves whether it is easy, whether it is possible to form any higher ideal of perfect manliness.

And without any morbid curiosity, and I think with profit, we may follow out the thoughts which this long[95] period of quiet suggests. We know from the evangelists only this, that he remained in obscurity in a retired village of Galilee, and subject to his reputed father and mother. That he also remained in great seclusion while living the simple peasant life of Nazareth we may infer from the surprise, not unmixed with anger and alarm, of his own family, when, after his baptism, he began his public career amongst them. And yet, on that day, when he rose to speak in the synagogue, it is clear that the act was one which commended itself in the first instance to his family and neighbors. The eyes of all present were at once fixed on him as on one who might be expected to stand in the scribe’s place, from whom they might learn something, a man who had a right to speak.

Indeed, it is impossible to suppose that he could have lived in their midst from childhood to full manhood without attracting the attention, and stirring many questionings in the minds, of all those with whom he was brought into contact. The stories in the Apocryphal Gospels of the exercise of miraculous powers by Christ as a child and boy may be wholly disregarded; but we may be sure that such a life as his, though lived in the utmost possible seclusion, must have impressed every one with whom he came in contact, from the scribe who taught the Scriptures in Nazareth to the children who sat by his side to learn, or met him by chance in the vineyards or on the hill-sides. That he was diligent in using such[96] means for study as were within his reach, if it needed proof, would appear from his perfect familiarity with the laws and history of his country at the opening of his ministry. And the mysterious story of the crisis immediately following his baptism, in which he wrestled, as it were, face to face with the tempter and betrayer of mankind, indicates to us the nature of the daily battle which he must have been waging, from his earliest infancy, or at any rate ever since his first visit to Jerusalem. No one can suppose for a moment that the trial came on him for the first time after the great prophet to whom all the nation were flocking had owned him as the coming Christ. That recognition removed, indeed, the last doubt from his mind, and gave him the signal for which he had been patiently waiting, that the time was come and he must set forth from his retirement. But the assurance that the call would come at some time must have been growing on him in all those years, and so when he does come he is perfectly prepared.

In his first public discourse in the synagogue of Nazareth we find him at once announcing the fulfilment of the hopes which all around him were cherishing. He proclaims, without............