In the first recorded public prayer of the Apostles after the
resurrection of our Lord he is called "THY HOLY CHILD JESUS."
The expression is a very beautiful one if we couple it with the
Master's declaration that the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is
the most like a little child, and that to become as a little child
is the first step toward fitness for the knowledge of spiritual
things.
There has been in this world one rare flower of Paradise,--a holy
childhood growing up gradually into a holy manhood, and always
retaining in mature life the precious, unstained memories of perfect
innocence. The family at Nazareth was evidently a secluded one.
Persons of such an elevated style of thought as Joseph and Mary,
conscious of so solemn a destiny and guarding with awe the treasure
and hope of a world, must have been so altogether different from the
ordinary peasants of Nazareth that there could have been little more
than an external acquaintance between them. They were undoubtedly
loving, gentle, and tender to every one, full of sympathy for
trouble and of kind offices in sickness, but they carried within
their hearts a treasury of thoughts, emotions, and hopes, which
could not be perceived by those whose spiritual eyes had never been
opened. It is quite evident from the surprise that the Nazarenes
manifested when Christ delivered his first sermon among them that
they had never seen anything unusual in the family, and that Christ
himself had been living among them only as the carpenter's son.
This case is not peculiar. The great artist or poet often grows to
manhood without one of his townspeople suspecting who he is, and
what world he lives in. Milton or Raphael might so have grown up
unknown in a town of obscure fishermen.
The apocryphal gospels have busied themselves in inventing legends
of this child-life of Jesus. Nothing so much shows the difference
between the false and the true as these apocryphal gospels compared
with the real. Jesus is represented there as a miraculous child,
using supernatural power for display among his schoolmates and for
the gratification of childish piques and resentments.
The true gospel gives but one incident of the child-life of Jesus,
and that just at the time when childhood is verging into youth; for
the rest, we are left to conjecture.
We are told that his infancy was passed in the land of Egypt.
Jesus was the flower of his nation,--he was the blossom of its
history,--and therefore it seemed befitting that his cradle should
be where was the cradle of his great forerunner, Moses, on the
banks of the Nile. The shadows of the Pyramids, built by the labors
of his ancestors, were across the land of his childhood, and the
great story of their oppression and deliverance must have filled
the thoughts and words of his parents. So imbued was the Jewish
mind with the habit of seeing in everything in their history the
prophecy and type of the great Fulfiller, that St. Matthew speaks
of this exile in Egypt as having occurred that the type might
find completeness, and that Israel, in the person of its Head and
Representative, might a second time be called out of Egypt:--
"That it might be fulfilled that was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet,
"Out of Egypt have I called my son."
We do not know with any definiteness the length of this sojourn in
Egypt, nor how much impression the weird and solemn scenery and
architecture of Egypt may have made upon the susceptible mind of
the child; but to the parents it must have powerfully and vividly
recalled all that ancient and prophetic literature which in every
step pointed to their wonderful son. The earliest instructions of
Jesus must have been in this history and literature of his own
nation--a literature unique, poetic, and sublime. But we have no
tidings of him till that time in his history when, according to the
customs of his people, he was of age to go up to the great national
festival at Jerusalem.
The young Jewish boy was instructed all the earlier years of his
life in view of this great decisive step, which, like confirmation
in the Christian Church, ranked him as a fully admitted member
of the house of Israel. It was customary to travel to Jerusalem
in large companies or caravans, beguiling the way with hymns of
rejoicing as they drew nigh to the holy city. Jesus, probably, was
one of many boys who for the first time were going up to their great
national festival.
One incident only of this journey is given, but that a very striking
one. After the feast was over, when the caravan was returning,
they passed a day's journey on their way without perceiving that
the child was not among the travelers. This--in a large company of
kinsfolk and acquaintance, and where Jesus might have been, as he
always afterward seemed to be, a great personal favorite--was quite
possible. His parents, trusting him wholly, and feeling that he was
happy among friends, gave themselves no care till the time of the
evening encampment. Then, discovering their loss, they immediately
retraced their steps the next day to Jerusalem, inquiring for him
vainly among their acquaintances. They at last turned their steps
toward the outer courts of the temple, where was the school of the
learned Rabbins who explained the law of God. There, seated at their
feet, eager and earnest, asking them questions and hearing their
answers, the child Jesus had awakened to a new and deeper life, and
become so absorbed as to forget time, place, friends, and everything
else in the desire to understand the Holy Word.
It is a blot upon this beautiful story to speak of Jesus as
"disputing" with the teachers of his nation, or setting himself
up to instruct them. His position was that of a learner; we are
not told that he asserted anything, but that he listened and
asked questions. The questions of a pure child are often the most
searching that can be asked; the questions of the holy child Jesus
must have penetrated to the very deepest of divine mysteries. Those
masterly discussions of the sayings of the Rabbins, which years
after appeared in the Sermon on the Mount, may have sprung from
seeds thus dropped into the childish mind.
But, while he is thus absorbed and eager, his soul burning with
newly kindled enthusiasm, suddenly his parents, agitated and
distressed, lay hold on him with tender reproach: "Son, why hast
thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee
sorrowing."
Jesus answers, as he so often did in after life, as speaking almost
unconsciously out of some higher sphere, and in higher language than
that of earth: "How is it that ye sought me? Did ye not know that I
must be about my Father's business?"
It seemed to say, "Why be alarmed? is not this my Father's house; is
not this study of his law my proper work; and where should I be but
here?"
But immediately it is added, "He went down to Nazareth and was
subject to them." Even Christ pleased not himself; the holiest fire,
the divinest passion, was made subject to the heavenly order, and
immediately he yielded to the father and mother whom God had made
his guides an implicit obedience.
We have here one glimpse of a consuming ardor, a burning enthusiasm,
which lay repressed and hidden for eighteen years more, till the
Father called him to speak.
That simple, natural utterance in the child's mouth--"My
Father"--shows the secret of the holy peace which kept him happy
in waiting. The Father was a serene presence, an intimate and
inward joy. In the beautiful solitudes about Nazareth the divine
benediction came down upon him:--
"I will be as the dew to Israel:
He shall grow as the lily,
And cast forth his roots as Lebanon."
These two natural symbols seem fittest to portray the elements of
that holy childhood which grew to holiest manhood. They give us, as
its marked characteristics, the shining purity of the lily and the
grand strength and stability of the cedars of Lebanon.