“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 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 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 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 any preface or hesitation, with
the most perfect directness and confidence, the full gospel of the
kingdom of heaven: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand.” He takes for the text of his first discourse the passage in
Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, the recovery of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord,” and proceeds to expound how “this day
is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” And within the next few days
he delivers his Sermon on the Mount, of which we have the full record,
and in which we find the meaning, and character, and principles of the
kingdom laid down once and for all. Mark, that there is no hesitation,
no ambiguity, no doubt as to who he is, or what message he has to
deliver. “I have not come to destroy but to fulfil the law which my
Father and your Father has given you, and which you have misunderstood.
This which I am now unfolding to you is the meaning of that law, this
is the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Thus he springs at once, as it were, full-armed into the arena; and
it is this thorough mastery of his own meaning and position from the
first—this thorough insight into what he has to do, and the means by
which it is to be done—upon which we should fix our thoughts if we want
to understand, or to get any notion at all of, what must have been the
training of those eighteen years.
How had this perfect insight and confidence been reached? “This young
peasant, preaching from a boat or on a hill-side, sweeps aside at once
the traditions of our most learned doctors, telling us that this, which
we and our fathers have been taught, is not what the God of Israel
intended in these commandments of his; but that he, this young man, can
tell us what God did really intend. He assumes to speak to us as one
having authority. Who gave him this authority?” These, we know, are the
kind of questionings with which Christ was met at once, and over and
over again. And they are most natural and necessary questionings, and
must have occurred to himself again and again, and been answered by him
to himself, before he could have stood up to proclaim with the tone
of absolute authority his good news to the village congregations in
Galilee, or the crowds on the Mount, or by the lake.
Who gave thee this authority? We can only reverentially, and at a
distance, picture to ourselves the discipline and struggles by which
the answer was reached, which enabled him to go out without the
slightest faltering or misgiving, and deliver his full and astounding
message, the moment the sign came that the time had come, and that it
was indeed he to whom the task was intrusted.
But the lines of that discipline, which in a measure is also the
discipline of every one of us, are clearly enough indicated for us in
the story of the temptation.
In every subtle form this question must have been meeting the maturing
Christ day after day. Art thou indeed the Son of God who is said to
be coming to redeem this enslaved and degraded people, and with and
beside them all the kingdoms of the world? Even if these prophets
have not been dreaming and doting, art not thou at least dreaming and
doting? At any rate if that is your claim put it to some test. Satisfy
yourself, and show us, while satisfying yourself, some proof of your
title, which we, too, can recognize. Here are all these material,
visible things which, if your claim be true, must be subject to you.
Show us your power over some of them—the meanest, if you will, the
common food which keeps men alive. There are spiritual invisible
forces too, which are supposed to be the ministers of God, and should
therefore be under the control of his Son—give us some sign that you
can guide or govern the least of them. Why pause or delay? Is the
burden growing lighter on this people? Is the Roman getting year by
year less insolent, the publican less fraudulent and exacting, the
Pharisees and rulers less godless, the people, your own kin amongst
them, less degraded and less brutal? You are a grown man, with the full
powers of a man at any rate. Why are you idling here when your Father’s
work (if God be your Father) lies broadcast on every side, and no man
standing forth to “the help of the Lord against the mighty,” as our old
seers used to rave?
I hope I may have been able to indicate to you, however imperfectly,
the line of thought which will enable each of you for yourselves to
follow out and realize, more or less, the power and manliness of the
character of Christ implied in this patient waiting in obscurity and
doubt through the years when most men are at full stretch—waiting for
the call which shall convince him that the voice within has not been a
lying voice—and meantime making himself all that God meant him to be,
without haste and without misgiving.