Chapter V: Part III: Christ’s Boyhood

“So close is glory to our dust,
So near is God to man;
When duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.”—EMERSON.

ONE great difficulty meets the student of our Lord’s life and character, from whatever side, and with whatever purpose, he may approach it. The whole authentic record of that life, up to the time of His baptism, when He was already thirty years old, is comprised in half-a-dozen sentences. All that we know is the story of His visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve, when He was lost in the crush of the great feast, and His parents turned back to look for Him: “And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and His mother said unto Him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them. And He went down to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.”

The silence of the evangelists as to all other details of His youth and early manhood, except this one short incident, which belongs rather to His public than to His private life, is intended no doubt to fix our attention on the former, as that which most concerns us. At the same time it is impossible for those who will follow, as best they may, Christ’s steps and teaching, setting before themselves that highest outcome and aim of it all, “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” not to turn often in thought to those early years of His in which the weapons must have been forged, and the character formed and matured, for the mighty war.

And it cannot be denied that, to such seekers, this short Temple story is in many ways baffling, even discouraging. There is something at first sight, wilful indeed, possibly courageous, but not manly, in a boy of twelve staying behind his parents in a strange city, without their knowledge or consent; something thoughtless, almost ungracious, in the words of reply to Mary’s “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing”—“How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (or “in my Father’s courts,” as the words are more truly translated).

The clue to this apparent divergence from the perfect manly life is given with rare insight and beauty in Mr. Holman Hunt’s great picture. At any rate the face and attitude of the boy there seemed for the first time to make clear to me the meaning of the recorded incident, and to cast a flood of light on those eighteen years of preparation which yet remained before He should be ready for His public work. The real meaning and scope of that work, in all its terrible majesty, and suffering, and grandeur, have just begun to dawn on the boy’s mind. The first sight of Jerusalem, and of the Temple, has stirred new and strange thoughts within Him. The replies of the doctors to His eager questionings have lighted up the consciousness, which must have been dimly working in Him already, that He was not altogether like those around Him—the children with whom He was accustomed to play, the parents at whose knees He had been brought up.

Many of us must have seen, all must have read of, instances of a call to their spirits being clearly recognised by very young children, and colouring and moulding their whole after-lives. We can scarcely say how early this awakening of a consciousness of what he is, of what he is meant to do, has come to this or that young child, but no one will question that it does so come in many instances long before the age of twelve. And so I think we may safely assume that when Christ came up for the first time to the feast which commemorated the great deliverance of His nation, the boy was already conscious of a voice within, calling Him to devote Himself to the work to which the God of His fathers had in like manner called in their turn, Moses, and Samuel, and David, and Elijah, and Judas Maccabæus, and all that grand roll of patriot prophets, and kings, and warriors, with whose names and doings He would be already familiar. Amidst all the pomp of the great festival He found the chosen people weighed down by a sterner and more degrading bondage than had befallen them in all their long annals. And all that He heard and saw in the holy city, amongst the crowds of worshippers, and the rabbis teaching in the Temple courts—the first view of the holy hill of Sion, the joy of the whole earth—the strange contrast of the eager traffic, the gross Mammon-worship, the huge slaughtering of beasts with all the brutal accompaniments, with that universal longing and expectation in those multitudes for the Messiah who should lead and work out the final deliverance and triumph of the people of God in that generation—must have stirred new questionings within Him, questionings whether that voice which He had been already hearing in His own heart was not only _a_ call, such as might come to any Hebrew boy, but _the_ call—whether amongst all that vast assembly He was not the one upon whom the supreme task must be laid, who must be the deliverer of this people, so certainly and eagerly looked for.

To the young spirit before whose inward eye such a vision is opening, all human ties would shrink back, and be for the moment forgotten. And, when recalled suddenly by the words of His mother, the half-conscious dreamy answer, “How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s courts, about His business?” loses all its apparent wilfulness and abruptness.

And so, full of this new question and great wonder, He 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 neighbours. 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 it 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 Himself and no other to whom the task was entrusted.

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 besides 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 recognise. 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 burthen 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 realise, 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.

In the time of preparation for the battle of life this is the true touchstone. Haste and distrust are the sure signs of weakness, if not of cowardice. Just in so far as they prevail in any life, even in the most heroic, the man fails, and his work will have to be done over again. In Christ’s life up to the age of thirty there is not the slightest trace of such weakness, or cowardice. From all that we are told, and from all we can infer, He made no haste, and gave way to no doubt, waiting for God’s mind, and patiently preparing Himself for whatever His work might be. And so His work from the first was perfect, and through His whole public life He never faltered or wavered, never had to withdraw or modify a word once spoken. And thus He stands, and will stand to the end of time, the true model of the courage and manliness of boyhood, and youth, and early manhood.

Before passing on to the public life of Christ, there is one point which has been raised, and upon which perhaps a few words should be said, although it does not directly bear upon our inquiry. I refer to the supernatural power which all Christians hold to have dwelt in Him, and to have been freely exercised within certain limits during His public career. Was He always conscious of it? And, if so, did He exercise it before His call and baptism? Here we get not the slightest direct help from the Gospel narratives, and (as has been already said) no reliance whatever can be placed on the apocryphal stories of His boyhood. We are therefore left to our own judgment and reason, and there must always be differences between the conclusions at which one man and another will arrive, however honestly each may search for the truth.

To me, however, one or two matters seem to be clear enough. The first is, that He had only the same means as the rest of us of becoming conscious of his relationship to God. For, if this were not so, He is no example for us, He was not “tempted like as we are.” Now the great difference between one man and another depends upon how these means are used; and, so far as they are used according to the mind and will of God, we gain mastery over ourselves and our surroundings. “As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of His attributes as we bring to it,” may be a startling saying of Mr. Emerson’s, but is one which commends itself to our experience and reason, if we only consult them honestly. Let us take the most obvious example of this law. Look at the relations of man to the brute creation. One of us shall have no difficulty in making friends of beasts and birds, while another excites their dread and hate, so that even dogs will scarcely come near him. There is no need to go back to the traditions of the hermits in the Thebaid, or St. Francis of Assisi, for instances of the former class. We all know the story of Cowper and his three hares from his exquisite letters and poem, and most of you must have read, or heard of, the terms on which Waterton lived with the birds and beasts in his Yorkshire home: and of Thoreau, unable to get rid of wild squirrels and birds who would come and live with him, or from a boat taking up fish, which lay quietly in his hand till he chose to put them back again into the stream. But I suppose there is scarcely one of us who has not himself seen such instances again and again, persons of whom the old words seemed literally true, “At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh; neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.”

I remember myself several such: a boy who was friend even with rats, stoats, and snakes, and generally had one or other of them in his pockets; a groom upon whose shoulders the pigeons used to settle, and nestle against his cheeks, whenever he went out into the stable-yard or field. Is there any reasonable way of accounting for this? Only one, I think, which is, that those who have this power over, and attraction for, animals, have always felt towards them, and treated them, as their Maker intended—have unconsciously perhaps, but still faithfully, followed God’s mind in their dealings with His creatures, and so have stood in true relations to them all, and have found the beasts of the field at peace with them.

In the same way the stones of the field are in league with the geologist, the trees and flowers with the botanist, the component parts of earth and air with the chemist, just in so far as each, consciously or unconsciously, follows God’s methods with them—each part of His creation yielding up its secrets and its treasures to the open mind of the humble and patient, who is also at bottom always the most courageous, learner.

And what is true of each of us beyond all question—what every man who walks with open eyes, and open heart, knows to be true of himself—must be true also of Christ. And so, though we may reject the stories of the clay birds, which He modelled as a child, taking wing and bursting into song round Him (as on a par with St. Francis’s address to his sisters the swallows at Alvia, or the flocks in the Marshes of Venice, who thereupon kept silence from their twitterings and songs till his sermon was finished), we cannot doubt that in proportion as Christ was more perfectly in sympathy with God’s creation than any mediæval saint, or modern naturalist, or man of science, He had more power than they with all created things from His earliest youth. Nor could it be otherwise with the hearts and wills of men. Over these we know that, from that time to this, He has exercised a supreme sway, infinitely more wonderful than that over birds and beasts, because of man’s power of resistance to the will Christ came to teach and to do, which exists, so far as we can see, in no other part of creation.

I think, then, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that He must have had all these powers from His childhood, that they must have been growing stronger from day to day, and He, at the same time, more and more conscious of possessing them; not to use on any impulse of curiosity or self-will, but only as the voice within prompted. And it seems the most convincing testimony to His perfect sonship, manifested in perfect obedience, that He should never have tested His powers during those thirty years as He did at once and with perfect confidence as soon as the call came. Had He done so His ministry must have commenced sooner; that is to say, before the method was matured by which He was to reconstruct, and lift into a new atmosphere, and on to a higher plane, the faith and life of His own nation and of the whole world. For it is impossible to suppose that the works which He did, and the words He spoke, at thirty—which at once threw all Galilee and Judæa into a ferment of hope and joy, and doubt and anger—should have passed unnoticed had they been wrought and spoken when He was twenty. Here, as in all else, He waited for God’s mind: and so, when the time for action came, worked with the power of God. And this waiting and preparation must have been the supreme trial of His faith. The holding this position must have been in those early years the holding of the very centre of the citadel of Man’s Soul (as Bunyan so quaintly terms it), against which the assaults of the tempter must have been delivered again and again while the garrison was in training for the victorious march out into the open field of the great world, carrying forth the standard which shall never go back.

And while it may be readily admitted that Christ wielded a dominion over all created things as well as over man, which no other human being has ever approached, it seems to me to be going quite beyond what can be proved, or even fairly assumed, to speak of His miracles as supernatural, in the sense that no man has ever done, or can ever do, the like. The evidence is surely all the other way, and seems rather to indicate, that if we could only have lived up to the standard which we acknowledge in our inmost hearts to be the true one—could only have obeyed every motion and warning of the voice of God speaking in our hearts, from the day when we first became conscious of, and could hear it—if, in other words, our wills had from the first been disciplined, like the will of Christ, so as to be in perfect accord with the will of God—I see no reason to doubt that we too should have gained the power and the courage to show signs, or, if you please, to work miracles, as Christ and His apostles worked them.

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