“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.