66

no such systematic and authoritative "Body of Divinity" to fall back upon as an infallible rule and guide. Not a single word did He write. Nor did another write at His dictation. As much as twenty years elapsed ere the first record was made, and any word of His, speaking as never man spake," was committed to writing. Not all, only the substance of Christ's personal teaching was thus, by others, not by any effort of His own, preserved to all future ages. This fact now clearly indicates, that in the mind of Christ Himself, the power or principle of salvation was not, under the form merely of moral suasion and conviction, inherent in His teachings. And, full as much do we come short of the truth, if we attempt to limit and localize the power of salvation to a single point in our Lord's earthly career. Such localization of His mediatorial virtue, by reason of such prominence, ignores, at least seemingly, the saving significance and efficacy of all that preceded and all that succeeded that one event. There is no question that the whole life of Christ looked forward to its bloody issue on Calvary. The Scriptures make full and strong account of that great necessity. By type, and figure, and in sanguinary reality, they say: "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" But by immediately following that interrogative affirmation with the words, "And to enter into His glory," do they not express this clearly, that His death on the cross is not to be regarded as gathering up in itself exclusively all His mediatorial virtue and merit? That the completion of His redemptive work required His personal return to the "glory which He had with the Father before the world was." Sadly, indeed, both for Him and us, would His redeeming work have ended, had His burial not been followed by His resurrection and ascension.

Now, as we dare not thus, by giving exclusive prominence to His passion and death, ignore, as it were, the necessity of His final triumph over death and the grave, so neither can we ignore the necessity of that moral and spiritual development-that perfecting of character growing out of actual contact with and the repulsion of evil, as it crowded upon our human life at all points, and through all ages, from earliest childhood to the crowning glory of manhood. Hence, the mediatorial merit of Christ we find linked to His person, as He meets successively the trials and temptations, the sufferings and sorrows, the strivings and struggles, the sins and sighings incident to every stage of human life. We find redeeming virtue in the obedience of His childhood-His patient subjection to His reputed parents. We regard His experiences and privations in this period, although in the sacred record not standing out boldly, like the salient points of a painting, yet, even as the light clouds and the tinted foliage, all the shaded and softened lines of beauty are necessary to the completeness of that projected landscape, as truly meritorious as His agony in the garden and His death on the cross. And this ought not to sound strange to any ear, at all events, familiar with the answer in the Heidelberg Catechism to the question: "What dost thou understand by the word suffered?" The same thought has ample support in the ultimate appeal for all truth touching the work of human redemption.

Vigorously has an English divine said: "In Christ the Divine and Human blended; Immutability joined itself to mutability. There was in Him the Divine which remained fixed; the Human, which was constantly developing. One uniform idea and purpose characterized His whole life,

with a Divine immutable unity throughout, but it was subject to the laws of human growth. For the soul of Christ was not cast down upon this world a perfect thing at once. Spotless? Yes. Faultless? Yes. Tempted in all points without sin?—Yes. But perfection is more than faultlessness. All Scripture coincides in telling us, that the ripe perfection of His manhood was reached step by step. There was a power and a life within Him which were to be developed, and which could only be developed, like all human strength and goodness, by toil of brain and heart. Life up-hill all the way; and every foot-print by which He climbed left behind for us, petrified upon the hard rock, and indurated into history forever, to show us when, and where, and how He toiled and won."

Though seldom a topic of pulpit ministration or religious literature, the childhood of Jesus, in its development and discipline, is full of significance

and instruction.

There has always been a prurient curiosity to know something about the boyhood of great men. It is taken for granted, that persons who stirred the men of their age with their eloquence, or guided the destiny of empires, or achieved some military greatness, or rose to eminence in the sphere of letters, science, or mechanic arts, must already in boyhood have given some evidence of such precocity of intellect, or executive talent, or faculty to sway and command. And biographers generally minister to this appetite for the marvellous. Some remarkable incidents, happening in the formative period of their character whose life they are writing, are seized upon as strong prophecies of their after greatness. The biographers of Napoleon, with evident delight, thus relate, how, when a student at the Military Academy at Brienne, he directed one very severe winter, the building of snow fortifications, and then headed the storming party which, after several days of hard fighting, succeeded in capturing the works. Only recently it has been discovered that Lieut. Gen. Grant, when a child of but two years old, fired off a pistol, and was so much delighted with the operation as to want to repeat the experiment. The biographers of Sir Isaac Newton, the great mathematician and the discoverer of the laws of gravitation, relate how, when quite a small boy, he was found by one of his uncles beneath a hedge studying the propositions of Euclid. On the authority of the Rabbis, Josephus tells us of Moses, how, when the King of Egypt took the rescued infant from his daughter's arms, and playfully put the glittering crown on his head, he pettishly took it off and threw it down. And Josephus tells us of himself, with a large admixture of selfconceit, how, when a boy, no more than fourteen years of age, he was actually consulted on points of law by the high priests and principal men of Jerusalem.

The writers of the Apocryphal Gospels make sad work of the childhood of Jesus in attempting to make Him out a great prodigy. Miracles wholly incongruous with His high and holy character are ascribed to Him in infancy and youth. St. John expressly tells us, that "the beginning of miracles" was the transmutation of water into wine at the marriage at Cana of Galilee. But these Apocryphal Evangelists, ambitious of showing how His power of working miracles very early manifested itself, hesitated not to invent the most absurd stories. They tell us, how, on one occasion, in His anger He turned into kids children who refused to play with Him; how, on another, when a boy accidentally ran against Him and threw Him

over, He, in His quick revenge, said: "Fall thou also, and never rise again," and the child immediately expired.

The proverb is a current one: "The boy is father to the man." The proverb is founded in truth. It rests on indubitable facts. From such a childhood then as is attributed by these Apocryphal writers to Jesus, we should naturally expect such a boy to grow up a capricious, passionate, vindictive and revengeful person, a character vastly different from the "meek and lowly" Jesus of the true Gospels.

Even when those Apocryphal writers do not represent Him in similar acts, possessing a vindictiveness wholly incompatible with His gracious character and mission, their conception of Him evidently rises no higher than that of a sportive conjurer. They tell us, how, on one occasion, He and His companions having moulded birds out of clay, and, on clapping His hands, His fly away; how, on another, going into a dyer's establishment, and finding the dyer out, He threw all the garments in the place into a vat of one color, but, lo, when taken out, each was of the precise color ordered.

These absurd stories of the Apocryphal Evangelists, serve to impress us with the grandeur of the solemn stillness and reserve of the true Gospels, touching the period of His youth. In contrast, how sublime is this single, simple touch given of His childhood, in these words of St. Luke's account: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." These words place Him before us as a true human child, growing up through childhood according to the laws of a true human development. He was a real child; not that human monstrosity, a man in a child's form and in child's years. He was not that extraordinary prodigy, out of the common course of nature, exciting the wonder and astonishment of all, which the Apocryphal Gospels represent Him to have been. By no act or word incongruous with that period, could He have obliterated the character of childhood. He could not have displayed the miraculous powers they ascribe to Him; otherwise it would not afterwards have been said: "Neither did His brethren believe in Him." Had He then manifested any such supernatural powers, His subsequent fame would have been no matter of surprise and wonder to His own towns people: "From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto Him, that even such mighty works are wrought by His hands? Is not this the carpenter; the son of Mary?" The "mighty works" of His perfect manhood surprised and astonished them, because, having known Him from His childhood, nothing of the kind had they seen in Him—nothing to awaken in their minds even the suspicion of the presence of such wondrous power. It must, therefore, be said of Christ in this early and formative period of His character, in the language of St. Paul: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child."

All this shows that His childhood was real and natural. It shows that, like every human child, He grew up in a normal way, under the eye and tuition of His parents, under the discipline and training of a true home life; but unlike the merely human child, "without sin." In this respect only, He differed from the children of all previous and subsequent ages.

It is a beautiful and suggestive thought, that Jesus, the Eternal Son of God, had a "human and progressive childhood;" that He grew within

the sacred precincts and influences of a religious home. After all, it is there where the strongest and holiest characters are made. Men, like plants, are more vigorous for having grown for a season in the shade. They have had time to strike root; time to be "rooted and grounded” in the faith. The forcing, stimulating heat of any hot-bed arrangement spoils true character. It is under the gentle and genuine influences of a wellordered home, where is slowly but surely ripened and matured that strength of character indispensable to true greatness.

The age and the country have lost much in the loss of homes. There is no want of talk about our American homes; but, alas! the sacred reality seems to have passed away. Under the artificial stimulus of the fashionable order of things, we have long since ceased to have boys and girls; they are young men and young ladies, with the vanity of the coxcomb, and the finesse of the flirt. Boyhood and girlhood, as a period of necessary and wholesome discipline, has been swept away as an antiquated and obsolete idea. How much is lost to the youth themselves because of the artificial and forced culture of mind and feelings, so largely in vogue at the present day! In education, the ornamental and the showy supersede the solid and useful. Fashionable airs take the place of good common sense, in social life. The airy nothingness of fluent conversation passes for the possession of fine colloquial powers. Genuine feeling is crushed beneath the superabundant rubbish of current sentimentalism. Home, as a place of filial subjection, and youth as a season of obedience and deference to others, have lost this original and sacred character, and the result you find cropping out in every species of precocious and self-asserting independence. We have too much school-mannerism, and too little solid, sensible, hometraining.

Happy the child, who, under proper home-influences, awakens to the full consciousness of, and solid preparation for life's solemn responsibilities and duties. It was in the shade of such a pious home at Nazareth, where He acted, for a longer period than usual, the part of a grateful and obedient son, that Jesus came forth a matured and perfect Man.

Close attention to the words of the Evangelist will discover to us, that the early development and discipline of Jesus are spoken of under three particulars-physical growth, intellectual growth, moral and spiritual

growth.

He "increased in stature." There does not, at first sight, seem to be any thing striking in this declaration. But we shall find it full of significance touching the fact and reality of our Lord's incarnation. Asserting the fact of His bodily growth, it determines two things-the realness of His humanity, and, in order to the redemption of our human life in its separate stages, the absolute necessity of His assuming our nature from the very beginning of our fallen life.

His physical growth shows He had a true human body. It was veritable flesh and blood, not an illusion; not the form and semblance only of a body, but a reality. It was no empty appearance, no show, no pantomime, no phantom, nothing apparitional, but an actual human body, subject to all the laws of physical growth. First the babe, then the boy, and then the man. Like as it is in the world of nature: "First the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear." Hence it is said, Jesus "increased in stature."

He advanced in age, and advancing in age, He gradually

grew in bodily proportions. With increasing years increasing size, and strength, and powers of endurance came. He was a babe in His mother's arms. At twelve years of age, He was large and strong enough to be found in the temple, conversing with the learned Rabbis.

But, besides defining the true humanity of Christ, the expression under consideration points out the necessity of His taking up our human life in its infantile beginning, in order to sanctify and redeem all stages of human existence. In this respect, and necessarily so, His human beginning differed widely from that of the first Adam. Adam and Eve were fullformed at once. They were made in the perfection of manhood, and the matured beauty of womanhood. In their case, there were no years of increasing stature; no successive stages of physical development and growth. But "forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood," Jesus became one with us in the cradle, as in the grave. To redeem our entire earthly life from the curse of sin and the thraldom of death, He started with the stream of our life in its fountain, where the placid waters seem to creep along, scarcely stirred by a single ripple, following it as it meanders over the sunny fields of childhood and early youth; following it on its appointed course as it sweeps along with a bolder and broader current, breasting the sorrows, bearing the duties, and braving the struggles incident to manly years, to pour at last the mighty gathering of its waters into "that unfathomed, boundless sea-the silent grave." Thus in all the stages of human existence, He was made "like unto His brethren." He was an in

fant for the sanctification of infancy; a child for the sanctification of childhood; a man for the sanctification and leadership of manhood, according to the sublime thought of Irenæus. He passed through the several stages of human life, up to the flowering period of manhood, bringing, with His fellowship of suffering and struggle, redemptive and mediatorial virtue to each and all.

But it is farther added, Jesus "increased in wisdom." The intellect is no less an essential part of true humanity than a human body. And as such, it is subject to the same process of development and expansion as the body. Its growth keeps pace with the growth of the body, until that attains the fulness of its stature. But there the growth of the intellect does not stop. Fresh acquisitions of learning, and larger stores of information, will be witnessed to in greater intellectual ability, and wider range of thought. One Alpine height scaled, inspires and helps him to scale the loftier peaks beyond.

The normal process of mental development is gradual. Some time always elapses before the child comes to full self-consciousness. He speaks of himself, not in the first, but the third person. It is two or three years before he comes to know himself as an individual distinct and separate from others. This dawning of consciousness is followed by steady acquisitions, but only in the common and ordinary way-by habits of inquiry, educational training, and collision with other minds. All acquisition of knowledge is marked by studious and persevering application. No natural brilliancy can supersede the necessity of plodding study. Wisdom is not intuitive, but acquired. Perseverance is rewarded by the largest acquisition. The sluggard falls behind. The faithful student sweeps onward. He gets more strength of intellect, wider stretch of mental vision, clearer apprehension of things, and a larger fund of knowledge by close and more tho