December 1927
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still about His Father’s business, until at last He bursts forth from His long concealment and shows Himself as the Son of the Highest. In the light of all this, what sacredness, what dignity surrounds those hidden years at Nazareth! The Divine. records give us little insight into those first thirty years of our Savior’s life, and we do well to refrain from imag inings and theorizings concerning that Blessed One. There is displayed the sublime wisdom of God in all that is recorded of our-Lord’s life on earth. God the Father made no appeal to the race, to listen to the teach ing of a Wonderful Babe, nor was mankind expected to witness miracles performed by an Extraordinary Child. The Father, All-wise, brings forth from the solitudes of Nazareth, His Perfect Servant, the matured Man, pre pared and molded for the great work and ministry He was sent to accomplish; and it is to Him God points, and announces Him with a voice from Heaven, “This is My beloved Son; in Whom 1 am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). . . . . Then it is He enters upon His public ministry, with out limitations, but endued with Divine fulness and power; He goes right on to the end and turns not back until He is able to declare: “It is finished.” BPjil “ I Am the Truth” Dr. H. H. Horne recently brought out a striking thought: “Not once does Jesus give a logical definition. How strange it would be to hear Jesus saying, with Aristotle; ‘Man is a rational animal.’ He impresses us, not, as seeking the truth as they, but as possessing the truth.”
down and -worshiped before that same little Babe, and poured their rich treasures at His blessed feet. There is, however, something wondrously sublime and sweetly reasonable in the very brief record of the infancy, childhood and youth of our Lord, till He reached the ma turity of manhood. He was no abnormity or monstros ity. There is nothing to shock our moral sense, or that could be considered incongruous. All that is told us of the first twelve years, of our Savior’s life is that, the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). Then a/t the age of twelve, we have the record of His visit with His parents to Jerusalem and the incident of His being found in the midst of the doctors in the Temple, followed by eighteen years /of silence. \Vh;it Divine reticence, what sublime and patient self-restraint are manifested in those thirty years passed quietly and unnoticed at Naza- retli! - But why was that one event, His being found in the Temple among the doctors, singled out from His child hood and recorded ? Do we not see in the answer He gave to Mary, His mother, that He was conscious of His own peculiar relationship to God as His Father, and that from henceforth He must be engaged in His Fathers business? He disowns the relationship to Joseph. He knows the mystery of His birth and acknowledges the relationship to Ma.ry, His mother. He is her son, accord ing to the flesh, but H-is Father is in Heaven. For a brief period lie had broken away from all earth ly bonds, and was hidden in His Father’s House, engaged in His Father’s business, for it was no act of disobedience. He was there according to the will of His Father. With that secret buried in His breast, He returns with Joseph and Mary to Nazareth, and lives those eighteen years of quiet submission, patiently waiting, yet we may be sure
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