Christ, the Boy

Bout Christ as a village lad, in and about Nazareth, we have nothing in the canonical books, and et it is as a boy that we must consider him. There is for the most part a silence more than eighteen centuries long about Christ between infancy and manhood. What kind of a boy was he? Was he a genuine boy at all, or did there settle upon him from the start all the intensities of martyrdom? We have on this subject only a little guessing, a few surmises, and here and there an unimportant “perhaps.” Concerning what bounded that boyhood on both sides we have whole libraries of books and whole galleries of canvas and sculpture. Before the infant Christ in Mary’s arms, or taking his first sleep in the rough out-house all the painters bow, and we have Paul Veronese’s “Holy Family,” and Perugino’s “Nativity,” and Angelico da Fiesole’s “Infant Christ,” and Rubens’ “Adoration of the Magi,” and Tintoretto’s “Adoration of the Magi,” and Chirlandojo’s “Adoration of the Magi,” and Raphael’s “Madonna,” and Orcagna’s “Madonna,” and Murillo’s “Madonna,” and Madonnas by all the schools of painting in all lights and shades, and with all styles of attractive feature and impressive surroundings, but pen and pencil and chisel have, with few exceptions, passed by Christ, the village lad. Yet by three conjoined evidences, I think we can come to as accurate an idea of what Christ was as a boy as we can of what Christ was as a man.

First, we have the brief Bible account. Then we have the prolonged account of what Christ was at thirty years of age. Now you have only to minify that account somewhat and you find what he was at ten years of age. Temperaments never change. A sanguine temperament never becomes a phlegmatic temperament. A nervous temperament never becomes a lymphatic temperament. Religion changes one’s affections and ambitions, but it is the same old temperament acting in a different direction. As Christ had no religious change. He was as a lad what He was as a man, only on not so large a scale. When all tradition, and all art, and all history represent Him as a blonde with golden hair, I know He was in boyhood a blonde.

Apocryphal History of Christ’s Boyhood.

We have, besides, an uninspired book that was for the first three or four centuries after Christ’s appearance received by many as inspired, and which gives a prolonged account of Christ’s boyhood. Some of it may be true; most of it may

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be true; none of it may be true. It may be partly built on facts, or by the passage of the ages some real facts may have been distorted. But because a book is not divinely inspired, we are not therefore to conclude that there are not true things in it. Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico” was not inspired, but we believe it although it may contain mistakes. Macaulay’s “History of England” was not inspired, but we believe it, although it may have been marred with many errors. The so-called apocryphal Gospel in which the boyhood of Christ is dwelt upon I do not believe to be divinely inspired, and yet it may present facts worthy of consideration. Because it represents the boy Christ as performing miracles some have overthrown that whole apocryphal book. But what right have you to say that Christ did not perform miracles at ten years of age as well as at thirty? He was in boyhood as certainly divine as in manhood. Then while a lad He must have had the power to work miracles, whether He did or did not work them. When, having reached manhood, Christ turned water into wine, that was said to be the beginning of miracles. But that may mean that it was the beginning of that series of manhood miracles. In a word, I think that the New Testament is only a small transcript of what Jesus did and said. Indeed, John declares positively that if all Christ did and said were written, the world would not contain the books. So we are at liberty to believe or reject those parts of the apocryphal Gospel which say that when the boy Christ with his mother passed a band of thieves. He told his mother that two of them, Dumachus and Titus by name, would be the two thieves who afterwards would expire on crosses beside Him. Was that more wonderful than some of Christ’s manhood prophecies? Or the uninspired story that the boy Christ made a fountain spring from the roots of a sycamore tree so that his mother washed his coat in the stream — was that more unbelievable than the manhood miracle that changed common water into a marriage beverage? Or the uninspired story that two sick children were recovered by bathing in the water where Christ had washed? Was that more wonderful than the manhood miracle by which the woman, twelve years a complete invalid, should have been made straight by touching the fringe of Christ’s coat? Or the uninspired story that when a mother brought a dead child by the name of Bartholomew to Mary, the mother of Christ, she said: “Do thou place thy son in my Son’s bed and cover him with His clothes;” and, so done, the dead child opened his eyes and called with a loud voice for bread. Is that more wonderful than the manhood miracles by which Christ reanimated the dead again and again without going where they were or even seeing them? Why should we disbelieve the apocryphal New Testament when it says that a boy struck the boy Jesus till He cried out, the one who made the assault afterward known as Judas Iscariot, or the story that Christ with other boys made clay figures of birds, and these clay figures took life and flew away? Is that more unbelievable than the Bible account that Adam was made out of clay and walked forth a man, and afterwards soared an immortal? Not half so much of an undertaking to make a bird out of clay as to make a man out of clay. Or the uninspired story that the boy Christ took the cloths of a dyer’s shop and threw them into the fire, and after the dyer’s protest and ejaculation, brought forth the cloths in the color that the dyer wished? Is that more unbelievable than the manhood miracle in the wilderness picnic, where five biscuits the size of your fist were turned into enough bread to feed five thousand and the fragments filled twelve baskets? Or the uninspired story that Joseph the father, as a carpenter, having orders to make a throne for the king at Jerusalem, and toiling two years upon it, found that after it was done it was two spans too short, and the boy took

hold of one side of the throne and his father the other side of it and pulled it to the right size? Is that any more wonderful than that after growing to manhood he folded up, as easily as you would a fan, a Galilean hurricane? Or the uninspired story that his comrades in their play brought dowers and crowned Him

MARY AND THE INFANT JESUS. — From the Painting by Van Dyck.

as a King? I should think they would have done so. Or the uninspired story that a boy hunting for eggs in a partridge nest was stung by a viper and the poisoned lad was brought on a couch to the boy Christ, and Christ asked to be taken with the afflicted child to where the child was bitten, and at Christ’s command the serpent with its own mouth drew forth the poison from, the wound? Why, Christ has been doing that through all the ages, namely, compelling the very things that wound us, under His sanctifying power, to bring us to health and Teinvigoration and eternal life. Or the uninspired stor>’ that children were playing on the housetop and the boy Christ was there and one of the children was shoved from the roof and fell to the ground and died, and the other children charged Christ with the misdemeanor, and the boy Christ said:” Charge not me with the crime, but let us leave it to the dead child to settle the controversy,” and the boy Christ said: “Zeinumus! Zeinumus! who threw thee down from the housetop? “Then the dead child spake and said: “Not Thou, but such a one did.” Was that more wonderful than Paul’s resuscitation of Eutychus, who fell from the window while the apostle was preaching? Or the uninspired story in the apocr>’phal New Testament which says that Christ the boy was taken to school, and Zaccheus, the teacher, told Him the first three letters of the alphabet, whereupon Christ the boy asked his teacher such profound questions concerning the alphabet that the teacher was confounded, and the boy Christ himself explained all to the teacher until Zaccheus said to Joseph, the father of the wondrous boy: “Thou hast brought a boy to me to be taught who is more learned than any master;” then the boy was taken to a more learned master who, angered at the boy’s questions, lifted his hand to whip Him, and the hand withered, as will all the hands lifted against Christ? Is that more wonderful than the scene positively recorded by Matthew where the D. D.’s and the IvL,. D.’s stood around Christ at twelve years of age in the Temple, utterly confounded at his precociousness? Or the story that Christ the boy, questioned by astronomers, told them the number of worlds, their size, their circuits; and, questioned by physicians, told them more about anatomy and physiology than they had ever dreamed of, the number of veins, arteries, nerves and bones? If Christ were divine, was He not able at ten or twelve years to describe the human system as well as though He had been fifty years standing at an operating table or in a dissecting room?

Early Impressions ot Christ.

In other words, while I do not believe that any part of the so-called apocryphal New Testament is inspired, I believe much of it is true; just as I believe a thousand books, none of which are divinely inspired. Much of it was just like Christ. Just as certain as the man Christ was the most of the time getting men out of trouble, I think that the boy Christ was most of the time getting boys out of trouble. He did not sit around moping over what was to be, or what was. From the way in which natural objects en wreathed themselves into His sermonsafter He had become a man I conclude there was not a rock or a hill or a cavern of a tree for miles around that he was not familiar with in childhood. He had cautiously felt His way down into the caves and had with lithe and agile limb gained a poise on many a high tree top. His boyhood was passed among grand scenery r.smost all the great natures have passed early life among the mountains. Thc’ may live now on the flats, but they passed the receptive days of ladhood among the hills. Our Lord’s boyhood was passed in a neighborhood twelve hundred feet above the level of the sea and surrounded by mountains five or six hundred feet still higher. Before it could shine on the village where this boy slept the sun had to climb far enough up to look over hills that held their heads far aloft. From yonder height his eye at one sweep took in the” mighty scope of the valleys and with another sweep took in the Mediterranean sea, and you hear the grandeur of the cliffs and the surge of the great waters in His matchless sermonology. One day I see that Divine boy, the wind flurrying His hair over His sun-browned forehead, standing on a hill-top looking off upon Lake Tiberias, on which at one time, according to profane history, were four thousand ships. Authors have taken pains to say that Christ was not affected by these surroundings, and that He from within lived outward and independent of circumstances. So far from that being true, He was the most sensitive being that ever walked the earth, and if a pale invalid’s weak finger could not touch His robe without strength going out from Him, these mountains and seas could not have touched His eye without irradiating His entire nature with their magnificence. I warrant that He had mounted and explored all the fifteen hills around Nazareth, among them Hermon, with its crystal coronet of perpetual snow, and Carmel and Tabor and Gilboa, and they all had their sublime echo in after time from the Olivetic pulpit.

Experiences from which He drew His Sublime illustrations.

And then it was not uncultivated grandeur. These hills carried in their arms or on their backs gardens, groves, orchards, terraces, vineyards, cactus, sycamores. These outbranching foliages did not have to wait for the floods before their silence was broken, for through them and over them and in circles round them and under them were pelicans, were thrushes, were sparrows, were nightingales, were larks. were quails, were blackbirds, were partridges, were bulbuls. Yonder the white flocks of sheep snowed down over the pasture lands. And yonder the brook rehearses to the pebbles its adventures down the rocky shelving. Yonder are the Oriental homes, the housewife with pitcher on the shoulder entering the door, and down the lawn in front children re’eling among the flaming flora. And all this Spring and song and grass and siuishinc and shadow woven into the most exquisite nature that ever breathed or wept or sung or suffered. Through studying the skybetween the hills Christ had noticed the weather signs, and that a crimson sky at night meant dry weather next day, and that a crimson sky in the morning meant wet weather before night. And how beautifully He made use of it in after years as He drove down upon the pestiferous Pharisee and Sadducee by crying out: “When it is evening ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red, and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times? “By day, as every boy has done, He watcned the hsLvnystrd fowl at sight of overswinging hawk cluck her chickens under wing, and in after years He said:” O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings! “By night He had noticed His mother by the plain candle-light which, as ever and anon it was snuffed and the removed wick put down on the candlestick, beamed brightly through all the family sitting-room as His mother was mending His garments that had been torn during the day’s wanderings among the rocks or bushes, and years afterwards it all came out in the simile of the greatest sermon ever preached: ’ * Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all who are in the house. I^et your light so shine.” Sometime when His mother in the autumn took out the clothes that had been put away for the summer He noticed how the moth-miller flew out and the coat dropped apart, ruined and useless, and so twenty years after He enjoined: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can corrupt.” Hisboyhood spent among birds and flowers, they all caroled and bloomed again fifteen years after as He cries out:” Behold the fowls of the air.”” Consider

the lilies.”

A Storm that Swept the Valley.

A great storm one day during Christ’s boyhood blackened the heavens and angered the rivers. Perhaps standing in the door of the carpenter’s shop He watched it gathering louder and wilder until two cyclones, one sweeping down from Mount Tabor and the other from Mount Carmel, met in the valley of Esdraelon and two houses are caught in the fury, and crash goes the one and triuniyhant stands the other, and He noticed that one had shifting sand for a foundation and the other an eternal rock for basis; and twenty years after He built the whole scene into a peroration of flood and whirlwind that seized His audience and lifted them into the heights of sublimity with the two great arms of pathos and terror, which sublime words I render, asking you as far as possible to forget that you ever read them before:” Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his houseupon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew.

and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. And ever>’ one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell; and great was the fall of it.”

Yes; from the naturalness, the simplicity, the freshness of His parables and similes and metaphors in manhood discourse I know that He had been a boy of the fields and had bathed in the streams and heard the nightingale’s call, and

MOUNT HERMON.

broken through the flowery hedge and looked out of the embrasures of the fortress, and drank from the wells and chased the butterflies, which travelers say have always been one of the flitting beauties of that landscape, and talked with the strange people from Damascus and Egypt and Sapphoris and Syria, who in caravans or on foot passed through His neighborhood, the dogs barking at their approach at sundown. As afterward He was a perfect man, in the time of which I write He was a perfect boy, with the spring of a boy’s foot, the sparkle of a boy’s eye, the rebound of a boy’s life and just the opposite of those juveniles who sit around morbid and unelastic, old men at ten.

Christ at the Bench.

But having shown you the divine lad in the fields, I must show you Him in
the mechanic’s shop. Joseph, His -father, died very early, immediately after the
famous trip to the Temple, and this lad had not only to support himself but to
support His mother, and what that is many of my readers know. There is a royal
race of boys on earth now
doing the same thing. They
wear no crown. They have
no purple robe adroop from
their shoulders. The plain
chair on which they sit is
as much unlike a throne as
anything you can imagine.
But God knows what they
are doing and through what
sacrifices they go, and
through all eternity God
will keep paying them for
their filial behavior. They
shall get full measure of
reward, the measure pressed
down, shaken together and
running over. They have
their example in this boy
Christ taking care of His
mother. He had been
taught the carpenter’s trade
by His father. The boy
had done the plainer work
at the shop while His father
had put on the finishing
touches of the work. The
boy al.so cleared away the
chips and blocks and shav-

,T 1 1 J 1 1 1 4-1 A CARPENTKR SHOP IN NAZARKTH.

mgs. He helped hold the

different pieces of work while the father joined them. In our day we have all kinds of mechanics and the work is divided up among them. But to be a carpenter in Christ’s boyhood days meant to make plows, yokes, shovels, wagons, tables, chairs, sofas, houses, and almost ever>’thing that was made. Fortunate was it that the boy had learned a trade, for, when the head of the family dies, it is a grand thing to have the child able to take care of hiniselt and help take care of others. Now that Joseph, His father, is dead, and the responsibility of familysupport comes down on this Boy, I hear from morning to night His hammer pounding, His saw vacillating. His axe descending, His gimlets boring, and standing amid the dust and debris of the shop, I find the perspiration gathering on His temples and notice the fatigue of His arm, and as He stops a moment to rest I see Him panting. His hand on His side, from the exhaustion. Now He goes forth in the morning loaded with implements of work heavier than any modern kit of tools. Under the tropical sun He swelters. Lifting, pulling, adjusting, cleaving, splitting all day long. At nightfall He goes home to the plain supper provided by His mother and sits down too tired to talk. Work! work! work! You cannot tell Christ anything new about blistered hands, or aching ankles, or bruised fingers, or stiff joints, or rising in the morning as tired -as when you lay down. While yet a boy He knew it all. He felt it all. He suffered it all. The boy carpenter! The boy wagon maker! The boy house builder! O Christ, we have seen Thee when full-grown in Pilate’s police couit room, we have seen Thee when full-grown Thou wert assassinated on Golgotha, but, O Christ, let all the weary artisans and mechanics of the earth see Thee while yet undersized and arms not yet muscularized, and with the undeveloped strength of juvenescence trying to take Thy father’s place in gaining a liveHhood for the

family.

Christ Teaching the Doctors.

But, having seen Christ, the boy of the fields and the boy in the mechanic’s -shop, I show you a more marvelous scene, Christ the smooth-browed lad among the long-bearded, white-haired, high-foreheaded ecclesiastics of the Temple. Hundreds of thousands of strangers had come to Jerusalem to keep a great religious festival. After the hospitable homes were crowded with visitors, the tents were spread all around the city to shelter immense throngs of strangers. It was very easy among the vast throngs coming and going to lose a child. More than two million people have been known to gather at Jerusalem for that national :feast. You must not think of those regions as sparsely settled. The ancient historian Josephus says there were in Galilee two hundred cities, the smallest of them containing fifteen thousand people. No wonder that amid the crowds at the time spoken of, Jesus the boy was lost. His parents, knowing that he was mature enough and agile enough to take care of Himself, are on their way home without any anxiety, supposing that their Boy is coming with sonie of the groups. But after a while they suspect He is lost, and with flushed cheek and a terrorized look they rush this way and that, saying: “Have you seen anything of my boy? He is twelve years of age, of fair complexion and has blue eyes and. auburn hair. Have you seen Him since we left the city?” Back they go in hot haste, in and out the streets, in and out the private houses and among the surrounding hills. For three days they search and inquire, wondering if He has been trampled under foot of some of the throngs or has ventured on the cliffs or fallen off a precipice. Send through all the streets and lanes of the city and among all the surrounding hills that most dismal sound,” A lost child! A lost child! ‘” And lo, after three days, they discover Him in the great Temple, seated among the mightiest religionists of all the world. The walls of no other building ever looked down on such a scene. A child twelve years old surrounded by septuagenarians, He asking His own questions and answering theirs. I^et me introduce you to some of these ecclesiastics. This is the great Rabbi Simeon! This is the venerable Hillel! This is the famous Shammai! These are the sons of the distinguished Betirah. What can this twelve-year L,ad teach them, or what questions can He ask worthy their cogitation? Ah, the first time in all their lives these religionists have found their match and more than their match. Though so young, He knew all about that famous Temple, under whose roof they held that most wonderful discussion of all history. He knew the meaning of every altar, of every sacrifice, of every golden candlestick, of every embroidered curtain, of every crumb of shewbread, of every drop of oil in that sacred edifice. He knew all about God. He knew all about man.. He knew all about heaven, for He came from it. He knew all about this world, for He made it. He knew all worlds, for they were only the sparkling morning dewdrops on the lawn in front of His heavenly palace. Put these seven Bible words in a wreath of emphasis:” Both hearing them and asking them questions.”

The Doctors Confounded.

We are not so much interested in the questions they asked Him as in the questions He asked them. He asked the questions not to get information from the doctors, for He knew it already, but to humble them by showing them the height and depth and length and breadth of their own ignorance. While the radiant Boy thrusts these self-conceited philosophers with the interrogation point, they put the fore-finger of the right hand to the temple as though to start their thoughts into more vigor, and then they would look upward and then they would wrinkle their brows and then by absolute silence or in positive words confess their incapacity to answer the interrogatory. With any one of a hundred questions about theology, about philosophy, about astronomy, about time, about eternity, He may have balked them, disconcerted them, flung them flat. Behold the boy Christ asking questions. He has the right to ask them. ‘It is Christ-like to ask questions. Answer them if you can. Do not say.: “I can’t be bothered now.” It is your place to be bothered with questions. If you are not able to answer, surrender and confess your incapacity, as I have no doubt did Rabbi Simeon and Hillel and Shammai and the sons of Betirah when that splendid Boy, sitting or standing there, with a garment reaching from neck to ankle and girdled at the waist, put them to their very wit’s end. It is no disgrace to say: “I don’t know.” The learned doctors who environed Christ that day in the Temple did not know or they would not have asked Him any questions. The fact that they did not know .sent Kepler and Cuvier and Columbus and Humboldt and Herschel and Morse and Sir William Hamilton and all the other of the world’s mightiest natures into their life-long explorations. Telescope and microscope and stethoscope and electric battery and all the scientific apparatus of all the ages are only questions asked at the door of mystery. Behold this Nazarene lad asking questions, giving everlasting dignity to earnest interrogation.

The best thing that Rabbi Simeon and Hillel and Shammai and the sons of Betirah ever did was in the Temple, to bend over the Lad who, first made ruddy of cheek by the breath of the Judean hills, and on His way to the mechanic’s shop where He was soon to be the support of His bereaved mother, stopped long enough to grapple with the venerable dialecticians of the Orient,” both hearing them and asking them questions.” Many have cried out in admiration of Christ, Ecce Homo! Behold the Man! or Ecc(; Dens! Behold the God! but I close this chapter by writing Ecce Adolesceus! Behold the Boy!

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