1 Thess. v, 23. John i, 14. Christ's Growth im plies no Im the growth in Nazareth. Be it also remembered that Jesus Christ, although he was Divine, was also human, possessing, like any one of us, a com. plete human nature, spirit, and soul, and body. As such, he was, like any one of us, under the law of growth. We all admit that he grew physically, dilating from the babe into the man. But it is no more mysterious that he should grow inwardly than that he should grow outwardly, mentally and morally than corporeally. The real problem, let me repeat, is the incarnation itself. Believe the greater thing, that the Word became flesh, and you can believe the lesser thing, that the enfleshed Word grew. But Christ's growth, be it carefully observed, implies no sort of imperfection. It is no sign perfection. of imperfection in a peach-tree that it does not bear peaches in spring. It is not necessary that an acorn should grow into an oak in order to its being perfect as an acorn. Each stage of vegetable growth-seed, blade, ear, full corn in the ear has its own characteristic perfectness. The Divine Man was perfect along the whole line of his human unfolding-perfect as a babe, perfect as a child, perfect as a youth, perfect as a man. Beware, then, of a phantom Christ. The Word made flesh was all he seemed to be. He was a real babe, with a babe's dawning consciousness; a real child, with a child's feelings, and thoughts, and griefs, and joys; a real youth, with a youth's buoyancies, and temptations, and aspirations, and opening vistas of vocation; a real man, with a man's full sense of mission or Christhood. Yes, Jesus Christ, as the Word made flesh, was under the law of growth, and as such advanced in wisdom and favor with God as well as in stature. And this growth does not seem to have been marked by anything striking. Had it been, the presumption is that his biographers would at least have hinted it. But their silence, with one exception, to be presently noticed, is absolute. They give us no hint of his personal appearance, or dress, or habits of life. From this silence-all the more impressive because in such sharp contrast with the apocryphal gospels of the infancy and youth—we may safely infer that the evangelists recorded nothing because they had nothing striking to record. The boy. Jesus doubtless grew up boy.Jesus like the other boys of Palestine--like them, olivecomplexioned, black-eyed, wearing the Jewish dress for youths, joining in innocent sports, attending school, learning a trade, observing the annual festivals, worshiping in the synagogue. Oh, there is something very impressive and touching in this silence of the evangelists concerning the thirty years at Nazareth. Had they told us that he was extraordinarily precocious; that he secluded himself in conscious sanctity from his fellows; that he wrought prodigies; that he grew up manifestly supernatural-we should have felt that he was Divinity indeed, but not humanity; One who was over us, but who was not with us and of us. We should have adored him, but never loved him; we should have knelt before him, but never kissed him. Thank God, it was not so. There does not seem to have been anything unusual in his Naza Obscurity of the Thirty Years. John i, 45, 46. John vii, 5. Luke xvii, 20. The Lumi tion. Luke ii, 41-50. rene career. The very silence here of the evangelists is thrilling, for it brings the Divine Man within the range of our human sympathies and affections, thoroughly identifying him with our average humanity. So entirely ordinary and even obscure was that Nazarene life, that Nathanael, who lived in the almost adjacent town of Cana, seems never to have even heard of Jesus. Even his brothers, brought up by his side, we are told with a touch of infinite pathos, did not believe on him. Unlike the pictures of the artists, that sacred head for thirty years was without halo. He grew up, as grows his own kingdom, without observation. But there was, as just hinted, one exception to nous Excep- this profound obscurity: it was his visit while a lad to Jerusalem. Although it is the only recorded incident of his life between his return as a babe from Egypt and his baptism on entering his public ministry, yet this incident is of rich significance, illuminating, like a broad band of sunlight, the whole of the thirty years. To this memorable exception let us now attend. The Passover Luke ii, 41, 42. Although Joseph and Mary, as devout Jews, must have been accustomed to go up every year to Jerusalem to attend the great feast of the Passover, it does not appear that Jesus had ever accompanied them. But now he is twelve years old, and therefore, according to the Jewish constitution, a "son of the law," entitled to the privilege of a personal participation in the sacred rites of Judaism. And so he accompanies his parents in their Passover ascent to Jerusalem. We can see the caravan, representing every family in Naza reth, starting from that provincial village, and winding between the green hills of Galilee. What historic spots they pass in their eighty miles' journey southward!-Jezreel, and Gilboa, and Dothan, and Samaria, and Shechem, and Jacob's Well, and Shiloh, and Gilgal, and Bethel, and Ramah, and Gibeon, and Mizpeh. At last their straining eyes catch a glimpse of the City of Psalm xlviii, God, so beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, the City of the great King. As their feet gain the crest of the last ridge of the mountains that are round about Jerusalem, they burst into one of the pilgrim psalms, or songs of ascent, perhaps the psalm beginning— I was glad when they said unto me, Within thy gates, O Jerusalem! Thus chanting, they enter the holy city, and begin the sacred festivities of Passover-week. 1, 2. Psalm cxxii. Missing Child. And now, having performed all the offices of The the great feast, doubtless according to the ritual which Moses fifteen centuries before had pre- Exodus xiii. scribed, the Galilean pilgrims break up their encampment, and start homeward. But the lad Jesus for some reason remains behind. As the caravan consists of many Galileans besides those from Nazareth, and as, according to an Eastern custom still prevailing, it starts for the first day late in the afternoon, going but a little distance, Joseph and Mary, taking it for granted that their dear Child, ever so filial and loving, is somewhere The Boy Jesus ple. Luke ii, 45-50. in the general caravan, do not miss him till they reach their first encampment. Great is their surprise and anxiety when at nightfall they can not find their loved Boy in the tents of any of their kinsfolk or acquaintances. And so at early dawn they retrace their steps in the Tem- to Jerusalem, and spend the second day in fruitless search for him. The third day they bethink themselves of what as we might have supposed would have been their first thought, the temple.—Thither they hasten, and there, in one of the cloisters, they find him. And, lo, he is sitting among the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. So searching are his queries. and so profound his answers that even the learned doctors themselves are astounded. Not that there is in his manner anything pert or consciously superior. He is simply asking questions, as was the right of any catechumen or son of the law. But he has all the sacred and baffling inquisitiveness of an innocent, guileless, perfect childhood. He has come up from provincial Nazareth to the city of the rabbis and authorized teachers of Israel. He is now in the presence of the most renowned expounders of the law and the prophets. Now he may ask, it may be, of Hillel, the illustrious Looser, himself. And he has a thousand questions to ask -questions which he had pondered in his own village home, but which he has not been able to answer. For example: "What," we can hear him asking, "is the meaning of this precept of Moses? How shall I understand that saying of Isaiah? What does this rite signify? Why that |