[ p. 23 ]
HIS CHILDHOOD
Mt. ii. 19-23 ; Lk. ii. 39-52.
It would be early in October when the Holy Family migrated to Egypt. On April 1, 4 B.C., Herod died, and they were then free to return ; but some time would elapse ere the news reached Egypt and Joseph had settled his affairs, and thus it would be the month of October, as tradition alleges, after a year’s exile, that they set out for home. On reaching the southern borders of Judaea, Joseph received disquieting information. Immediately on his accession Archelaus had evinced his disposition by the massacre of three thousand of the worshippers who had assembled at Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover. He was following in his father’s steps, and Bethlehem would have been no safe abode for the exiles. Accordingly Joseph avoided Judaea and, travelling northward to Galilee, reoccupied his former home at Nazareth.
Here the curtain falls, and for the next ten years the Holy Family is hidden from our view. The sole record is one brief yet revealing sentence : “The Child grew and gathered strength and ever fuller wisdom, and God’s grace was upon Him.” (Lk. ii. 40) It appears also from the subsequent narrative that ere long there were other children in the home— four brothers, James, Joseph or, as the name was in Greek, Joses, Simon, and Judas, besides several sisters (Mt. xiii. 55,56; Mk. vi. 3). In deference to the ecclesiastical [ p. 24 ] fiction of the perpetual virginity of Mary, it has been fancied that they were either children of Joseph by a former marriage or nephews and nieces of Mary, her sister’s children (Lk. ii. 7; cf. Mt. i. 25); but it is written that Jesus was “her first-born son,” and these were the children whom she afterwards bore to Joseph in their home at Nazareth.
In His sixth or seventh year, according to the Jewish ordinance, He would enter the elementary school attached to the local synagogue. Since the manual was the Book of the Law, it was denominated beth ha-sepher , “The House of the Book” ; and there until His tenth year He learned the rudiments and then for the next two years was instructed in the Sacred Law, committing its precepts to memory after the Jewish method of mishnah or “repetition.”
All the while He breathed the atmosphere of a devout and loving home ; and unacquainted though He was with the secret which Joseph and Mary had hidden in their hearts, gradually there would dawn upon Him a sense of His heavenly origin. Here indeed we are confronted by an ineffable mystery; yet it may help us in some measure to penetrate it and more fully appreciate the testimony of the Evangelists if we consider the thoughts of philosophers and poets regarding the kindred mystery of the origin of the human soul. The most ancient and persistent theory is that of Pre-existence ; and nowhere is it so movingly presented as in that sublimest of lyrics, Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood :
[ p. 25 ]
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home :
Heaven lies about us in our infancy !
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy ;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended ;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.”
The thought here is that in childhood our immortal souls are haunted by " shadowy recollections” of a former state, but these are gradually overwhelmed by the world’s rude noise and obliterated by its defiling contact. It is a fading memory ; but could we only maintain converse with Heaven, then “the glory and the freshness of the dream” would survive and the memory brighten. And even so it happened with the Incarnate Redeemer. The purity of His soul was never soiled, its serenity never clouded ; and thus His memory of “that imperial palace whence He came” instead of fading waxed ever larger and clearer until it crystallised into a consciousness and a vision of God.
[ p. 26 ]
That momentous crisis is the one recorded incident of His childhood. In August, 7 A.D., He attained His thirteenth year, the age when a Jewish boy became bar mitzvah , “a son of the commandment” a responsible citizen of the Commonwealth of Israel; and at the ensuing Passover, which fell that year on April 9, He accompanied Joseph and Mary on the annual pilgrimage to the Holy City. The sacred celebration, at once commemorative of the historic deliverance of the Exodus and prophetic of the Messianic redemption, proved an illuminative experience for Him. It interpreted the thoughts which had been stirring in His breast, and revealed to Him Who He was and wherefore He had come. At the conclusion of the festal week the worshippers departed homeward, the men and the women travelling, according to custom, in separate companies; and when the caravan reached the first station on the route, Joseph and Mary discovered that He was missing. During the day’s march each had supposed that He was in the other’s company, but now it appeared that He had been left behind. They retraced their steps, looking for Him all the way, and it would be late on the second day after their departure when they got back to Jerusalem. Next day they resumed their quest, and at length they found Him where they least expected—in the Rabbinical College, within the Temple precincts, where some eight years later Saul of Tarsus was educated at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel. He had entered the class-room and seated Himself among the students. They were accustomed not merely to hear the Rabbi’s discourse but to put questions whenever difficulties occurred to their minds ; and He was joining in the [ p. 27 ] discussion. He was the youngest of them all, since it was not until he had attained his fifteenth year that a Jewish student began his theological curriculum ; yet He evinced so rare an intelligence that teacher and scholars alike were astonished.
Joseph and Mary took Him away, and she gently upbraided Him for the anxiety which He had occasioned them. “Why is it,” He answered, “that you were seeking Me ? Did you not know that it is in My Father’s House that I should be ?” These are His first recorded words, and they are very significant. He had discovered His heavenly relationship and His divine commission, and thenceforth He owned no human kinship and no earthly home. God was His Father, and the Temple, where for generations God had dwelt among His people and manifested His grace and glory, was His proper resort.
From that day He recognised that He was the Promised Messiah and that His life-work was the achievement of the redemption prefigured on the prophetic pages of Holy Scripture; but " His hour was not yet come.” He returned to Nazareth with Joseph and Mary and resumed His place in that humble home. On attaining his twelfth year a Jewish lad was put to the learning of a trade, and Jesus naturally followed Joseph’s business of carpentry and worked beside him, making, says St. Justin Martyr (Mk. vi. 3), ploughs and yokes for the husband-men who tilled the fields about the village. It seems, since he appears no more in the sacred narrative after that memorable visit to the Passover, that Joseph presently died ; and it devolved on Jesus to earn a livelihood not alone for Himself but for Mary and her [ p. 28 ] other children. It was a heavy burden for one so young, but He bore it bravely, faithful to the hard duty which each day brought and thus preparing Himself for the high ministry which awaited Him when the appointed hour should arrive.