parents looked for a larger meaning in the words of such a son--whose
meaning at the same time was too large for them to find.

When, according to the Greek, the Lord, on the occasion already alluded
to, says 'my father's house,' he says it plainly; he uses the word
_house_: here he does not.

Let us see what lies in the Greek to guide us to the thought in the mind
of the Lord when he thus reasoned with the apprehensions of his father
and mother. The Greek, taken literally, says, 'Wist ye not that I must
be in the----of my father?' The authorized version supplies _business_;
the revised, _house_. There is no noun in the Greek, and the article
'the' is in the plural. To translate it as literally as it can be
translated, making of it an English sentence, the saying stands, 'Wist
ye not that I must be in the things of my father?' The plural article
implies the English _things_; and the question is then, What _things_
does he mean? The word might mean _affairs_ or _business_; but why the
plural article should be contracted to mean _house_, _I_ do not know. In
a great wide sense, no doubt, the word _house_ might be used, as I am
about to show, but surely not as meaning the temple.

He was arguing for confidence in God on the part of his parents, not for
a knowledge of his whereabout. The same thing that made them anxious
concerning him, prevented them from understanding his words--lack,
namely, of faith in the Father. This, the one thing he came into the
world to teach men, those words were meant to teach his parents. They
are spirit and life, involving the one principle by which men shall
live. They hold the same core as his words to his disciples in the
storm, 'Oh ye of little faith!' Let us look more closely at them.