Him to proclaim His having come. The aged Anna could not long speak "of
Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem," or anywhere
else. For awhile the shepherds told their wonderful story, and then
died. The angels did not continue to sing their hymn of the Nativity
over the plains of Bethlehem. The Wise Men returned to their own
country. Herod died, and none thought of the young child he sought to
kill. The hiding in Egypt was followed by a longer hiding of another
kind in Nazareth. The stories of those who gathered about the infant
cradle were soon forgotten, or repeated only to be disbelieved. Mary,
and her husband Joseph--who acted the part of an earthly father to the
heaven-born child--carried through the years the sacred secret of who
and what Jesus was.

We long to know something of the holy childhood. We have allowed our
imagination to have a little play, but this does not satisfy our
curiosity, nor that desire which we have concerning all great men, to
know of their boyhood. What did He do? Where did He go? What was His
life at home, and in the village school? Who were His mates? How did He
appear among His brothers and sisters? So strong is a desire to know of
such things that stories have been invented to supply the place of
positive knowledge; but most of them are unsatisfactory, and unlike our
thoughts of Him. Thus much we do know, that, "He grew in wisdom and
stature" not only, but also "in favor with God and man."

It has been finally said; "Only one flower of anecdote has been thrown
over the wall of the hidden garden, and it is so suggestive as to fill
us with intense longing to see the garden itself. But it has pleased
God, whose silence is no less wonderful than His words, to keep it
shut." That "one flower" refers to Jesus' visit to Jerusalem just as He
was passing from childhood to youth, when He tarried in the Temple with