THE BOY IN THE TEMPLE


'And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought Me!
wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?'
--LUKE ii. 49.

A number of spurious gospels have come down to us, which are full of
stories, most of them absurd and some of them worse, about the
infancy of Jesus Christ. Their puerilities bring out more distinctly
the simplicity, the nobleness, the worthiness of this one solitary
incident of His early days, which has been preserved for us. How has
it been preserved? If you will look over the narratives there will
be very little difficulty, I think, in answering that question.
Observing the prominence that is given to the parents, and how the
story enlarges upon what they thought and felt, we shall not have
much doubt in accepting the hypothesis that it was none other than
Mary from whom Luke received such intimate details. Notice, for
instance, 'Joseph and His mother knew not of it.' 'They supposed Him
to have been in the company.' 'And when they,' i.e. Joseph and Mary,
'saw Him, they were astonished'; and then that final touch, 'He was
subject to them,' as if His mother would not have Luke or us think
that this one act of independence meant that He had shaken off
parental authority. And is it not a mother's voice that says, 'His
mother kept all these things in her heart,' and pondered all the
traits of boyhood? Now it seems to me that, in these words of the