twelve-year-old boy, there are two or three points full of interest
and of teaching for us. There is--

I. That consciousness of Sonship.

I am not going to plunge into a subject on which certainly a great
deal has been very confidently affirmed, and about which the less is
dogmatised by us, who must know next to nothing about it, the
better; viz. the inter-connection of the human and the divine
elements in the person of Jesus Christ. But the context leads us
straight to this thought--that there was in Jesus distinct growth in
wisdom as well as in stature, and in favour with God and man. And
now, suppose the peasant boy brought up to Jerusalem, seeing it for
the first time, and for the first time entering the sacred courts of
the Temple. Remember, that to a Jewish boy, his reaching the age of
twelve made an epoch, because he then became 'a son of the Law,' and
took upon himself the religious responsibilities which had hitherto
devolved upon his parents. If we will take that into account, and
remember that it was a true manhood which was growing up in the boy
Jesus, then we shall not feel it to be irreverent if we venture to
say, not that here and then, there began His consciousness of His
Divine Sonship, but that that visit made an epoch and a stage in the
development of that consciousness, just because it furthered the
growth of His manhood.

Further, our Lord in these words, in the gentlest possible way, and
yet most decisively, does what He did in all His intercourse with
Mary, so far as it is recorded for us in Scripture--relegated her
back within limits beyond which she tended to advance. For she said,
'Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing,' no doubt thus