^ The work of an inferior artist arrives at a certain amount of perfection through a series of failures, which teach him where he is wrong. By slow correction of error he is enabled to produce a tolerable picture. Such is our development. The work of a man of genius is very different. He has seen, before he touches pencil, the finished picture. His first sketch contains the germ of all, The picture is there ; but the first sketch is inferior in finish to the next stage, and that to the completed picture. But his work is perfect in its several stages ; not a line needs erasure, not a thought correction ; it develops into its last and noblest form without a single error. Such was Christ's development — an orderly, faultless, unbroken development, in which humanity, freed from its unnatural companion, evil, went forward according to its real nature. It was the restoration of humanity to its original integrity, to itself, as it existed in the idea of God.
6. St. Luke not only says that as a child Jesus grew, develop- ing as other children do, but he also tells us that He grew in every part of His personality. (1) He grew in body: "waxed strong " ; (2) He grew in mind : " filled with wisdom " ; and (3) He grew in spirit : " the grace of God was upon him."
Development ought always to take place in all these three ways. Let us take a little baby as our instance. First of all the baby begins to grow in body ; it gets bigger, it gets stronger ; it has power over its little actions ; it begins to walk — it is a great time in the house when the baby begins to walk — and everybody
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says how it is growing. And so it goes on, growing in bulk and in strength. Its clothes become too small for it. It grows on to boyhood or to girlhood; on to manhood, to womanhood; to strength and grace and beauty.
Now that is a marvellous thing — that growth of body. But, by and by, people begin to notice another kind of growth ; some- thing else is growing. This little one begins to walk; it also begins to talk, to notice things, to remember, to like and to dislike. Not only is the body growing, the mind is growing too. Presently the little mind will be strong enough to learn the alphabet, to begin to write, to begin to cipher, to begin to play on the piano, later on it will be strong enough to go to school, to college, and will, in time, become a learned man or woman.
Now that is a still more wonderful growth, for it will stop growing as a body, but it will never stop growing as a mind. You may find that child at eighty still growing, still growing, still learning, still advancing in wisdom. But, once more, if you notice the little one very closely, you will see that, not only does it grow in two ways — in body and mind — but it grows also in another way ; it grows out of little faults into little virtues ; out of little tricks of temper into patience, into power over itself ; out of little selfishnesses into noble love. There are dolls and toys of the mind and there are dolls and toys of the soul ; and as the body outgrows its clothes, and the mind outgrows its little mistakes, so there is something which is the best thing in man — the soul — which also grows ; grows out of little faults and little wickednesses, and the unlovely habits of selfishness, till, by and by, men see before them a grand and splendid character.
i. Bodily Growth.
"The child grew and waxed strong."
The words are used of bodily development in size and strength. The Authorized Version adds " in spirit," but that addition does not belong to this verse ; it has been taken in by some copyist or commentator from the eightieth verse of the first chapter, where it is used of St. John the Baptist.
^ I think I am safe in saying that this exactest of writers would never have said about the youth of our Lord what he does
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say, and says over again, unless he had had liefnre his mind's eye the figure of a young man conspicuous among His fellows for His stateliness and His strength. The sacred writer tells us that he had the most perfect understanding of the very beginnings of our Lord's life, because he had himself seen, and had interrogated with a view to his gospel, the most trusty eye-witnesses of our Lord's childhood and boyhood and youth; till in this text we ourselves become as good as eye-witnesses of the laying of the first foundation stones of our Lord's whole subsequent life and character and work. And the very first foundation-stone of them all was laid in that body which the Holy Ghost prepared for our Lord as the " instrumentum Deitatis " — the organ and the instrument of His Godhead. You may depend upon it that a writer like Luke would never have repeatedly expressed himself, as he has here repeatedly expressed himself, about the growth and the stature of our Lord's body, if our Lord's bodily presence had been weak, as was the case, to some extent, with the Apostle Paul. In his famous essay on " Decision of Character," John Foster has a most striking passage on the matter in hand. Decision of character, the great essayist argues, beyond all doubt, depends very much on the constitution of the body. There is some quality in the bodily organization of some men wliich increases, if it does not create, both the stability of their resolutions and the energy of their undertakings and endeavours. There is something in some men's very bodies, which, like the ligatures that the Olympic wrestlers bound on their hands and on their arms, braces up the very powers of their mind. Men of a strong moral character will, as a rule, be found to possess something correspondingly strong in their very bodies ; just as massive engines demand to have their stand taken on a firm foundation. " Accordingly," says Foster, " it will be found that those men who have been remarkable among their fellows for the decisiveness of their characters, and for the success of their great endeavours, have, as a rule, been the possessors of great constitutional strength, till the body has become the inseparable companion and the fit co-worker with the mind." It is an ancient proverb — " Mens sana in corpore sano " — a sound mind in a sound body — a stately mind and character in a corresponding bodily stature.^