* A. Whyte, The Walk, Oonversation, and Character of Jesus Christ our Lord, 47.
ST. LUKE II. 40 93
and life-mistakes; and yet men may be no wiser than before Before the same temptations they fall again in the self-same way they fell before. Where they erred in youth they err still in age. A mournful truth ! " Ever learning," said St. Paul, " and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth."
Distinguish wisdom again from talent. Brilliancy of powers is not the wisdom for which Solomon prayed. Wisdom is of the heart rather than the intellect : the harvest of moral thoughtful- ness, patiently reaped in through years. Two things are required — earnestness and love. First that rare thing earnestness — the earnestness which looks on life practically. Some of the wisest of the race have been men who have scarcely stirred beyond home, read little, felt and thought much. "Give me," said Solomon, " a wise and understanding heart." A heart which ponders upon life, trying to understand its mystery, not in order to talk about it like an orator, nor in order to theorize about it like a philosopher ; but in order to know how to live and how to die.i
^ One of the most pleasing of the poems in Christina Eossetti's " New Poems " is that addressed " To Lalla," the favourite name of her cousin Henrietta Polydore. The latter was only three years old when the poem was written. The lines incidentally point the moral that wisdom of the heart is better than know- ledge of the head. It is a trite moral, but rarely has it been better expressed than here.
Eead on: if you knew it
You have cause to boast : You are much the wiser
Though I know the most.^
3. There is a distinction to be observed between His intel- lectual development and ours. We, being defective in nature, are developed through error. By slow correction of mistakes, we arrive at intellectual, by slow correction of faults at moral, excellence. But it is quite possible to conceive the entirely natural development of Christ's perfect nature, limited by time ; the development, as it were, of a fountain into a river, perfect as the fountain, but not more than the fountain as a child ; perfect as the rivulet, but not more than the rivulet as a boy ; perfect as the stream, but not more than the stream as a youth ; and perfect as
^ F. W. Robertson, Sermons, ii. 182. ' Mackenzie Bell, Christina Rossetti, 21.
94 THE GROWTH OF THE CHILD JESUS
the majestic river as a man. At each stage greater than at the last, more developed, but as perfect as possible to nature at each ; and as the water of the fountain, rivulet, stream, and river is the same throughout, self-supplied, perennial in its source and flowing, 80 was it with the nature of Christ, and with His growth.
A simple-hearted Child was He,
And He was nothing more : In summer days, like you and me,
He played about the door, Or gathered, where the father toiled,
The shavings from the floor.
Sometimes He lay upon the grass,
The same as you and I, And saw the hawks above Him pass
Like specks against the sky ; Or, clinging to the gate, He watched
The stranger passing by.
A simple Child, and yet, I think,
The bird folk must have known, The sparrow and the bobolink.
And claimed Him for their own, And gathered round Him fearlessly
When He was all alone.
The lark, the linnet, and the dove,
The chaffinch and the wren, They must have known His watchful love,
And given their worship then ; They must have known and glorified
The Child who died for men.
And when the sun at break of day
Crept in upon His hair, I think it must have left a ray
Of unseen glory there — A kiss of love on that little brow
For the thorns that it must wear.
4. Can we discover any of the means that were used in the development of His mind ? We know not if there were schools
ST. LUKE II. 40 95
for children in those days, but the parent, and especially the mother, was the natural instructor of the child in all necessary knowledge, as she is the nurse and provider for its physical wants. What this Divine child learned from His human mother in those years of sweet and loving dependence, what wise questions He asked, or what wonderful sayings He uttered in that humble home, sayings which Mary, His mother, laid up and pondered in her heart, we may never know, at least in this world ; for the lips of inspiration are sealed except in a single instance. But there were two oracles of instruction ever open, in which God spake to His Son, and taught Him, preparatory to His speaking through Him to the world He came to save. The first of these was the Scriptures of the Old Testament, that " sincere milk of the word " by which all devout and holy minds have been nourished, and have grown thereby. Jesus' intimate familiarity with the letter of Scripture, shown by His frequent quotations from it, evince how carefully He had studied the written Word — like the Psalmist, hiding it in His heart. And His profound and sometimes startling penetration into its spirit shows a deeper and more spiritual know- ledge of it, such as no Kabbi or mere human expositor could have imparted.