2. Is this freedom which Christ claims the prerogative of His sole Sonship — of His unique relation to the Father ? Have we no part or lot in that demand ? Surely that Sonship of His has been made ours. Into its prerogatives we are baptized. In Christ, by Christ, we too are endowed with peculiar responsi- bilities. We are given authority to become the sons of God. We have rights in the Father's house. In Him, in His body, each individual soul wins a higher value, a fuller freedom. Its freedom of development, its freedom of judgment, its freedom of thought, its freedom of action — these are not lost or diminished ; they are intensified, braced, enriched, by those who are born into that Spirit of liberty which bloweth, as the wind, where it listeth,
1 Samuel Cox.
no ALWAYS AT HOME
^ Mr. Frederic Harrison, with whom, as a fellow-teacher at the Working Men's College, Euskin had become acquainted, was often at Denmark Hill in these years, and has thus described the father and the son : —
"John James Ruskin, the father, certainly seemed to me a man of rare force of character ; shrewd, practical, generous, with pure ideals both in art and life. With unbounded trust in the genius of his son, he felt deeply how much the son had yet to learn. I heard the father ask an Oxford tutor if he could not 'put John in the way of some scientific study of Political Economy.' * John ! John ! ' I have heard him cry out, ' what nonsense you are talking!' when John was off on one of his magnificent paradoxes, unintelligible as Pindar to the sober, Scotch merchant. . . . There were moments when the father seemed the stronger in sense, breadth, and hold on realities. And when John was turned of forty, the father still seemed something of his tutor, his guide, his support. The relations between John Ruskin and his parents were among the most beautiful things that dwell in my memory. . . . This man, well past middle life, in all the renown of his principal works, who, for a score of years, had been one of the chief forces in the literature of our century, continued to show an almost child-like docility towards his father and his mother, respecting their complaints and remonstrances, and gracefully submitting to be corrected by their worldly wisdom and larger experience. The consciousness of his own public mission and the boundless love and duty that he owed to his parents could not be expressed in a way more beautiful. One could almost imagine it was in the spirit of the youthful Christ when He said to His mother, ' Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? ' " ^
^ In the world of practical affairs the mother of Phillips Brooks showed herself eminently sane and wise. Her home circle was itself a means of liberal education. Experience had instilled into her a strong respect for the individuality of her children. They must be left free to shape their own lives, to follow their own destiny. She would force no confidence that was not freely and spontaneously given. She studied her oppor- tunities of approach to them. This is how she speaks to an anxious mother who sought her counsel as to the training of her sons : " There is an age when it is not well to follow or question your boys too closely. The period of which I speak appears to be one in which the boy dies and the man is born ; his individuality rises up before him and he is dazed and almost overwhelmed by
1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, i. 482.
ST. LUKE II. 49 m
his first consciousness of himself. I have always believed that it was then that the Creator was speaking with my sons, and that it was good for their souls to be left alone with Him, while T, their mother, stood trembling, praying and waiting, knowing that when the man was developed from the boy, I should have my sons again, and there would be a deeper sympathy than ever between us." And so it came about that in later years the sympathy between Phillips Brooks and his mother became more strong and complete than ever. " The happiest part of my happy life," said the great preacher, " has been my mother." When on his visit to England he was commanded to preach before Queen Victoria, some one asked him if he felt at all afraid. " No," he replied, smiling, " I have preached before my mother." ^
11.
Kesponsibility.
I
With the knowledge of His freedom there came also the con- viction to Jesus that His first opportunity of obedience to His Father was now before Him, and that it must be instantly attended to, without reference to any other claims upon Him, such, for instance, as returning to Nazareth with His parents. Hitherto, in His quiet Nazareth home, neither such knowledge nor opportunity had presented itself. To do His mother's will and to please Joseph, His foster-father, was the full extent of His will and duty. That He did these well and truly goes without saying. Since coming to Jerusalem to attend the feast of Passover, a new crisis had come to Him, and He did not suffer that opportunity to recede from His obedient heart, but embraced it at once, and gave Himself up with calm and determined enthusiasm to attend to it.