Tj When men begin all their works with the thought of God, acting for His sake and to fulfil His will, when they ask His blessing on themselves and their life, pray to Him for the objects they desire, and see Him in the event, whether it be according to
^ 0. E. Jeflferson, My Father^ s Business, 113.
ii6 ALWAYS AT HOME
their prayers or not, they will find everything that happens tend to confirm them in the truths about Him which live in their imagination, varied and unearthly as those truths may be. Then they are brought into His presence as a Living Person, and are able to hold converse with Him, and that with a directness and simplicity, with a confidence and intimacy, mutatis mutandis, which we use towards an earthly superior ; so that it is doubtful whether we realize the company of our fellow men with greater keenness than these favoured minds are able to contemplate and adore the Unseen Incomprehensible Creator.^
III.
Home.
Wherever the Son is and whatever He is doing He is at home with the Father, He is in the Father's house. What did He mean when He spoke of the Father's house ?
1. Did He mean the Temple? "My Father's house," He says ; these are the very words with which our Lord describes the Temple on another occasion. He rebukes people for turning the Father's house into a den of thieves. Christ's name for the Temple ; Christ's name for the great central place of worship of the Jewish people, which had a sacredness that could not belong to any lesser place of worship; Christ's name for the Temple was " my Father's house." This makes the translation " in my Father's house " the more natural thing for Him to say. For the surprise of His parents was to find Him there ; and His surprise was that they should have expected Him to be anywhere else : " Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house ? " But, further, we feel that the words are more natural, because they are more child- like. It is hardly the saying of a child that He must be about the concerns or affairs or businesses of His Father. And with changing thought, we have come to think of Jesus, the Divine child, as the perfectly human, perfectly natural child. The simple wonder of His heart seems sufficiently and inimitably expressed in the question, "Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"
* J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent.
ST. LUKE II. 49 117
^ " Wist ye not ? " — He said in His deep distress at the un- reasonable behaviour of Joseph and Mary that passover-week. It was the utter and inexcusable unreasonableness of His mother's behaviour to Him that so hurt and so humbled Him. A little consideration would surely have directed her steps straight to the Temple to seek for her Son there, and there alone. And having found Him in the Temple, a very little consideration would surely have restrained her from the precipitate words with which she assailed Him. If she had taken a little time to think of it the utter unreasonableness of her conduct could not but have struck her and made her ashamed of herself. To take the very lowest ground, it was not reasonable to think that the youthful Christ should hurry away from the passover ordinances at the earliest possible moment, and should spend His time gadding about up and down the city. It was but common sense and sound reason, as well as ordinary piety, in Him to do as He had done. " The different magnitude of things is their reason to me," says William Law. And it was because His Father's business was already beginning to be a matter of such immense magnitude to our Lord that He felt so acutely the unreasonableness and the injustice of His mother's treatment of that business and of Him that day. And in all that He teaches us also that if our mere reason were only but sound, if we but gave our wholly sane minds to the different magnitudes of things, that of itself would secure the salvation of our souls. Eeason itself, He as good as says here, would never let us wander from the way of our salvation, nor would let us stop short of our Father's house, or ever leave it. Only be reasonable men, He as good as says to us, and you will end in being saved men.^
(1) The Temple was the place of learning. In the Temple there were some schools in which good and learned men taught the Scriptures to anybody who wished to learn. They sat upon a high seat, and any person, old or young, might enter and join the class sitting on the floor around the teachers. Jesus had found this school. He wanted, like all good children, to know more of the Scriptures. He thought He could not serve God in any better way than by learning from these good old men, who welcomed a young child to their school. And here His parents found Him, " sitting in the midst of the doctors (teachers), both hearing them and asking them questions."
It was in touch with the ancient wisdom, under the schooling * A. Whyte, The Walk, ConverscUion, and CharacUr of Jesw Christ our Lord, 63.