3. Education." Hellenic or Roman culture might be brilliant, hut it was narrow, limited to the con- ditions of life in a Greek city, or to the u.ses of a ruling race. Its faults are plain : intellectual pride, superficial cleverness, abundance of ideas together with dearth of ideals. Conceive now the training of a Hebrew boy. Ignorant of much that a Greek lad knew, he was thoroughly instructed in the books of the OT. These constituted a national literature, which, on any fair comparison, vastly excels the utmost that the Hellenic spirit could produce, in its power to quicken and direct the activities of the soul, to deepen it, and to enrich it with noblest conceptions of human life and destiny. Such a literature is the most splendid instrument of education the world has ever seen ; and such was the education even of a carpenter's son in an obscure village. No doubt even a system so excellent might be perverted ; but always in eilucation the result is determined not by the perfection of the instrument, but by the reaction of the pupil. From school Jesus might have gone on to be a Rablii of the common dogmatic and narrow type. If He did not, if His thought is wide. His insight deep. His spirit n.dile and gentle ; if He moves on the plane of the greatest prophets of the OT, and sees beyond their highest vision ; we must trace this result to His education, and to the response made to it by His quick and intelligent sympathy. It is because He is moulded by the influences of the OT that His character is at once more spiritual and more universal than it would have been, had He been stccpod to the lips in Hillenic culture. The mcisurr of Hi :i( .|uaiiilaiir.' with the apoealyjitic lilrr.sliiiv uhirli maiiyoi II is contemporaries were stuilying, cannot hci uralily lie determined. But we sliall make a profouni.1 mistake, it we imagine that we can explain His teaching or understand Himself by any such reference. We can come within sight of Him only by retracing the steps of His own education, and approaching Him from the point of view of the OT. Tlie groundwork of His character and the spring of His thinking are to be found in the OT. \\hat He came to be or to reveal, beyond that stage of moral and religious attainment, stands in organic connexion witli it. Other educational influences must be remembered and their power duly estimated : the historic scenes which were within His view, with the splendid and tragic memories they wen' litleil to awaken; the hiohways of the worM s liii>inr-s which were visible from the hills behind which Nazareth lay ; the pleasant country which was spread all around His home. Such aspects of His cliaracter as His intense patriotism. His wide humanitarian sympathies, and His feelin" for nature, liml theiV antecedents in the physical sur- roundiu'js of 1 1 is early years.
At tills [mint we pause to note an incident which enables us, as elliciently as a .score of haphazard
284 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
reminiscences vould have done, to discern the fruition of His life's preparation, so far as it liad gone. Here it is well to remind ourselves of the reverence vhich is due to all childhood in our endeavour to analyse its utterances. ' How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must he ahout my Father's business?' (Lk 2'"').* No plati- tudes as to moral paternity, no pedantic references to tlie Trinity, help us to understand this wonder- ing question. The words have no doctrinal mean- ing. They ought not to be used as proof of a ilogma. Did Mary ask her Son what He meant ? n she had asked, could He liave made her under- stand ? The words, however, while thus far re- moved from ontological problems, do reveal most surely what manner of child He must have been who uttered them. He must have lived till that hour in a fellowship with God which had known no intenuption, Avhich had been so deep and holy and tender, that Mary's word, applied to an earthly parent, proNddes its secret. 'Thy father and I,' said His mother; and He replied, surely not in any self-conscious, didactic mood, but in glad and confident adoption of lier word, 'my Father's business.' It is certain that one who uttered this plirase out of the fulness of a child's unrellective experience, had never passed through the agonies of a violated conscience. His exiierience is not the abnormal type to be seen in St. Paul, Augus- tine, Luther, Bunyan, but the profoundly normal tyi)e of the liuman relation to God, as God designed it to be. Operating -tqmn Him, through parent- age and home and education, ojjerating ivithin Him in ways beneath consciousness and beyond observation, the Divine Spirit had led Him into, and enabled Him to abide within, a continuous, loving fellowship with God, of which the earthly relationship of father and son is the reflexion and the symbol. It is certain that Jesus never knew any inward dislocation of spirit, never passed through agonies of conviction, or emerged into the rapture of an experience which overwhelmed the judgment with surges of emotion. His char- acter is not created by the healing of some deep breach of soul. It bears none of the marks of manufacture. It is a steadfast growth, the unin- terrupted unfolding of the wealth of ethical mean- ing that lay, from the beginning, within His soul. From the village street He passes to the temple courts, to find Himself tliere at home, and to occupy Himself with His F'ather's concerns. From the temple He returns to His village home, without surprise and without disappointment, still to be in His Father's presence, and to be about His Father's business. ' He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and he was subject unto them' (Lk2=').