3. The Youth of Christ.--It is written that there was once a pious, godly bishop who had often earnestly prayed that God would manifest unto him what Jesus had done in his youth. Once the bishop had a dream to this effect. He seemed in his sleep to see a carpenter working at his trade, and beside him a little boy who was gathering up chips. Then came in a maiden clothed in green, who called them both to come to the meal, and set porridge before them. All { 40} this the bishop seemed to see in his dream, himself standing behind the door that he might not be perceived. Then the little boy began and said: Why does that man stand there? Shall he not also eat with us? And this so frightened the bishop that he awoke. Let this be what it may, a true history or a fable, I none the less believe that Christ in his childhood and youth looked and acted like other children, yet without sin; in fashion like a man.--Martin Luther.
4. Messiah's Life for Thirty Years.--What was his manner of life during those thirty years? It is a question which the Christians cannot help asking in deep reverence, and with yearning love; but the words in which the Gospels answer it are very calm and very few. * * * * * His development was a strictly human development. He did not come to the world endowed with infinite knowledge, but, as St. Luke tells us, he gradually advanced in wisdom. He was not clothed with infinite power, but experienced the weakness and imperfections of human infancy. He grew as other children grow, only in a childhood of stainless and sinless beauty--as the "flower of roses in the spring of the year and as lilies by the waters." * * * * * It was in utter stillness, in prayerfulness, in the quiet round of daily duties--like Moses in the wilderness, like David among the sheep folds, like Elijah among the tents of the Bedouin, like Jeremiah in his quiet home at Anathoth, like Amos in the sycamore groves of Tekoa--that the boy Jesus prepared himself, amid a hallowed obscurity, for his mighty work on earth. His outward life was the life of all those of his age, and station and place of birth. He lived as lived other children of peasant parents in that quiet town, and in great measure as they live now.--Canon Farrar.