How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?
Thus early in life, just emerging from childhood, it seems that the Son of God had the inspiration of his mission resting upon him. Yet in loving obedience he went with them down into Nazareth, "and was subject unto them." With the { 35} return to Nazareth the authentic history of the childhood and youth of the Son of God ends; further than we learn from the remark of Luke that "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." But what the details of his life and development were for the next eighteen years, we do not know. (See note 3, end of section.)
3. In the New Testament apocrypha there are wonderful and miraculous stories of his carrying spilt water in his robe; of his pulling a short board to its requisite length; of moulding sparrows out of clay and then clapping his hands at which they are made alive and fly away; how he vexes and shames and silences those who wish to teach him; how he rebukes Joseph or turns his playmates into kids; how he strikes dead with a curse the boys who offend or run against him, until at last there is a storm of popular indignation, and his mother fears to have him leave the house[15]--and a hundred other things equally absurd which mar rather than embellish the childhood and youth of Jesus, which the silence of his reliable biographers dignifies and exalts.
4. John the Baptist.--In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, there came preaching throughout the wilderness of Judea [Ju-de-a] a strange character, called John the Baptist. He was the son of Elizabeth, who was a descendant of Aaron, and a cousin to Mary, the mother to Jesus. His father was a priest of the temple, named Zacharias. Zacharias and Elizabeth were both well stricken in years, when there appeared unto the former, in the temple, as he was burning incense upon the altar, the angel Gabriel [Ga-bri-el], who announced to him that his wife should bear him a son, and that he must call his name John. The angel also said that John should be great in the eyes of the Lord; that he should be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. He was { 36} to have power also to turn unto their God many of the children of Israel, and to go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.[16]