day trains are not arrested by the legislature; nor because a public permission is given to the workingclasses for a few hours' recreation on the day of rest; but because we are selfish men; and because we prefer Pleasure to Duty, and Traffic to Honor; and because we love our party more than our Church, and our Church more than our Christianity, and our Christianity more than Truth, and ourselves more than all. These are the things that defile a nation; but the labor and the recreation of its Poor, these are not the things that defile a nation.

18

XV.

Preached January 2, 1853.

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.

LUKE ii. 40.

"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him.”

THE ecclesiastical year begins with Advent, then comes Christmas-day. The first day of the natural year begins with the infancy of the Son of Man. Today the gospel proceeds with the brief account of the early years of Jesus.

The infinite significance of the life of Christ is not exhausted by saying that He was a perfect man. The notion of the earlier Socinians that He was a pattern man (viios rownos), commissioned from Heaven with a message to teach men how to live, and supernaturally empowered to live in that perfect way Himself, is immeasurably short of truth. For perfection merely human does not attract; rather it repels. It may be copied in form. It cannot be imitated in spirit, for men only imitate that from which enthusiasm and life are caught, — for it does not inspire nor fire with love.

Faultless men and pattern children, you may admire them, but you admire coldly. Praise them as you will, no one is better for their example. No one blames them, and no one loves them; they kindle no enthusiasm; they create no likenesses of themselves;

they never reproduce themselves in other lives, - the true prerogative of all original life.

If Christ had only been a faultless Being, He would never have set up in the world a new type of character which at the end of two thousand years is fresh and life-giving and inspiring still. He never would have regenerated the world. He never would have "drawn all men unto Him," by being lifted up a selfsacrifice, making self-devotion beautiful. In Christ the Divine and Human blended; Immutability joined itself to Mutability. There was in Him the Divine which remained fixed; the Human which was constantly developing. One uniform Idea and Purpose characterized His whole life, with a Divine immutable unity throughout, but it was subject to the laws of human growth. For the soul of Christ was not cast down upon this world a perfect thing at once. Spotless?-yes. Faultless?-yes. Tempted in all points without sin?—yes. But perfection is more than faultlessness. All scripture coincides in telling us that the ripe perfection of His manhood was reached step by step. There was a power and a Life within Him which were to be developed, which could only be developed, like all human strength and goodness, by toil of brain and heart. Life up-hill all the way; and every foot-print by which He climbed left behind for us, petrified on the hard rock, and indurated into history for ever, to show us when and where and how He toiled and won.

Take a few passages to prove that His perfection was gained by degrees. "It became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering."

Again, "Behold, I cast out devils, and do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected."

"Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience." And in the context, " Jesus increased."

Now see the result of this aspect of His perfectibility. In that changeless element of His Being which beneath all the varying phases of growth remained Divinely faultless, we see that which we can adore. In the ever-changing, ever-growing, subject therefore to feebleness and endearing mutability, we see that which brings Him near to us; makes Him lovable, at the same time that it interprets us to ourselves.

Our subject is the early development of Jesus. In this text we read of a three-fold growth.

I. In strength.
II. In wisdom.

III. In grace.

First, it speaks to us simply of His early development. "The child grew."

In the case of all rare excellence that is merely human, it is the first object of the biographer of a marvellous man to seek for surprising stories of his early life. The appetite for the marvellous in this matter is almost instinctive and invariable. All men almost love to discover the early wonders which were prophetic of after-greatness. Apparently, the reason is, that we are unwilling to believe that wondrous excellence was attained by slow patient labor.

get an excuse for our own slowness and stunted

growth, by settling it once for all, that the original differences between such men and us were immeasurable. Therefore it is, I conceive, that we seek so eagerly for anecdotes of early precocity.

In this spirit the fathers of the primitive church collected legends of the early life of Christ, stories of superhuman infancy; what the infant and the child said and did. Many of these legends are absurd; all, as resting on no authority, are rejected.

Very different from this, is the spirit of the Bible narrative. It records no marvellous stories of infantine sagacity or miraculous power, to feed a prurient curiosity. Both in what it tells and in what it does not tell, one thing is plain, that the human life of the Son of God was natural. There was first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn. In what it does not say; because, had there been anything preternatural to record, no doubt it would have been recorded. what it does say; because that little is all unaffectedly simple. One anecdote, and two verses of general description, that is all which is told us of the Redeemer's childhood.

In

The child, it is written, grew. Two pregnant facts. He was a child, and a child that grew in heart, in intellect, in size, in grace, in favor with God. Not a man in child's years. No hotbed precocity marked the holiest of infancies. The Son of Man grew up in the quiet valley of existence, in shadow, not in sunshine, not forced. No unnatural, stimulating culture had developed the mind or feelings; no public flattery; no sunning of infantine perfections in the glare of the world's show, had brought the temptation of the wilderness with which His manhood grappled, too early