Luke ii. 46, 47.
“And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.”
The manifestation to the Magian, which was brought before us in the service of Thursday, is recorded by St. Matthew. This manifestation to the doctors is only spoken of by St. Luke. We might have expected that the places of the narratives would have been reversed; that St. Matthew, who wrote for Jews, would have spoken of that which directly concerned Jews; that St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, would have seized upon the fact which has been always described as the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles. But it should be considered that he who cared especially to set forth a King of the Jews, would very appropriately notice the search of the Wise Men for such a King, and the homage which they paid Him when they had found Him. And I think there was no one fitter to speak of the way in which the Light of the World burst upon the minds of the Rabbis in the Temple, than he who had conversed with the pupil of Gamaliel, and had carefully studied the process of his illumination.
What the Church seems especially to impress upon us by bringing these two facts together, and classing them under the common name of Epiphany, is that every act of our Lord, from His birth onwards, is to be looked upon as a disclosure of the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father—of Him from whose Grace and Truth all the grace and truth of men had proceeded. So considered, these old records which some suspect and would like to cast off, are seen to be most consistent with the tenour of the history, most helpful in delivering us from confusions respecting that history, and respecting the meaning of the word Revelation. We think it natural and reasonable that the Apostles, being endowed with certain miraculous powers, should be able to build up a Church among Jews and Gentiles. Had we the like powers, we have little doubt we might convert Hindoos and Mussulmans as well as the great body of those who are Christians only in name. The Apostles had no dream that they had any such charms for acting on the hearts and consciences of men. They said that the Gospel itself was the “power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” They said that what they had to do was to preach Christ crucified, because in His weakness and humiliation were made known the power and wisdom of God. In other words, it was He who was revealing Himself, through their preaching, to that eye which was intended to receive the discovery, and was waiting for it. The story of the Star in the East leading the Wise men to the King whom they were asking the stars to tell them of, explains how He made either words or signs effectual for His own mighty purpose. And the story of His listening to the doctors in the Temple, and questioning them, shows how He compelled a set of men, who were the slaves of words, or rather of letters, who believed that all power lay in them, to confess a mightier power in Him.
I. This is the subject which I think is especially forced upon us by the Gospel today. There were met in the Temple a number of grave men, full of all the learning which could be got from the traditions of the past, full, as they thought, of all the learning which could be got from the words and lives of Patriots, Lawgivers, holy men. It was no profane wisdom that they were occupied with. Some of them might have a little measure of it. All would value it only as it illustrated the Divine wisdom which had been imparted to their land, or as a foil to set off its brightness and purity. They might not be wholly agreed about the meaning of the words by which they set such store. The Psalms were open to very different interpretations. They were not at one upon the question where and how this or that prophecy would be accomplished. They might differ even upon the relative worth of different commandments—still more when they compared those commandments, simple, broad, and general, with the accurate rules which had been transmitted to them by elders and doctors. Probably there was no doubt in the minds of the majority that the observance of the commandments was comparatively an easy and vulgar thing, that the practice of those refined rules was the sign of a more exact and scrupulous holiness, at all events a step to it. Some however there would be among them who derided such practices as idle and unnecessary. Ordinary morality, they would say, such as the Commandments prescribed, was what God demanded; the maxims of an ascetic devotion had been needlessly grafted upon these. Amidst all such differences there would be a general impression that whatever there was in the land of religion or acquaintance with the oracles of God, dwelt among them. Age, and the knowledge of what former times had bequeathed, were theirs. They were the shepherds of the people. Whether the sheep went right or wrong depended mainly on their submission to this guidance or their neglect of it.
Into this grave and venerable consistory there enters a Boy just twelve years of age. No one can tell exactly how he came there. But of course it is a promising sign, a sign of early devotion, that he should like to be in the Temple. The great festival is just over. Amidst the numbers who frequented it, it is no wonder if there should be one who has been seized with awe and admiration by those beautiful buildings, or by the sense of that which they denote. This one is apparently a fugitive from his parents. He may have wandered from them by accident, or he may have a thought, if his tribe and the rules of the elders permit it, of giving himself to the service of that place. A friendly Rabbi might think it worth while to question him about his purposes, to ascertain why he was lingering in those precincts.
(1.) So he stands among the Rabbis, not affrighted certainly by their dignity, with no sign of bashfulness, but also with none of forwardness. He is not eager to speak. He wishes to listen. The doctors are conversing about matters which they presume are far above the comprehension of a boy. And there is in the face of this boy nothing which tells of assumption or precocity, rather of quietness and docility. Such a one may be allowed to hear their discourse; it may impress him hereafter, if not at once, with reverence for the persons and their office. And what was that listening of his? In the highest sense, as in every lower one, the maxim holds good, “Everything is received according to the measure of the receiver.” We can imagine how glibly the familiar texts would be repeated by one and another,—how often ‘sins’ and ‘repentance’ would be in their mouths,—how they would debate about the hope of Israel and the promise of dominion over the Gentiles,—how they would speak of all God’s doings with them, if they did not actually pronounce the Name which signified his hidden essence. What awful, unutterable meanings lay beneath these sounds! And the meaning, not the sound, was that to which the Boy was listening. That of which the learned men had only the faintest consciousness, entered into His inmost being. It was in the fullest sense listening, reverent and awful listening, the listening of a child, not the judgment of a man. It is hard for us to make that distinction; but if we believe the Incarnation, we shall try to make it. We shall believe that the Child was a child, the Boy a boy; that the Child was perfect as such, and therefore did not anticipate its after-growth, which would imply imperfection; that the Boy was a perfect boy, and therefore had none of that forestalling of manhood which our consciences and reason tell us is irregular and untrue. And this is not, as some would state it, merely in order that we may do justice to the Humanity of Christ. We cannot in any other way see how the Divinity manifested itself through the Humanity, how it addressed itself to all the conditions and needs of Humanity. We may make a notion to ourselves of Divinity as unlimited wisdom and power; but such notions are good for very little. What we want is to know what wisdom and power are in their fullest, highest sense, not to mould and contract them by our understandings, and then fancy we make amends for the contraction by giving them the epithet ‘unlimited.’
Do you suppose that those Rabbis, after forty, say, or fifty years, of reading and copying out the Law, of comparing and registering the different commentaries upon it, had ever felt such a presence of Divinity with them, as when they looked into the face of that listening Boy? They could copy the letters, they could overlook the commentaries. If there was something very deep and mysterious beneath them, they could reduce it into Cabbala; they could talk of it as their possession, their distinction from the multitude. But which of them could penetrate the awe and mystery of that countenance, clear and bright as it was? What spoke to them through that, could be reduced into no Cabbala. They could never say, “That raises us above the rest of our countrymen.” They must have felt: “That face speaks to us of our connection with Galilean peasants; it reminds us that we are of the same flesh and blood with them. While we look at it, does it not seem as if we were more glorious to be of the same flesh and blood with any one that is called a man, than to have all this learning of ours?” A strange message to come to men who must uphold their reputation for sanctity and wisdom before the multitude! Yet surely a divine message! Surely those listening eyes were reading their very hearts. Surely they knew better than they ever did before, that God was reading them.
(2.) And then came the questions. “He was sitting among them,” it is said, “both hearing them and asking them questions.” Still all is suitable to the boy. He pronounces on nothing. He does not lay down the law upon this matter or that. The time may come when He shall go up into a mountain and open His lips, and speak as one having authority. But that time is not yet. He is not above the Scribes, but is sitting at their feet. He desires to know what they think about this commandment in the Law, about this sentence of David or Isaiah. At first, no doubt, the answers are all ready. They can tell that which one elder or another had written down or expressed orally to his disciples. They begin to give out the oracles, perhaps with an air of patronage or condescension, to the earnest youth. Why do the patronage and the condescension disappear? Why is the well-trained memory at fault? Why is there that look of puzzle and perplexity, almost of terror, on the countenances of those who are used to resolve all riddles, to silence all disputes? The question has gone beneath commentary and text both. The second-hand answer does not avail. What, for instance, could it profit to give the best exposition of the Commandments, if the Child with those deep, searching eyes said: “He who spoke these commandments calls himself The Lord thy God. What is this Thy? Is He indeed the God of each of you? He speaks as if He were a Deliverer out of bondage. Is that indeed so? Was He only a Deliverer of our fathers in the days of old, or is he that still, that now? The prophets always describe Him as the Living God—the God from generation to generation. What! is He then actually with us as He was with them, speaking to us as He spoke to them? He is described as a Father pitying His children, putting away their sins from them, and yet as hating all iniquity. Is that so still? Does He actually seek to make men right?”
I have supposed, you see, questions which had no novelty or strangeness in them; questions which arose directly out of the language of the Holy Book. If these had been all,—if there had been none deeper than these—deeper than we can think of,—what must have been their effect? No Rabbi can have imputed captious doubt, premature disbelief to the speaker. May not many a one have been led to suspect himself of doubt and disbelief? May not many a one have thought: “It cannot be that the words are to be taken in this simple strict sense; if so, the Book is not the one I thought I knew from beginning to end?” May not another have said: “Yes! thanks be to God, that must be what is written. I did not perceive it, but so it is. The King of kings cannot be far from us. He must be in this place; and though it is the holy place,—the place which He chose to put His name in,—I knew it not?”
(3.) We are told that “all who heard this child were astonished at his understanding and answers.” So that they must have asked Him questions as He asked them. No doubt He showed as much willingness to submit to their catechism as He had shown eagerness to receive whatever they had to impart; a child, whichever task he was engaged in,—taught by elder men, doing what they required. And the answers, we may be sure, like the questions, would not be new or rare or far-fetched. They would be startling because they presented the words of holy men in their direct, full, original force; because they did not make veils for the sense, but drew away a veil which had concealed it; because the words came forth in them as if the men were there in whose hearts they had been as a burning fire; because the words were shown to be not theirs, but His who had spoken to them, and had declared His own purpose through them. The answers, I repeat it, were not veils; they were a Revelation, or Unveiling; and that Revelation, or Unveiling, was not of a System or of a Religion, but of Him who had said, “Let not the rich man glory in his riches, nor the wise man in his wisdom, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he knoweth Me, that I execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.”
It was therefore, as the Evangelist expresses it, the understanding of this child which astonished the doctors. We can see what must have been the impression upon their minds. This boy entered into the very sense of the words which they had read and copied and committed to memory. They had never understood the words as spoken to themselves. They had drawn conclusions from the words, generalized notions from them. But their hearts had never come into contact with them. They were idols to be worshiped at a distance; not worshiped till all the dangerous life had been extracted from them, till they were as powerless to act or teach or govern as the stocks and stones of the heathen, which had been denounced in them. What a wonder, to see them quick and breathing again in the answers of this Child! What a wonder, to find that He went along, not only with them, but with the very mind of Him from whom they had proceeded; that He spoke like one who had been brought up with Him, like a sharer of His counsels!
(4.) Although, therefore, one discovers nothing in the listening or questioning or answering of this Boy which interferes with that growth in wisdom and stature of which St. Luke speaks,—with that gradual unfolding of the human life which was necessary to the manifestation of the Divine life,—there is that foreshadowing of after-years which we generally discern in an individual man when we are acquainted with the facts of his story, and which we should confidently expect in the Man, the Representative of the Race. After He had entered upon His ministry, when He was exercising the fullness of His power, when He was denouncing those Scribes and Pharisees to whom He had listened in the Temple, He was still unveiling some of the deepest mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, by asking questions of his disciples and the multitude, that being the last, which awakened so much awe, “What think ye of Christ? whose Son is He?”; He was still answering those who asked Him, “What was the chief commandment?” “Shall we give tribute to Caesar?” ”Whose wife will the woman be hereafter, who had the seven husbands on earth?” He was again a silent hearer of the charges against Him in the Sanhedrim, till that adjuration of the High Priest to declare whether He was the Son of God brought forth that final answer, “Thou hast said; nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of Heaven.” In all these ways His earliest acts on earth and His latest exhibited a divine harmony. His understanding of the ways of God was more and more discovering His name to be that which the prophet had proclaimed. “He shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor.” And the question to Mary and Joseph, when they sought Him sorrowing, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” was the preparation for His baptism, and for the final prayer, “Father, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee.”
II. But the subject is for us no less than for the Rabbis. I will mention some of the lessons which I think lie in it, and which we need especially at this time.
(1.) And first: There is, in many divines—in many Christians who are not divines—a great fear of questions. “Certain things,” they say, “have been settled long ago. To disturb the settlement is perilous. If we are humble and modest, we shall be content without knowledge of divine things. Probabilities, distant approximations to knowledge, are all to which creatures such as we are can aspire.” Now, brethren, as long as I believe in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, our Lord;—as long as I seek for my standard of modesty and humility in Him,—so long I must protest against the kind of modesty and humility which these disciples of His affect. I find Him beginning His pilgrimage on earth as a questioner. I find Him astonishing the upholders of a long and safe tradition by that method. I find Him sanctioning that as His own sound method of detecting falsehood and laziness, and of urging men to seek Truth that they may find it. Brethren, I believe that Christ has been asking questions from that day to this; that He is asking questions of us all, divines and laymen, now; that the questions come to us in multitudes of shapes, through a multitude of lips;—through children tormenting their parents and teachers about the wonderful meaning of words which have become to them mere familiar sounds, of things which they have gazed at till they have forgotten that there is any life or mystery in them at all; through men who have been exercised with the puzzles of Philosophy, and want to find some ground upon which they may stand, a ground of reality, not of convention; through the cravings of men who know nothing of Philosophy, but who have found enough in their own thoughts and in the world to amaze and confound them;—through the frivolous, even, who appear to be engaged in no search at all, who only wish to throw down some system or to build up one for their own fame, but who nevertheless, because they are men, cannot be merely busy in that poor occupation, and will be sure to start some inquiry which we may pursue to its issue if they will not. I am greatly afraid that when we try to silence any of these questions we are trying to silence the voice of Christ, in others and in ourselves; that we do not like Him to sift us and make us understand what in us is of Him, and will bear the fires of His judgment-day; what is wood, hay, stubble of our own, and must be burnt up in those fires.
(2.) I know how liable statements like these are to be misunderstood, as if one wished to discourage reverence for the past, as if one thought there were no oracles of God which were stronger and deeper than all the reasonings and speculations of men. I have endeavoured to show you today how fair and reasonable these charges are. Just because I would uphold reverence for the past;—just because I think our own speculations and reasonings are so much feebler than the oracles of God,—I dare not stifle one anxious question of men respecting the faith of other days, respecting those oracles of God. The Rabbis did not reverence the past. They accepted its decrees. They had no fellowship with the life and sufferings of its men. They did not honour the oracles of God. They were buried under their own reasonings and speculations. They could not receive any communication as coming directly to the hearts of men from the Ruler of their hearts. No men needed so much to become little children, to recover the wisdom of children. That they might attain that wisdom the Child came amongst them, listened to them, asked them questions, answered their questions.
I think that same Child, who has the government on His shoulders, hears us, questions us, answers us for the same end. There are those doubtless who wish to cut us off from all communion with the past, telling us that it is a chain upon our freedom. There are those who say the Bible is an obsolete book, useful in the infancy of the world, unworthy of such advanced sages as we are. You do not confute these objectors by arguing against them, by opposing the weight of opinion to them, by emulating their hard and scoffing temper. It is not that they question too much, but too little. They have never asked themselves what they want, what mankind wants. If they once fairly grappled with these questions, they would begin to reverence those who wept and bled that mankind might have what it wants; they would be filled with shame, as they contrast the tears and blood with their boasting. They would hear an old text telling them secrets of their own being, which the wisdom that mocks at texts has never penetrated. For they would perceive that they want—that mankind wants—the actual knowledge of God; that for this men have sighed and cried in every country and age of the world; that if this knowledge is not to be had, what is called Self-knowledge is either a miserable delusion or a curse and a horror. So you may lead even proud deniers to come, as little children, not only to the Bible, but to that Child whom the Bible declares to be the firstborn of Men, the perfect manifestation of God.
(3.) This is the subject with which I began, and with which I shall end. Do our Doctors confess Jesus Christ to be that perfect manifestation of God? Do they admit that He came into the world, in very deed, to show men of the Father? Do they confess that this was His Father’s business which he was about, from His cradle to His Cross? Nay, that in this He was occupied ever since the world was made; that in this He will be occupied for ever and ever? Alas! in the very highest quarters of English Theology, we are taught a doctrine the very reverse of this. The only way, we are told, to confute Rationalism, to establish Christianity, is to affirm that God cannot be known; that man is prohibited by his constitution from seeking such knowledge. The justification for this startling doctrine lies in the simple proposition, “We cannot conceive the inconceivable,” a maxim so self-evident, that it must have swept all thoughts about an invisible world, or a divine Being, before it, if there had not been a deeply grounded conviction in human beings, however variously expressed, or however unable to express itself, that unless we can rise above our conceptions, above ourselves, there is for us no science of things, no knowledge of persons—fathers, brothers, friends; that all affection must perish as well (in the true sense of the word) as all understanding. That inward belief, the loss of which, one has been wont to suppose, is the loss of every aspiration after goodness or nobleness, the destruction of any morality but that which is conventional,—that belief has given rise to the cry that some Being who is above all our thoughts and conceptions, but who must be the ground and standard of them all, would tell us what He is, and therefore what we are. The faith of our fathers was that God answered this cry which He had awakened; that He did come forth in the person of His only-begotten Son, to show men what He is; that He did send His Spirit into the hearts of men, that all might know Him, from the least to the greatest. The confession of this Revelation was their orthodoxy. They had no notion of a system or scheme of Religion, apart from a Manifestation of God to men. I believe, brethren, that any scheme or system of Religion which has not such a Manifestation for its basis,—any scheme or system constructed out of the Bible, or upon a theory of our own nature,—will effect nothing for the good of mankind. I believe the Child who stood in the Temple will destroy it. I believe He has saved and will save the world, which by wisdom knew not God from that fatal ignorance, by revealing Himself as His Father’s Wisdom, as the source of all Wisdom in us.