iv] Some Implications of the Incarnation 1 2 1 



tion of His Mission and even of His own Divinity did 

 not come to Him till He was a full-grown man? Before 

 we consider the help that such an idea gives, let us con- 

 sider its apparent difficulty. 



We have been accustomed to think of Him as realising 

 His true Nature and His Mission from the earliest years. 

 Partly, this is due to the piety of ages of literature and 

 art. The Holy Child is pictured as a child with sad eyes, 

 old beyond His years, already looking upon the sorrows 

 of the future. Raphael loved to paint Him so. The 

 Madonna of the Grand Duke shows it, and the Sistine 

 Madonna; even His play with the goldfinch is tender, 

 and has none of the abandon of childhood. Sacred 

 legend is full of His praeternatural wisdom, and His 

 preoccupation with His life-work. But is there any- 

 thing of this in the Gospels? Mary ponders His future 

 in her heart, Simeon and Anna can look into it, but we 

 are not told that He did. We hear little of his childhood 

 or adolescence, except that He worked as a common 

 carpenter; and even that from legend, and by implica- 

 tion from the Gospels; and that he played children's 

 games 1 . Had He been unlike other children, except in 

 perfect sweetness of character, and goodness, it is hard 

 to believe that we should not have heard of it, though 

 the argument from silence is always a precarious one. 

 For myself, I love to think of Him romping with other 

 children, a true child, without care or thought ; forget- 

 ful, as children are forgetful; happy, as children are 

 happy; loving toys and games as children love them. 



1 Surely this is not an unjustified inference from Lc. vii. 32. 

 At any rate T. R. Glover takes this view (The Jesus of History. 

 p. 36) in commenting on Christ's parable of the children playing 

 at weddings and funerals. It is also clear from His nature parables 

 that He must have gone out into the country often for recreation 

 and amusement, for His work as a carpenter did not take Him there. 

 He speaks with all the knowledge of a shepherd or an agriculturalist. 



