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VIII. LIGHT ON THE HIDDEN YEARS
 HE baptism of Jesus separated between His private and public life. At that baptism the opened heavens, the descending Spirit, and the voice of the Father alike bore testimony to the perfection of the Son.
he Divine voice had special significance as a declaration concerning the character of Christ as He emerged from the seclusion of the hidden years. Thrice during the period of public ministry did this Divine voice break the silence of the heavens, announcing the Father's approval of the Son of His love. On each occasion the silence was so broken for the bearing of testimony to the perfection of Jesus.
he first occasion was the one now under consideration, when the voice declared, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased."
he second was when upon the mount of transfiguration, the same voice was heard saying, " This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased ; hear ye Him."
he third was when Jesus, drawing near to His Cross, the shadow and sorrow thereof falling over His life, prayed, "Father, glorify Thy name," and the answer came, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."
 n each case the breaking of the silence of the heavens was for the announcement of God's approbation of Christ, as in some fresh crisis of life He set His face towards the death, which was to culminate the work of redemption, according to the purposes of God. He went into the waters of Jordan, and was numbered with the transgressors in the baptism of repentance, taking His place with them in that symbol of death, as He would finally associate Himself with them in actual death. So far as the Person and character of Christ were concerned, He had no need of the baptism of John. The prophet was perfectly right when he said, "I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me? " By His action He signified His consent to identification with sinners, even to death. Here then, at once becomes evident the value of the Divine statement. It was a declaration of the perfection of Jesus, and consequently of the value of that sacrifice which He would ultimately offer.
his indeed was the signification in each of the three cases quoted, for on the mount of transfiguration, He spoke with the heavenly visitors of His coming exodus, thus in the light of that wondrous glory facing His death for men. And on the third occasion it was when He, troubled in Spirit, at the prospect of death, yet deliberately declared that for death He had come unto that hour, and prayed only for the glorification of the Divine name. In three crises He faced and consented to death, and on each occasion heaven sealed the sacrifice as being perfect, and therefore of infinite value.
his statement of the perfection of Jesus made at His baptism is a window through which light falls upon His Person and character in the years that had been spent at Nazareth.
n the account of the creation in Genesis, it is declared that man, created in the image of God was appointed master of all created things, the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and the beasts of the field. He was, moreover, placed in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, that fact indicating that all the wonderful possibilities lying within the new creation were to be realized by the attention and work of man. The psalmist, overwhelmed by the majesty of the heavens, asks in astonishment, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" and then answers his question in words that recall the Divine intention as revealed in Genesis:
"For Thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honour.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen,
Yea, and the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas."
 an, in the first Divine intention, is master of creation. He is born to have dominion. This psalm is quoted by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews:
But one hath somewhere testified, saying,
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;
Thou crownedst him with glory and honour,
And didst set him over the works of Thy hands:
Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet
 or in that he subjected all things unto him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. That is a declaration of the original purpose of God. The writer then proceeds, "But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold . . . Jesus." Without dealing with the full purpose or intention of the writer's argument, it is evident that he intends to declare, that while man as he is to-day has failed to realize the Divine intention, this Man was an exception to the general failure, in that He perfectly realized it. To Him all things were in subjection. He was Master of the fish of the sea, and knew where to find them, when the disciples had been baffled in their all-night fishing. He understood the habits of the birds of the heavens, and drew some of His sweetest lessons from them. The very beasts of the field recognized His Lordship. Of this there is a glimpse in the account of the temptation as chronicled by Mark, "He was with the wild beasts; " the preposition used indicating close contact, and therefore also suggesting that He was unharmed by them. He was indeed God's perfect Man, having dominion over the things of His Father's creation.
o facilitate the meditation on the perfections of Jesus as Man, fall back upon the simplest analysis of human personality, that of spirit and body, dealing with the mind as the consciousness of this compound personality. Inferentially the New Testament has much to say concerning the perfection of Jesus in spirit and body during those years of seclusion in Nazareth.
I.  e commence with spirit, for that is the essential fact in man. For an understanding of the perfection of His Spirit again let the analysis of intelligence, emotion, and will be accepted. In all of these, and in their combination, Jesus of Nazareth realized the Divine thought, and therefore was absolutely perfect.
n Him intelligence was unclouded. In the Divine economy there are three ways in which men may know God,—through creation, through revelation, and through direct communication.
 ll these avenues were open to Jesus, and through them He saw all that was to be seen. To Him creation was an open book, revelation was radiant, and communication with God was immediate and uninterrupted. These things can be said of none other. Creation is not an open book to man. God is allowing him by the slow and tedious processes of the centuries to learn to read its secrets. To Jesus all these secrets were apparent.
he revelation of the Scriptures, while perfect in themselves, are not perfectly understood because of the clouding of man's intelligence, and it is out of his limitation that all the misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the centuries have risen. To Jesus all the words of revelation rang with the meanings of God, and He knew Him, and understood His message in the holy writings.
he communication of men with God, even of the saints, is intermittent and partial, interfered with often by moods and frames. His was perpetual, the Divine voice sounding in the deepest consciousness of His soul, and He, answering with the naturalness of a child, in the immediate presence of the Father.
n this connection hear the testimony of the men of Nazareth. To this hamlet on the hills He had been taken as an infant on the return from Egypt, and there for the next twenty-eight years the greater part of His life was spent. At the age of twelve He had been taken to Jerusalem, and in all probability had visited the Holy City each subsequent year; but most likely all the remaining months of the years were passed in Nazareth. The people of Nazareth would know Him perfectly. It was a little town standing out of the run of the ordinary traffic of the country. So far is it removed from the ordinary course of events that it seems as though no invading army has ever touched it; and there is great probability that the synagogue standing to-day is the very one in which the Lord read the words of the law. It was a small and unimportant place, where in all likelihood every one knew every one else, and would be perfectly familiar with the boy who had grown up in the shop of the village carpenter, and had finally Himself succeeded His reputed father in the work of that shop.
t about thirty years of age, He had turned His back upon the village. After an absence of a few months He returned, and as His custom was, visited the synagogue on the Sabbath day. But now what He did was unusual and unexpected—He opened His mouth and began to speak to them, and as they listened to Him they were astonished; and presently some one asked the question, " Whence hath this Man these things: and, What is the wisdom that is given unto this Man?"
o gather the full force of the question it is necessary to understand what they meant by wisdom. According to Trench the word ao^ia, signifies clearness of understanding, and is a word used only "as expressing the highest and noblest." As these men of Nazareth listened to Him, what surprised them was that they heard in His teaching, such wisdom as was proof at once of great intellect, and great goodness.
here is a yet more remarkable statement recorded about Him in the Gospel of John. Coming from Galilee to Jerusalem He taught in the temple. Speaking here was a very different thing from speaking in the synagogue at Nazareth. Here were gathered and centred the light and scholarship of the day. Here a false accent, or a misquotation of ignorance, would immediately have been detected. When Savonarola came to Florence for the first time, his magnificent eloquence of conviction was counted nothing, because of the objectionable Lombardy accent. When Jesus passed from the villages to the metropolis, and opened His mouth to teach, surrounded by the most critical ears of His day, " the Jews therefore marvelled, saying, How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned?" Now this word jyi«/»/taT«, translated "letters," is a most significant one. It only occurs in one other place in the New Testament, "And as he thus made his defence, Festus saith with a loud voice, Paul, thou art mad; thy much learning is turning thee mad."* Festus meant by the word "learning" exactly what these men meant by "letters." Festus detected in the speech of Paul, all that he had gained from his careful training. There was the accent of the school of Gamaliel, and it was this tone of erudition that the Jews were astonished at in Jesus when they spoke of His knowing letters. " When they said, ' How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned,' they meant that He had never studied in the schools, and yet possessed all that the schools could give Him." 3 The remarkable thing was that Jesus showed Himself familiar with the literary methods of His time, which were confined to the disciples of the popular teachers. He did not speak amongst them as an earnest and yet ignorant Man; but by His use of language, and His evident familiarity with the philosophies of the schools, He impressed the Jerusalem crowds, and in astonishment they exclaimed, "How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned?"
en have to learn, to study, to go through processes of training, to obtain what He possessed without these processes. To return to the Gospel of John, notice that He answered their question: "My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself." While that passage is generally quoted as declaring a philosophy of Christian discipleship, and while it has that application, it should never be forgotten that the first intention of the words is that of an answer to a question of the Jews, and is our Lord's account of His knowledge of the things that astonished His hearers. The Man Who perfectly does the will of God is the Man Who understands all mysteries; and is familiar with facts which ordinary men only understand by long effort and study. The secrets that lie hidden in Nature, fallen man with clouded intelligence must search after; but God's unfallen Man will read them upon the open page of Nature, discovering immediately the deepest philosophies of life. Never let Christ be robbed of the royalty of intellectual kingship. He was in no sense ignorant or illiterate. He never learned, for there was no necessity for learning. Learning is a process made necessary by the fall of man, and the sin of the race. God's perfect and unfallen Man needed no such process; being sinless, He knew letters without having learned. In Him was most perfectly fulfilled the wonderful words "The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear Him."
his intelligence operated not only in the realm of Nature, but in keen and marvellous accuracy of understanding of the inner secrets of other human lives. As John declares, "He needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for He Himself knew what was in man." l Telepathy and thought-reading are great mysteries to the mind of men to-day, mysteries towards the solution of which a few are bending all their mental power, while the rest watch, and smilingly imagine that they are either playing tricks, or are themselves being tricked. And yet this whole realm of the communication of the mind of man with the mind of man, is part of the estate lost through sin. In it Jesus was at home. He knew the thought of sin, and the lustful desire, and the hidden malice, and the trembling aspiration after God; and to watch carefully His dealings with the varied men and women, who crossed His pathway, is to see the method of an intelligence the calibre of which cannot be understood, for He read the inner thought of the heart of each as an open book.
 et workers for God in dealing with individual souls ever bear this in mind. He knows the secret of the heart of the one to whom the worker is talking. There are times when in dealing with men of intellectual mold there has come the temptation of imagining that Jesus of Nazareth was not able perfectly to satisfy the capacity of their great minds. Shame on all such unworthy doubt. Be it ever remembered that Jesus, the Son of Mary, was Prince of scholars, Master of learning, King of wisdom, His enemies being His witnesses. He had the j-pd/t/jiara, the wisdom of letters, which they so coveted, though He never passed through human process to reach the human result.
 e was moreover perfect in His emotional nature. His affection was undivided. Unclouded intelligence issued in perfect consciousness of God. Seeing God perfectly in the ways and works of God, He loved God perfectly. Herein is the deepest meaning of His own words," Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Himself pure in heart, He saw God perfectly, and this was to realize the Divine unity. Let this sequence be carefully noted. First, unclouded intelligence producing perfect consciousness of God; secondly, perfect consciousness of God revealing the unity of God and of all things in God; thirdly, this discovery capturing the whole heart and necessitating perfect love.
his unity of God was the central fact for the understanding of which the Hebrew nation had been created. "Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah." To see and know God as Jesus saw and knew Him is to discover this unity, and therein to discover the unity of all the purposes of Deity,—that ". . . through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."
his vision of the unity of God captures the heart of man. The consciousness of the One Who creates and maintains unity, is the perfection of love in the soul of man. Thus the passage already quoted in Deuteronomy concerning the unity of Jehovah is immediately followed by the command, "And thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." Jesus knowing with unclouded intelligence was perfectly conscious of the character of God, and the unity of His purpose, and loved Him with all His heart. The Man of unclouded intelligence was the Man of undivided affection.
hen follows the fact of the unopposing will. The will is the citadel against which all the forces of temptation are directed, and within this citadel Jesus repelled these temptations in the light of unclouded intelligence, and the power of undivided affection. He saw God perfectly, and therefore He loved God perfectly, and therefore He obeyed God perfectly, and was able to say, "I do always the things that are pleasing to Him."
n this analysis of the spiritual perfection of Jesus, there must ever be borne in mind the interaction of these three facts within the spiritual nature. Love, through light, appealed to will. Will, responding, strengthened love and increased light. That is the perpetual process in human life. Yielding to God, light falls upon the pathway, and creates love. Love suggests obedience. The will, impulsed by love, yields to light. The experience that follows obedience increases love and light, and thus there is perpetual progress, growth, development in the grace that makes men grow in favour with God and man.
III. urn now to the physical perfection of Jesus. When will some inspired artist give us a true picture of this glorious Man? He is almost always depicted as frail in physical form, and lacking in bodily beauty. Perhaps the German artist, Hoffmann, has come nearest to the true ideal. It may be argued that the prophet Isaiah declared, " There is no beauty that we should desire Him ;" but surely the prophet did not mean that He would be devoid of beauty, but rather that men would be blind and would not recognize the true type of Divine beauty. I strenuously hold that He was perfect in physical form and proportion. The body is the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible spirit, and the perfect spirit of Jesus would form a perfect physical tabernacle in which He passed the probationary life.
n the letter to the Romans the apostle urges the saints "to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." ' That is the marginal reading, and catches the real thought of the writer. The spirit worships through the presentation of the body. The spirit expresses itself through the body. It will readily be conceded that the most plain and commonplace faces become transfused with light, when the spirit is in communion with God; and to grant the spiritual perfection of Jesus is of necessity to admit bodily perfection likewise. Marred with the furrows of sorrow and of pain His sacred face most surely was, yet in form and feature and fashion it was the fairest face of man the world has ever seen. Perhaps bent, and even at the last faltering with weariness, that sacred tabernacle of His spirit, and yet the boasted perfections of Greek gods were but human abortions by the side of the perfectly balanced physique of Jesus. In Him spirit was dominant, and all bodily powers were perfectly under control, within the sphere appointed in the Divine economy.
t follows that every piece of work that Jesus did in physical strength under the control of spiritual intelligence, was perfect work, and this because He perfectly understood His work, was perfectly able to do it, and rendered it in the perfect love of His heart to God. How delightful it is to meditate upon Him as He bent over His bench and made yokes and ploughs for the cultivation of the fields He so dearly loved, which stretched around the hamlet where He lived. It is worthy of remembrance that He used both plough and yoke as illustrations in His preaching. Think for a moment of the wonderful skill with which He would carry out His work. His knowledge of nature was such that He knew exactly the best wood to use for any given piece of work; and in the tree lying before Him, He read all the story of its growth, and knew the precision of its method, and so understood just how to cut it so as not to spoil it in the process. He knew, moreover, how to join it, so that in the joint the strength of each part should minister to the new strength of union. He was a perfect Workman, doing perfect work.
 erhaps apart from the Master, one of the most wonderful illustrations the world has ever had of perfection of spirit producing perfection of work was that of Stradivarius, the great, and may it not be said, the only, maker of the violin. Certain' it is that his instruments have never been improved upon. When he was at work on them, he would pass into the woods, and placing his hands upon the trees would know by the very touch, which wood was best for each part of the musical mechanism. He discovered the tones of music in the fibre of the wood, with the result that he made a perfect instrument. In him there was the development of spirit on the side of music.
 ow lift the thought, and remember that Jesus of Nazareth was not developed upon one side only, but was perfect in His understanding of all the methods of God in creation. See then how His work would be most perfect. Every piece of carpentry passing from His shop, if men had but been able to appreciate it, thrilled with the energy of perfect manhood.
n Him there was an utter absence of disease. He had strength enough for the accomplishment of the Divinely ordained work of the day. No more than that, for He was Man. Tired was He when the day was over, because His strength had been used for the day for which it was given. Tiredness is God's call to sleep which is Nature's sweet restorer. O perfect Man, perfect in spirit, having learning, loving always, obeying ever; perfect in body, with face of rarest beauty, and form of finest mold, expressing in common daily tasks the thoughts of God and the perfections of eternity!
hen finally, and in a word, let it be remembered that He passed from those thirty years of privacy, perfect in spite of temptation. His had not been a life free from temptation. The old question asked in Eden was surely asked of Jesus, "Has God imposed limitations?" and the suggestions, listening to which the first of the race was ruined, were made to Him also," This limitation of the carpenter's bench is cruel bondage." And yet there He remained while days multiplied into weeks, and weeks grew into months, and months passed on, until years had multiplied themselves to thirty. And even when perhaps the subtlest temptation of all came, the temptation to hurry on His own greatest work, the temptation which coming to Moses and mastering him postponed deliverance for so long, He still remained, there also learning obedience by the things which He suffered, and growing in favour with God and men ; until, responsive to the inward call, He left the seclusion and the privacy, and standing on the threshold of public work, with the waters of a death baptism, which He had shared in the grace of His heart with man, still clinging about Him, the silent heavens broke into the language of a great music, as the Almighty Father declared, "This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased."
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