If the authorized translation be true to the intent of the Greek, and therefore to that of the Syriac, how could his parents, knowing him as they did from all that had been spoken before concerning him, from all they had seen in him, from the ponderings in Mary’s own heart, and from the precious thoughts she and Joseph cherished concerning him, have failed to understand him when he said that wherever he was, he must be about his father’s business?  On the other hand, supposing them to know and feel that he must be about his father’s business, would that have been reason sufficient, in view of the degree of spiritual development to which they had attained, for the Lord’s expecting them not to be anxious about him when they had lost him?  Thousands on thousands who trust God for their friends in things spiritual, do not trust him for them in regard of their mere health or material well-being.  His parents knew how prophets had always been treated in the land; or if they did not think in that direction, there were many dangers to which a boy like him would seem exposed, to rouse an anxiety that could be met only by a faith equal to saying, ’Whatever has happened to him, death itself, it can be no evil to one who is about his father’s business;’ and such a faith I think the Lord could not yet have expected of them.  That what the world counts misfortune might befall him on his father’s business, would have been recognized by him, I think, as reason for their parental anxiety—­so long as they had not learned God—­that he is what he is—­the thing the Lord had come to teach his father’s men and women.  His words seem rather to imply that there was no need to be anxious about his personal safety.  Fear of some accident to him seems to have been the cause of their trouble; and he did not mean, I think, that they ought not to mind if he died doing his father’s will, but that he was in no danger as regarded accident or misfortune.  This will appear more plainly as we proceed.  So much for the authorized version.

Let us now take the translation given us by the Revisers:—­’Wist ye not that I must be in my father’s house?’

Are they authorized in translating the Greek thus?  I know no justification for it, but am not learned enough to say they have none.  That the Syriac has it so, is of little weight; seeing it is no original Syriac, but retranslation.  If he did say ‘my father’s house’, could he have meant the temple and his parents not have known what he meant?  And why should he have taken it for granted they would know, or judge that they ought to have known, that he was there?  So little did the temple suggest itself to them, that either it was the last place in which they sought him, or they had been there before, and had not found him.  If he meant that they might have known this without being told, why was it that, even when he set the thing before them, they did not understand him?  I do not believe he meant the temple; I do not think he said or meant ’in my fathers house’.