It was the tragedy of His early life that, while He was filling up with the wisdom which came by faith, Joseph and Mary were leaking out what faith they had had. At the age of twelve the boy Jesus felt compelled to make a protest at the treatment He was receiving in His home. As He was to say sorrowfully in later life, a prophet is not without honour save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own home.

The time had come in His experience when He realised that the prophecies and visions which had immediately preceded and followed His birth were but echoes of the prophecies uttered centuries before by Isaiah and the other prophets. The staggering fact, made known so directly to Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zacharias, that He was the Son of the Highest, had entered His mind and heart.

What a tremendous shock it must have been to the son of the carpenter of Nazareth to realise for the first time that He was God the Creator! Those who are born again find it difficult to realise that they too are Sons of God: but what of Him who was the Only-Begotten Son of God? How could humanity sustain the unbelievable grandeur of Deity; how could flesh face the awful responsibilities of God? We know not how much more of the truth had as yet burst upon Him, but we are given a clear statement of His understanding of His divine nature.

It was of course the custom of all Hebrew parents to watch eagerly for any signs of spirituality in their children. Those who showed promise in this way were naturally sent at an early age to the Bible School in Jerusalem that as the pupil of one or other of the great Rabbis they might learn the Hebrew language in which God's Word was written—unintelligible to the ordinary Jew, who spoke Aramaic or Koine. So Saul was sent that long journey from Tarsus that he might sit at the feet of