The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1906-01-21

What the Church Folks IRE Thinking
.About and Doing. Religious RegUS
From Everywhere.
SUNDAY scHOoI LESSON AND YOUNG PEOPLES TOPIC.

every parent WnGn nEE Will IS the
child's viii; but there comes a
day when youth must bear it's own
burdens, solve its own problems as
sumo it's own sponsibilities. That day
had come for Jesus
In contemplating Mary'S sorrow over
the gentle rebuke of her Son we forget
the trial of Jesus. 1t was no pleasure
to Him to reproVe, though ever so
gently. the mother that He loved. One
of the heavy crosses of sensitive young
manhood is the necessity for asserting
his maturity. Tt is hard day for the
youth who is obliged to say, Father.
am no longer d boy" Yet to be true
to his manhood the youth must insist
on his divine right of government.
Every Life to Its Own.
"Know We not that 1 must be in my
Fathers house" was the wondering
question with which Jesus greeted His
mothers reprOach. After all that these
twelve years has held-after Gabriels
visit, the shepherds wondering an
nouncement the glad surprise of
Simeon and Anna, the star in the sky.
the Magi with their gifts, JOseph's
dream the close relation in the little
Nazareth hOme,-knoW ye not that my
first allegiance is to the Father who
sent me- How blind every other life
is to each LIES fulhllment OF its own
destiny; in his innermost self no one
is known to anybody else. Earth's
rarest Soul is here seen fulfilling his
destiny Christ instinctively turned to
His Fathers house. He could not deny
His nature. He had to be about the
things of His Father.
Misunderstood.
one of the hymns that never fails
to awaken response in any audience
is, Sometime Wen Understand"
Everybody is misunderstood. Some
weak souls lament and repine over
this and count it great injustice;
strong spirits accept it as one of the
inevitable facts of life But in all the
tragedies of earth's misunderstanding
there is comfort to the deVOut in the
record of the life of Jesus that in the
very outset He was not understood
by those closest to Him. So it ran
through all the days, until the hour of
His passion. He came unto his own
and his own received him not" The
solitude of the Saviour passes compre-
But here we come to a sublime
spectacle, showing how the Son of
Man "humbled Himself for after the
interview at the temple Jesus went
of a carpenter; to put Himself into the
limitations of all the life of that gOs-
siping village He made Himself one
/ of the many, though so far above
them. That was true greatness. 1t
/ is easy to walk apart with ones own
thought; it is easy to do and think as
| the crowd thinks when with them, but
4 it is greatness. as Emerson has pointed
/ out to preserve the ideals of solitude
amid the sordidness of the multitude.
The only person not surprised at
many a mans success is his mother.
| Never a woman receives newborn
son in her arms without hope of a
great future for him. Mary kept all
these sayings of Jesus, bordering them
IN her heart.
All conditions are meant by God for
human growth. Even during the
! eighteen years in Nazareth. the un-
sympathetic and uncongenial years,
/ the unrecognized and unappreciated
/ years, Jesus advanced in wisdom and
stature and in favor with God and
men, Wherever God plants a life is
good growing ground. If the Son of
God and the Saviour of men could
come to His estate by the Nazareth ap-
/ premiership every life that longs for
/ better things can rise to its height by
right use of present conditions.