friendships as somehow different from other men's. We feel that in
some mysterious way his human life was supported and sustained by the
deity that dwelt in him, and that he was exempt from all ordinary
limiting conditions of humanity.

There is no doubt that with many people this feeling of reverence has
been in the way of the truest understanding of Jesus, and ofttimes
those who have clung most devoutly to a belief in his deity have missed
much of the comfort which comes from a proper comprehension of his
humanity.

Yet the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels furnishes no ground for
any confusion on the subject of his human life. It represents him as
subject to all ordinary human conditions excepting sin. He began life
as every infant begins, in feebleness and ignorance; and there is no
hint of any precocious development. He learned as every child must
learn. The lessons were not gotten easily or without diligent study.
He played as other boys did, and with them. The more we think of the
youth of Jesus as in no marked way unlike that of those among whom he
lived, the truer will our thought of him be.

Millais the great artist, when he was a young man, painted an unusual
picture of Jesus. He represented him as a little boy in the home at
Nazareth. He has cut his finger on some carpenter's tool, and comes to
his mother to have it bound up. The picture is really one of the
truest of all the many pictures of Jesus, because it depicts just such
a scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in his youth. Evidently
there was nothing in his life in Nazareth that drew the attention of
his companions and neighbors to him in any striking way. We know that
he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public
ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and
kindness. There was never any sin or fault in him; he always kept the
law of God perfectly. But his perfection was not something startling.
There was no halo about his head, no transfiguration, that awed men.
We are told that he grew in favor with men as well as with God. His
religion made his life beautiful and winning, but always so simple and
natural that it drew no unusual attention to itself. It was richly and
ideally human.

So it was unto the end. Through the years of his public ministry, when
his words and works burned with divine revealing, he continued to live
an altogether natural human life. He ate and drank; he