The Adolescent Years

127:4.1By this time Je­sus and Mary were get­ting along much bet­ter. She re­garded him less as a son; he had be­come to her more a fa­ther to her chil­dren. Each day’s life swarmed with prac­ti­cal and im­me­di­ate dif­fi­cul­ties. Less fre­quently they spoke of his life­work, for, as time passed, all their thought was mu­tu­ally de­voted to the sup­port and up­bring­ing of their fam­ily of four boys and three girls.

127:4.2By the be­gin­ning of this year Je­sus had fully won his mother to the ac­cep­tance of his meth­ods of child train­ing—the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion to do good in the place of the older Jew­ish method of for­bid­ding to do evil. In his home and through­out his pub­lic-teach­ing ca­reer Je­sus in­vari­ably em­ployed the pos­i­tive form of ex­hor­ta­tion. Al­ways and ev­ery­where did he say, “You shall do this—you ought to do that.” Never did he em­ploy the neg­a­tive mode of teach­ing de­rived from the an­cient taboos. He re­frained from plac­ing em­pha­sis on evil by for­bid­ding it, while he ex­alted the good by com­mand­ing its per­for­mance. Prayer time in this house­hold was the oc­ca­sion for dis­cussing any­thing and ev­ery­thing re­lat­ing to the wel­fare of the fam­ily.

127:4.3Je­sus be­gan wise dis­ci­pline upon his broth­ers and sis­ters at such an early age that lit­tle or no pun­ish­ment was ever re­quired to se­cure their prompt and whole­hearted obe­di­ence. The only ex­cep­tion was Jude, upon whom on sundry oc­ca­sions Je­sus found it nec­es­sary to im­pose penal­ties for his in­frac­tions of the rules of the home. On three oc­ca­sions when it was deemed wise to pun­ish Jude for self-con­fessed and de­lib­er­ate vi­o­la­tions of the fam­ily rules of con­duct, his pun­ish­ment was fixed by the unan­i­mous de­cree of the older chil­dren and was as­sented to by Jude him­self be­fore it was in­flicted.

127:4.4While Je­sus was most me­thod­i­cal and sys­tem­atic in ev­ery­thing he did, there was also in all his ad­min­is­tra­tive rul­ings a re­fresh­ing elas­tic­ity of in­ter­pre­ta­tion and an in­di­vid­u­al­ity of adap­ta­tion that greatly im­pressed all the chil­dren with the spirit of jus­tice which ac­tu­ated their fa­ther-brother. He never ar­bi­trar­ily dis­ci­plined his broth­ers and sis­ters, and such uni­form fair­ness and per­sonal con­sid­er­a­tion greatly en­deared Je­sus to all his fam­ily.

127:4.5James and Si­mon grew up try­ing to fol­low Je­sus’ plan of pla­cat­ing their bel­li­cose and some­times irate play­mates by per­sua­sion and non­re­sis­tance, and they were fairly suc­cess­ful; but Joseph and Jude, while as­sent­ing to such teach­ings at home, made haste to de­fend them­selves when as­sailed by their com­rades; in par­tic­u­lar was Jude guilty of vi­o­lat­ing the spirit of these teach­ings. But non­re­sis­tance was not a rule of the fam­ily. No penalty was at­tached to the vi­o­la­tion of per­sonal teach­ings.

127:4.6In gen­eral, all of the chil­dren, par­tic­u­larly the girls, would con­sult Je­sus about their child­hood trou­bles and con­fide in him just as they would have in an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther.

127:4.7James was grow­ing up to be a well-bal­anced and even-tem­pered youth, but he was not so spir­i­tu­ally in­clined as Je­sus. He was a much bet­ter stu­dent than Joseph, who, while a faith­ful worker, was even less spir­i­tu­ally minded. Joseph was a plod­der and not up to the in­tel­lec­tual level of the other chil­dren. Si­mon was a well-mean­ing boy but too much of a dreamer. He was slow in get­ting set­tled down in life and was the cause of con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety to Je­sus and Mary. But he was al­ways a good and well-in­ten­tioned lad. Jude was a fire­brand. He had the high­est of ide­als, but he was un­sta­ble in tem­per­a­ment. He had all and more of his mother’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and ag­gres­sive­ness, but he lacked much of her sense of pro­por­tion and dis­cre­tion.

127:4.8Miriam was a well-bal­anced and level-headed daugh­ter with a keen ap­pre­ci­a­tion of things no­ble and spir­i­tual. Martha was slow in thought and ac­tion but a very de­pend­able and ef­fi­cient child. Baby Ruth was the sun­shine of the home; though thought­less of speech, she was most sin­cere of heart. She just about wor­shiped her big brother and fa­ther. But they did not spoil her. She was a beau­ti­ful child but not quite so comely as Miriam, who was the belle of the fam­ily, if not of the city.

127:4.9As time passed, Je­sus did much to lib­er­al­ize and mod­ify the fam­ily teach­ings and prac­tices re­lated to Sab­bath ob­ser­vance and many other phases of re­li­gion, and to all these changes Mary gave hearty as­sent. By this time Je­sus had be­come the un­ques­tioned head of the house.

127:4.10This year Jude started to school, and it was nec­es­sary for Je­sus to sell his harp in or­der to de­fray these ex­penses. Thus dis­ap­peared the last of his recre­ational plea­sures. He much loved to play the harp when tired in mind and weary in body, but he com­forted him­self with the thought that at least the harp was safe from seizure by the tax col­lec­tor.