When his mother told him they had been looking for him, sorrowing, he replied, "How is it that ye sought me? Knew ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"
There was a law among the Jews that no one should be a public teacher, or minister, till he was thirty years old. Jesus wished to show respect to the laws of his country, and therefore we may suppose he continued to work as a carpenter till he was of that age. He was then baptized in the river Jordan by his forerunner, John the Baptist, and commenced choosing his disciples and preaching the gospel.
The story of his life after this time,—how he went about teaching the people, though they often abused him; how he gave them food when they were hungry, though he had not where to lay his head, healed the sick, and in every way returned good for evil to his ungrateful countrymen, for three years, till they cruelly put him to death,—is told at large in the New Testament, where we hope all our young readers will read it again and again, with earnest attention. They will find it a very interesting narrative, and in it instructions capable of making them wise unto salvation.
CRUCIFIXION OF OUR SAVIOR.
Our blessed Savior, having passed a life of piety and virtue, amply illustrated by the doctrines he had taught and practised, and the benefits rendered mankind, was at length betrayed by Judas Iscariot into the hands of the Jewish High Priest and Council, whose hatred and malice against him were without bounds, as the truths he had proclaimed were but faithful commentaries on the vice and wickedness of their own characters.
He was tried and condemned—though his judge declared that he found no fault in him,—his body mangled with whips, and a wreath of thorns pressed upon his head as a mock crown. They spit upon him, taunted him, smote him on the crown with staves, that it might wound the more deeply, till his head, face, and body were bathed in blood.
In this situation, condemned and abandoned by the world he came to save, the heavy cross was laid upon his shoulders, and he was conducted in public through the city.