"It was night then, and they could not return to the city before the morning came. Do you think Mary slept that night? Do you suppose she could lie down peacefully, and close her eyes, and forget her great and sudden trouble? Oh, no! She would be wondering where her lost child was, where he was sleeping, and if he were hungry and homeless in the great city they had left, or perhaps wandering about in the fields and woods outside, with no place to lay His head. She watched for the morning, and at the very first glimmer of light she was on her feet, ready to run all the way back to the city.
"And all the way back they would ask every one they met, 'Have you seen our son Jesus of Nazareth?'
"Those who did not know them would say, 'Tell us what your son is like.'
"Then Mary did her best to describe Him as exactly as she could; for she knew every look upon His face, and every tone of His voice. But very likely the clearest thing she could say, the thing most people would know Him best by, would be, 'He wears a little coat which I made myself, and it is all in one piece, without seam, woven from the top throughout.'
"Most folks see clothes plainer than faces. But she did not get any news of Jesus before they reached the city.
"They wandered up and down the streets, seeking everywhere for the child Jesus. They sought Him sorrowing, sorrowing. Think what it would be to lose your child, perhaps the only one you had, in this great city of London; never to know where it had wandered, or whose hands it had fallen into; by night not to know whether it was sleeping under any shelter, and by day not to know whether any one was giving it bread to eat."
"Why, that's like me and Gip!" cried Sandy, pushing through the circle to get closer to the speaker, and listening with all his might, lest he should miss a single word.
"At last," he continued, "Mary said suddenly, 'How foolish we are! When we were here with our boy, we went scarcely anywhere but to the Temple, and that was where Jesus always liked best to go. Let us look for Him there.'
"So they went up to the Temple, where Jesus loved most to go; and there they found Him! Try to think how all this sorrow was turned in a moment into great joy; and how, as they were going home to Nazareth with their child, their hearts would dance for very gladness, whenever their eyes fell upon Him.
"And now Jesus, who was a lost child then, is seeking us, who are all like lost children, wandering away from the house and home of God, our Father. You know you are a long way off from God; you have lost your way, and do not know how to get home to Him again. We are like foolish little children, who follow some show along the streets till they lose sight of the way back, and can only wander on and on, farther and farther away, till in time, if they are not found, they will forget all about their old home, or that they ever had one.