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The Child Jesus grew. He did not stand still. Although it was God Himself who was revealed to us in the life of Jesus Christ, yet this did not prevent Him from being made like unto us in all things, sin only excepted. And so in all things He is an example for us to imitate. Each one, whether old or young, must remember that progress, improvement, going on, advance, change into something better and better, wiser and wiser, year by year, is the only way of becoming like Christ, and therefore like God. The world moves, and you and all of us must move with it. God calls us all ever to something higher and higher, and that higher stage we must reach by steadily advancing towards it. There are three things especially which the text puts before us as those in which our Lord's earthly education, in which the advance and improvement of His earthly character, added to His youthful and childlike powers.

1. Strength of character. Christ waxed strong in spirit. What we all want is a stout heart to resist temptation, a strong hardy conscience which fixes itself on matters of real importance and will not trifle or waste its powers on things of no concern. We must earnestly seek this strength. It comes to those who strive after it.

2. Wisdom. To gain this — to have your mind opened, to take in all that your teachers can pour into it — you are sent to school. You need not be old before your time, but you must even now be making the best use of your time. These are the golden days which never come back to you, which if once lost can never be entirely made up. Seek, therefore, for wisdom, pray for it, determine to have it, and God who gives to those who ask for it, will give it to you. Try to gain it, as our Lord gained it when He was a child, by hearing and by asking questions, i.e.,

(a)  by being teachable, humble, modest, and fixing your attention on what you have to learn;

(b)  by trying to know the meaning of what you learn, by cross-questioning yourselves, by inquiring right and left to fill up the blanks in your mind.

3. The grace or favour of God, or, as it says in ver. 52, the favour of God and man. Our Lord possessed God's favour always, but even in Him it increased more and more. It increased as He grew older, as He saw more and more of the work which was given Him to do; He felt more and more that God was His Father, and that men were His brothers, and that grace and loving-kindness was the best and dearest gift from God to man, and from man to man, and from man to God. He was subject to His parents. He did what they told Him; and so He became dear to them. He was kind, and gentle, and courteous to those about Him, so that they always liked to see Him when He came in and out amongst them. So may it be with you. Look upon God as your dear Father in heaven, who loves you, and who wishes nothing but your happiness. Look upon your schoolfellows and companions as brothers, to whom you must show whatever kindness and forbearance you can. Just as this beautiful building in which we are assembled is made up of a number of small stones beautifully carved, every one of which helps to make up the grace and beauty of the whole, so is all the state of the world made up of the graces and goodnesses not only of full-grown men and women, but of little children who will be, if they live, full-grown one day.

(Dean Stanley.)

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KJV: And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

WEB: The child was growing, and was becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.