FOR the earnest Christian deep significance attaches to every incident in the life of the Master. The yearning for knowledge of his life, especially of his youth and young manhood, about which so little is known, is particularly keen. In consequence, the story of the youthful Jesus loitering behind his parents in Jerusalem and found later arguing with the doctors, commands peculiar interest. The reply to his anxious mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?" has a depth of meaning which Christians dearly cherish: "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" What could be the Father's business, to which the youthful Jesus thus declared he must give his attention, is a problem of deep concern to all who would follow in his footsteps.
That during the years of his ministry Christ Jesus was wholly devoted to establishing in the hearts of men the truth about God and man, there can be no doubt. At all times, under all circumstances, he proclaimed the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; he proclaimed and demonstrated the allness of God, His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Moreover, Jesus made his teachings practical even to the destroying of the claims of sin, of disease, even of death itself. He overcame material law in many of its aspects, thus demonstrating the divine power as available to meet the varying needs of mankind. In short, he proclaimed the kingdom of heaven as at hand and with gates wide open to all who would take the steps necessary to enter its atmosphere of holy peace and quietude. Thus did this most marvelous of men, the world's elder brother, make manifest precisely what the Father's business is —the establishing of the kingdom of heaven on earth. This, then, is the true business, and there is none other.
If we are to accept Jesus as Way-shower, the foremost exemplar of righteous living, we are in duty bound to accept him in all his ways, wholly, not in part. The world of affairs, it seems, has been little inclined to accept the Nazarene's exemplification of the true business, and so has gone on its own way, striving to succeed through a purely material concept of business, of its purposes and its practices. Consequently, business has come in a great measure to be conducted on a selfish basis, for personal gain, to satisfy the lusts of the so-called material senses. How far has it wandered from the criterion set forth by the Nazarene Prophet!
