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The Third Lesson: The Mystic Youth of Jesus.961
some of these travelers regarding the boy, that they might impart to him
some truth or teaching for which He was ready.
And so the boy grew in knowledge and wisdom, day by day, year by
year, until, finally, there occurred an event in His life, which has since
been the subject of greatest interest to all Christians and students of the
New Testament, but which without the above explanation is not readily
understood.
The Feast of the Passover occurred in its allotted time of the year—
April—when Jesus was in his thirteenth year. This feast was one of the most
important in the Jewish calendar, and its observance was held as a most
sacred duty by all Hebrews. It was the feast set down for the remembrance
and perpetuation of that most important event in the history of the Jewish
people when the Angel of Death swept over all of Egypt’s land smiting the
first-born child of every house of the natives, high and low, but sparing
all the houses of the captive Hebrews who marked their door-sills with
the sacrificial blood as a token of their faith. This is no place to give the
explanation of this apparently miraculous event, which students now know
to be due to natural causes. We merely mention it in passing.
The Law-givers of Israel had appointed the Feast of the Passover as a
perpetual symbol of this event so important by the nation, and every selfrespecting
Jew felt obligated to take part in the observance and sacrament.
Every pious Jew made it a point to perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the
time of the Feast of the Passover, if he could in any way manage to do so.
At the time of the Passover celebration of which we are speaking, Jesus
had just entered into His thirteenth year, which age entitled Him, under the
ecclesiastical law, to the privilege of sitting with the adult men of His race at
the Passover supper, and also to publicly join with the male congregation in
the thanksgiving service in the synagogues.
And so, on this year, He accompanied His father and mother to Jerusalem
and made His second visit to the Holy City. It will be remembered that His
first visit there was made when as an infant He was carried thither from