The Carpenter's Son.

Front matter

THE CARPENTER'S SON.

r.

THE CARPENTER'S SON.

Chapter I. Strange And Suggestive Story

Is not this the carpenter ? — Mark vi. 3.

IN the Apocryphal New Testament this story is told : The king of Jerusalem ordered Joseph of Nazareth to build for him a throne to fit a certain place in the palace where the king was accustomed to sit. After two years Joseph finished the throne, but found to his dismay that it did not fit the place, as the king had ordered, by two spans. Josephs son bade his father to take hold on one side of the throne while he took hold on the other, and stretched it until it made a perfect fit. The story continues in these quaint words : " The throne was made of the same wood which was in being in Solomon's time, namely, wood adorned with various shapes and figures."

This is a strange story, and none the less so because material used by the royal builder of the first temple is associated with Joseph's son, who is called in the gospel according to Mark "the carpenter/' (6 zixrajv) and who appeared in public first in the temple, saying, " Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? " and whose zeal for the temple was so great that beholders were reminded of the Messianic prediction, " The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up."

A suggestive feature of the legend is that the skill of the son was greater than that of the father. This is not strange. The trade of Joseph's son was given him not merely by his reputed father, but by his real Father — as much as was divinely given the vocation of Bezaleel and Aholiab, builders of the tabernacle, " in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary;" and the business of Hiram, who, " filled with wisdom and understanding/' wrought the skilled and divinely-ordered work of the temple of Solomon.

And need not this to have been just so? That eternal purpose which planned the whole creation and history of the universe from eternity to eternity, and the unfailing providence, which superintends the execution of that plan from the birth and work and death of the least animalcule to the origin and movement and destiny of worlds and systems of worlds, must have determined and superintended all that pertained to the incarnation of the Sou of God, and, among other things, the occupation of his boyhood and earlier manhood to which he Avas adapted no doubt by special mental and physical abilities. He that wings the butterfly and shapes the leaf for certain ends, had positive reason why Jesus of Nazareth should be a carpenter and a

STRANGE AND SUGGESTIVE STORY. 3

carpenter's son, and more skilled and powerful, as the legend has it, than his carpenter father.

And what was that reason ? There is a doctrine of correspondence between the material and the immaterial, between the natural and the spiritual, which, though it may be pressed too far, has in it a basis of truth. The material and the natural are the phenomena of the immaterial and the spiritual, and are sometimes their representatives and symbols. It is designed by the universal author that we should pass from the obvious to the recondite, from the manifest to the hidden, from the human to the divine. Hence the trade of this so-called " carpenter " of Nazareth was given to or assumed by him because it was the best practical representation of what he was really and essentially. He was a maker, a builder. Who built the spire of grass with its measured frame and its fibrous covering and its graceful proportions and its complete symmetry; and the more elaborately constructed tree with its root-foundation, its supporting trunk, its bracing branches and twigs and its foliage-covered whole; and the boundless forests of nature and the plantations of man—these buildings that make up the vegetable kingdom of human science ? Who built the pebble with its component parts, the rock with its perfectly adjusted atoms, the mountain with its well laid strata, and the stupendous construction of the waters of the deep? And who fabricated the marvellous structures and organisms of bird and beast and fish and man ? Is there any human edifice so accurate in proportions, so harmonious in adjustment, so adapted in its uses, so perfect in its completeness as these constructions? And are not these as psalms and hymns in Nature's Temple? He that built the spire of grass built our globe, and built all worlds ; and did he not put them together into a grand Temple for the divine glory? In the Old Testament he is called Wisdom, and he says of himself, " I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. . . . And by wisdom the Lord founded the earth and established the heavens." In the New Testament he is called the Word, of whom it is written, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. . . . All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." And as to the temple-idea, why did he make anything — everything? In pondering aright this question we must conclude, sooner or later, that he made all things for the praise of his own name ; which accords with the divine declaration, "for of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen." Hence we read that the whole world is full of his glory. And is not " the world full of his glory" the best possible description of a grand and universal temple ?

And when disaster came upon this temple of nature by a vital part falling into ruin, the same builder came again to rebuild, saving a part of the fallen material; to construct a temple vaster and more enduring — a temple whose corner-stone and foundations and materials and completion are described in the gospel, and

STRANGE AND SUGGESTIVE STORY. O

the architect and builder of which is plainly declared to be this Carpenter's Son, called in contempt 6 zixriov, as he was called il the sinner's friend ," and yet called so truly, though he might have been called more truly (6 dp^rixTcov) " the Master Builder."

The story suggests also that the Carpenter's Son did work other than house-building. And this is the import of the term by which he is called. He is not called by the term (6 ocxodo/ioz) house-builder, but by the broader term rendered in the gospel "the carpenter," 6 tsxtcov, which derived from Tsu^a> y to make, to construct, to build, means the maker, the constructor, the builder. This symbolizes more perfectly the varied and vast workmanship of the eternal Son in his creative and recreative office. He makes thrones and nations, and plans and systems, and races angelic and redeemed — the last race, a special one that makes applicable to him the classic phrase 6 rixvcov ysyoo^; as well as, as has been said, worlds combined and reconstructed, comprehending these things and all things harmonious and praise-giving into a temple universal and everlasting, of which he is, as I have said, really b Apxivixrajv, rendered in the New Testament " the master-builder." As maybe convenient, I shall use the terms 6 tsxtwv and even 6 dpzczixvcov as interchangeable with "the carpenter" or "the carpenter's son."

And the fitness of the correspondence between the trade of the Carpenter's Son and the ordained work of the Son of the Divine Creator and Preserver of all, is seen more clearly as we reflect how carpentry implies in its results, creation and construction, and harmonization and unity, and perpetuation by the application of intelligence and skill and wisdom ; the very results of the eternal makership, whose accomplishment is by the wisdom and power and all the attributes of the Divine Mind. This symbol also meets the primal law of divine symbols, viz., that the symbol and the symbolized must be in different kingdoms. No symbol of the essential Divine Maker could be more complete than "the carpenter's son."

As to the main point of the legend, that the throne of the father was by the son stretched out and made to meet exactly the royal order, has it not an ample realization in the application to this " son of David " of the divine prophecy, a For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. . . . Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even forever " ?