p. 109 | Half-Learned Critics by Dr. A. Thomson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 17, 1872

Half-Learned Critics.

By Dr. A. Thomson

THE practice of taking advantage of the early morning for travelling is a necessity in the East, in order to get the full benefit of the cooler hours of the day, and to have time for the rest and repast at noon, when traveling would be intolerably oppressive and often dangerous. But while this is the unvarying practice, when proceeding from day to day on a pilgrimage, it is never done on the first day of a departure. On that day the party does not leave until within a few hours of sunset, and often pitches its tent on the first night within sight of the place which it has left. This was our uniform experience. The custom, which has all the authority of a law, is very ancient, and allusions to it can be discovered in Jewish writers at least a century before Christ. The reason in which it appears to have originated was the very simple one that if, on the first evening of unloading the baggage, it was found that anything of value had been left behind, or anything indispensable to the journey unprovided, there might yet be time to return and procure it. This custom illustrates one of the most beautiful passages in the history of our Lord. When Joseph and Mary were on their way back from Jerusalem, on the first occasion of their visit with Jesus to the Temple at the feast, they discovered, when halting at sunset, that their wondrous child was not in the company. The fact has long been used as a stock objection with infidels, and with interpreters who dwell on the border-land of infidelity, and it has even been picked up and appropriated by Strauss, as casting doubt on the reality of the entire narrative. Was it credible, it has been said, that our Lord’s parents could have taken a long day’s journey, and never once have inquired for a child so deserving of their love? This is another instance of that skeptical quarreling with the Scripture narrative which has its origin in half-knowledge. Joseph and Mary, it is probable, were only a few miles distant from the city when they made their painful discovery. We saw Jerusalem on the day of our leaving it from the place of our encampment on our way south-eastward.—Dr. A. Thomson in the Christian Weekly.