The parents of the Master were living Souls: they were alive to every pure and spiritual good. Between them and the Jewish priesthood there was nothing in common. No part did they take in the Temple services, though from the Gospel Records it would appear as if they had done so. They were of the purest community of the Essenes. No creature was sacrificed by them in religious rite, nor yet for food or clothing; for they knew that the only true sacrifice was spiritual, and that to eat any creature who had looked with living conscious eye upon life, was evil, a great wrong done to the creature and the Soul. Nor did they drink of any fermented cup, knowing well that the perfect equilibrium of the body could not be retained if evil elements were introduced. The pure fruits of the Earth constituted their dietary. They lived purely; and in all their ways they were pure.

All the signs and emblems within the home were those of Divine Charity. The gates of life were the avenues of love. Every sense was attuned to the Divine Will; the influence of all was harmonious. The pure fruits of the Earth by which they nourished themselves, were unto them emblems of beautiful thoughts and signs of the graciousness of the Father unto all His children. Within the home the conditions were truly heavenly. In no mere imaginary way, but in a true poetic and empirical sense, Angels trod its threshold. The Divine Presence was there, for it was a Sanctuary. The Divine Love flooded it with His Radiance. The child grew in grace and in stature, nourished in body, mind and heart upon everything pure, beautiful and spiritual.

It was in such an atmosphere that the Master spent His childhood and early youth, growing in the grace of the Divine Love, opening out ever more and more to the inflowing Light of the Divine Wisdom. In all His ways He was beautiful. His Life bathed in the beautiful Divine Life-stream, whose waters filled His whole Being as the waters of the ocean fill every part where they flow, even every nook and crevice of the rock-bound coast. It may be said that upon His brow there ever rested the crown of the Angelic Life. He was sphered in the Angelic World; and, as a result, there was within Him the rapidly unfolding consciousness of all that blessed Life meant. He always felt the influences of that world upon Him, and gladly responded to them. Communion with that world was His delight as He drank in the knowledge which came to Him from those heavenly visitants who were His constant companions. Unto His vision the Heavens were open, and life upon them was His native air. It was thus that He unfolded until the fulness of manhood was reached, and with it that fuller consciousness of the work for which He had come into this cosmos.

Excerpts from pp 30-32 of The Master: His Life and Teachings by John Todd Ferrier.
© The Order of the Cross

See the quotation The Man of Nazareth from What is a Christian?

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