When, at the age of thirty, he rose in the synagogue of his native place and declared his great and beautiful mission it is quite evident that he took everybody by surprise. No former utterances, nothing in his previous life, had prepared his townsfolk for this. They said, "How knoweth this man letters? Is not this the carpenter?" What habitual silence and reticence is here indicated! For this was the same Jesus whose words, when he did speak, had that profound and penetrating power that stirred the hearts of men, and have gone on since stirring them as no other utterances ever did. But when he did speak his words were more mighty from the accumulated force of repression. They fell concentrated and sparkling like diamonds that had been slowly crystallizing in those years of silence; they were utterances for time and for eternity.
In like manner we see numerous indications that he withdrew from all that was popular and noisy and merely sensational with a deep and real distaste. So far as possible he wrought his miracles privately. He enjoined reticence and silence on his disciples. He said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." He pointed to the grain of mustard seed and the hidden leaven as types of its power.
In the same way we see him sometimes receiving in silence prayers for help which he intended to answer. When the Syro-Phoenician woman cried to him to heal her daughter, it is said "he answered her never a word;" yet healing was in his heart. His silence was the magnet to draw forth her desire, to intensify her faith and reveal to his disciples what there was in her.
So, too, when word was sent from the sisters of Bethany, "Lord, behold he whom thou lovest is sick," he received it in the same silence. It is said, "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus; when he had heard, therefore, that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was." In those two days of apparent silent neglect, how many weary hours to the anxious friends watching for him who _could_ help, and who yet did not come! But the silence and the wailing ended in a deeper joy at the last. The sorrow of one family was made the means of a record of the Saviour's tenderness and sympathy and his triumphant power over death, which is for all time and for every mourner. As he gave Lazarus back whole and uninjured from the grave, so he then and there promised to do for every one who believes in him: "He that believeth on me shall never die."