d with variations, runs as
follows: "This child Jesus, being five years old, was playing at the
crossing of a stream, and he collected the running waters into pools,
and immediately made them pure, and by his word alone he commanded them.
And having made some soft clay, he fashioned out of it twelve sparrows;
and it was the Sabbath when he did these things. And there were also
many other children playing with him. And a certain Jew, seeing what
Jesus did, playing on the Sabbath, went immediately and said to Joseph,
his father, Behold, thy child is at the water-course, and hath taken
clay and formed twelve birds, and hath profaned the Sabbath. And Joseph
came to the place, and when he saw him, he cried unto him, saying, Why
art thou doing these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to
do? And Jesus clapped his hands, and cried unto the sparrows, and said
to them, Go away; and the sparrows flew up and departed, making a noise.
And the Jews who saw it were astonished, and went and told their leaders
what they had seen Jesus do" ("Gospel of Thomas: Apocryphal Gospels,"
B.H. Cowper, pp. 130, 131). Making the water pure by a word is no more
absurd than turning water into wine (John ii. 1-11); or than sending an
angel to trouble it, and thereby making it health-giving (John v. 2-4);
or than casting a tree into bitter waters, and making them sweet (Ex.
xv. 25). The fashioning of twelve sparrows out of soft clay is not
stranger than making a woman out of a man's rib (Gen. ii. 21); neither
is it more, or nearly so, curious as making clay with spittle, and
plastering it on a blind man's eyes in order to make him see (John ix.
6); nay, arguing _a la_ F.D. Maurice, a very strong reason might be made
out for this proceeding. Thus, Jesus came to reveal the Father to men,
and his miracles were specially arranged to show how God works in the
world; by turning the water into wine, and by multiplying the loaves, he
reminds men that it is God whose hand feeds them by all the ordinary
processes of nature. In this instructive miracle of the clay formed into
sparrows, which fly away at his bidding, Jesus reveals his unity with
the Father, as the Word by whom all things were originally made; for
"out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and
every fowl of the air" (Gen. ii. 19) at the creation, and when the Son
was revealed to bring about the new creation, what more appropriate
miracle could he perform than this rem