Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/272

156 Now when Jesus was five years old, there came a great rain upon the earth, and the child Jesus walked through it: and there was a dreadful rain, which he gathered into a pool, and commanded by his word that it should become clear, and immediately it became so. Again he took of the clay which was in that pool and made of it the number of twelve sparrows. Now it was the Sabbath when Jesus did this among the Jewish children; and the Jewish children went away saying to Joseph his father. Behold thy son was playing with us, and he took clay and made sparrows, which it was not right to do on the Sabbath, and violated it. And Joseph went to the child Jesus, and said to him. Why hast thou done that which it was not right to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus, spreading out his hands, commanded the sparrows, saying, Retire aloft and fly; ye shall find death from no one: and they flew up and began with a cry to praise Almighty God. And the Jews who saw what was done were astonished, and departed, declaring the signs which Jesus did. But a Pharisee, who was there with Jesus, took an olive branch and began to disperse the pool of water which Jesus had made, and when Jesus saw this, he was troubled and said. Impious and ignorant man of Sodom, what wrong have the pools of water, my works, done to thee? Behold thou shalt become as a dry tree, nor having roots, nor