_And he came to Capernaum: and, being in the house, he asked them, What
was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held
their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves who
should be the greatest. And he sat down, and called the twelve, and
saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last
of all, and servant of all. And he took a child, and set him in the
midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto
them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name,
receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him
that sent me._----MARK ix. 33-37.
Of this passage in the life of our Lord, the account given by St Mark
is the more complete. But it may be enriched and its lesson rendered
yet more evident from the record of St Matthew.
"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever
shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the
kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my
name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones that
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged
about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
These passages record a lesson our Lord gave his disciples against
ambition, against emulation. It is not for the sake of setting forth
this lesson that I write about these words of our Lord, but for the
sake of a truth, a revelation about God, in which his great argument
reaches its height.
He took a little child--possibly a child of Peter; for St Mark says
that the incident fell at Capernaum, and "in the house,"--a child
therefore with some of the characteristics of Peter, whose very faults
were those of a childish nature. We might expect the child of such a
father to possess the childlike countenance and bearing essential to
the conveyance of the lesson which I now desire to set forth as
contained in the passage.
For it must be confessed that there are children who are not childlike.
One of the saddest and not least common sights in the world is the face
of a child whose mind is so brimful of worldly wisdom that the human
childishness has vanished from it, as well as the divine childlikeness.
For the _childlike_ is the divine, and the very word "marshals me the
way that I was going." But I must delay my ascent to the final argument
in order to remove a possible difficulty, which, in turning us towards
one of the grandest truths, turns us away from the truth which the Lord
had in view here.
The difficulty is this: Is it like the _Son of man_ to pick out the
beautiful child, and leave the common child unnoticed? What thank would
he have in that? Do not even the publicans as much as that? And do not
our hearts revolt against the thought of it? Shall the mother's heart
cleave closest to the deformed of her little ones? and shall "Christ as
we believe him" choose according to the sight of the eye? Would he turn
away from the child born in sin and taught iniquity, on whose pinched
face hunger and courage and love of praise have combined to stamp the
cunning of avaricious age, and take to his arms the child of honest
parents, such as Peter and his wife, who could not help looking more
good than the other? That were not he who came to seek and to save that
which was lost. Let the man who loves his brother say which, in his
highest moments of love to God, which, when he is nearest to that ideal
humanity whereby _a man_ shall be a hiding-place from the wind, he
would clasp to his bosom of refuge. Would it not be the evil-faced
child, because he needed it most? Yes; in God's name, yes. For is not
that the divine way? Who that has read of the lost sheep, or the found
prodigal, even if he had no spirit bearing witness with his spirit,
will dare to say that it is not the divine way? Often, no doubt, it
will _appear_ otherwise, for the childlike child is easier to save than
the other, and may _come_ first. But the rejoicing in heaven is
greatest over the sheep that has wandered the farthest--perhaps was
born on the wild hill-side, and not in the fold at all. For such a
prodigal, the elder brother in heaven prays thus--"Lord, think about my
poor brother more than about me, for I know thee, and am at rest in
thee. I am with thee always."
Why, then, do I think it necessary to say that this child was probably
Peter's child, and certainly a child that looked childlike because it
was childlike? No amount of evil can _be_ the child. No amount of evil,
not to say in the face, but in the habits, or even in the heart of the
child, can make it cease to be a child, can annihilate the divine idea
of childhood which moved in the heart of God when he made that child
after his own image. It is the essential of which God speaks, the real
by which he judges, the undying of which he is the God.
Heartily I grant this. And if the object of our Lord in taking the
child in his arms had been to teach love to our neighbour, love to
humanity, the ugliest child he could have found, would, perhaps, have
served his purpose best. The man who receives any, and more plainly he
who receives the repulsive child, because he is the offspring of God,
because he is his own brother born, must receive the Father in thus
receiving the child. Whosoever gives a cup of cold water to a little
one, refreshes the heart of the Father. To do as God does, is to
receive God; to do a service to one of his children is to receive the
Father. Hence, any human being, especially if wretched and woe-begone
and outcast, would do as well as a child for the purpose of setting
forth this love of God to the human being. Therefore something more is
probably intended here. The lesson will be found to lie not in the
_humanity_, but in the _childhood_ of the child.
Again, if the disciples could have seen that the essential childhood
was meant, and not a blurred and half-obliterated childhood, the most
selfish child might have done as well, but could have done no better
than the one we have supposed in whom the true childhood is more
evident. But when the child was employed as a manifestation, utterance,
and sign of the truth that lay in his childhood, in order that the eyes
as well as the ears should be channels to the heart, it was essential--
not that the child should be beautiful but--that the child should be
childlike; that those qualities which wake in our hearts, at sight, the
love peculiarly belonging to childhood, which is, indeed, but the
perception of the childhood, should at least glimmer out upon the face
of the _chosen type_. Would such an unchildlike child as we see
sometimes, now in a great house, clothed in purple and lace, now in a
squalid close, clothed in dirt and rags, have been fit for our Lord's
purpose, when he had to say that his listeners must become like this
child? when the lesson he had to present to them was that of the divine
nature of the child, that of childlikeness? Would there not have been a
contrast between the child and our Lord's words, ludicrous except for
its horror, especially seeing he set forth the individuality of the
child by saying, "this little child," "one of such children," and
"these little ones that believe in me?" Even the feelings of pity and
of love that would arise in a good heart upon further contemplation of
such a child, would have turned it quite away from the lesson our Lord
intended to give.
That this lesson did lie, not in the humanity, but in the childhood of
the child, let me now show more fully. The disciples had been disputing
who should be the greatest, and the Lord wanted to show them that such
a dispute had nothing whatever to do with the way things went in his
kingdom. Therefore, as a specimen of his subjects, he took a child and
set him before them. It was not, it could not be, in virtue of his
humanity, it was in virtue of his childhood that this child was thus
presented as representing a subject of the kingdom. It was not to show
the scope but the nature of the kingdom. He told them they could not
enter into the kingdom save by becoming little children--by humbling
themselves. For the idea of ruling was excluded where childlikeness was
the one essential quality. It was to be no more who should rule, but
who should serve; no more who should look down upon his fellows from
the conquered heights of authority--even of sacred authority, but who
should look up honouring humanity, and ministering unto it, so that
humanity itself might at length be persuaded of its own honour as a
temple of the living God. It was to impress this lesson upon them that
he showed them the child. Therefore, I repeat, the lesson lay in the
_childhood_ of the child.
But I now approach my especial object; for this lesson led to the
enunciation of a yet higher truth, upon which it was founded, and from
which indeed it sprung. Nothing is required of man that is not first in
God. It is because God is perfect that we are required to be perfect.
And it is for the revelation of God to all the human souls, that they
may be saved by knowing him, and so becoming like him, that this child
is thus chosen and set before them in the gospel. He who, in giving the
cup of water or the embrace, comes into contact with the essential
childhood of the child--that is, embraces the _childish_ humanity of
it, (not he who embraces it out of love to humanity, or even love to
God as the Father of it)--is partaker of the meaning, that is, the
blessing, of this passage. It is the recognition of the childhood as
divine that will show the disciple how vain the strife after relative
place or honour in the great kingdom.
For it is _In my name_. This means _as representing me_; and,
therefore, _as being like me_. Our Lord could not commission any one to
be received in his name who could not more or less represent him; for
there would be untruth and unreason. Moreover, he had just been telling
the disciples that they must become like this child; and now, when he
tells them to receive _such_ a little child in his name, it must surely
imply something in common between them all--something in which the
child and Jesus meet--something in which the child and the disciples
meet. What else can that be than the spiritual childhood? _In my name_
does not mean _because I will it_. An arbitrary utterance of the will
of our Lord would certainly find ten thousand to obey it, even to
suffering, for one that will be able to receive such a vital truth of
his character as is contained in the words; but it is not obedience
alone that our Lord will have, but obedience to the _truth_, that is,
to the Light of the World, truth beheld and known. _In my name_, if we
take all we can find in it, the full meaning which alone will harmonize
and make the passage a whole, involves a revelation from resemblance,
from fitness to represent and so reveal. He who receives a child, then,
in the name of Jesus, does so, perceiving wherein Jesus and the child
are one, what is common to them. He must not only see the _ideal_ child
in the child he receives--that reality of loveliness which constitutes
true childhood, but must perceive that the child is like Jesus, or
rather, that the Lord is like the child, and may be embraced, yea, is
embraced, by every heart childlike enough to embrace a child for the
sake of his childness. I do not therefore say that none but those who
are thus conscious in the act partake of the blessing. But a special
sense, a lofty knowledge of blessedness, belongs to the act of
embracing a child as the visible likeness of the Lord himself. For the
blessedness is the perceiving of the truth--the blessing is the truth
itself--the God-known truth, that the Lord has the heart of a child.
The man who perceives this knows in himself that he is blessed--blessed
because that is true.
But the argument as to the meaning of our Lord's words, _in my name_,
is incomplete, until we follow our Lord's enunciation to its second and
higher stage: "He that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me." It
will be allowed that the connection between the first and second link
of the chain will probably be the same as the connection between the
second and third. I do not say it is necessarily so; for I aim at no
logical certainty. I aim at showing, rather than at proving, to my
reader, by means of my sequences, the idea to which I am approaching.
For if, once he beholds it, he cannot receive it, if it does not shew
itself to him to be true, there would not only be little use in
convincing him by logic, but I allow that he can easily suggest other
possible connections in the chain, though, I assert, none so
symmetrical. What, then, is the connection between the second and
third? How is it that he who receives the Son receives the Father?
Because the Son is as the Father; and he whose heart can perceive the
essential in Christ, has the essence of the Father--that is, sees and
holds to it by that recognition, and is one therewith by recognition
and worship. What, then, next, is the connection between the first and
second? I think the same. "He that sees the essential in this child,
the pure childhood, sees that which is the essence of me," grace and
truth--in a word, childlikeness. It follows not that the former is
perfect as the latter, but it is the same in kind, and therefore,
manifest in the child, reveals that which is in Jesus.
Then to receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive Jesus; to
receive Jesus is to receive God; therefore to receive the child is to
receive God himself.
That such is the feeling of the words, and that such was the feeling in
the heart of our Lord when he spoke them, I may show from another
golden thread that may be traced through the shining web of his golden
words.
What is the kingdom of Christ? A rule of love, of truth--a rule of
service. The king is the chief servant in it. "The kings of the earth
have dominion: it shall not be so among you." "The Son of Man came to
minister." "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The great Workman
is the great King, labouring for his own. So he that would be greatest
among them, and come nearest to the King himself, must be the servant
of all. It is _like king like subject_ in the kingdom of heaven. No
rule of force, as of one kind over another kind. It is the rule of
_kind_, of _nature_, of deepest nature--of _God_. If, then, to enter
into this kingdom, we must become children, the spirit of children must
be its pervading spirit throughout, from lowly subject to lowliest
king. The lesson added by St Luke to the presentation of the child is:
"For he that is least among you all, the same shall be great." And St
Matthew says: "Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Hence the sign that passes
between king and subject. The subject kneels in homage to the kings of
the earth: the heavenly king takes his subject in his arms. This is the
sign of the kingdom between them. This is the all-pervading relation of
the kingdom.
To give one glance backward, then:
To receive the child because God receives it, or for its humanity, is
one thing; to receive it because it is like God, or for its childhood,
is another. The former will do little to destroy ambition. Alone it
might argue only a wider scope to it, because it admits all men to the
arena of the strife. But the latter strikes at the very root of
emulation. As soon as even service is done for the honour and not for
the service-sake, the doer is that moment outside the kingdom. But when
we receive the child in the name of Christ, the very childhood that we
receive to our arms is humanity. We love its humanity in its childhood,
for childhood is the deepest heart of humanity--its divine heart; and
so in the name of the child we receive all humanity. Therefore,
although the lesson is not about humanity, but about childhood, it
returns upon our race, and we receive our race with wider arms and
deeper heart. There is, then, no other lesson lost by receiving this;
no heartlessness shown in insisting that the child was a lovable--a
childlike child.
If there is in heaven a picture of that wonderful teaching, doubtless
we shall see represented in it a dim childhood shining from the faces
of all that group of disciples of which the centre is the Son of God
with a child in his arms. The childhood, dim in the faces of the men,
must be shining trustfully clear in the face of the child. But in the
face of the Lord himself, the childhood will be triumphant--all his
wisdom, all his truth upholding that radiant serenity of faith in his
father. Verily, O Lord, this childhood is life. Verily, O Lord, when
thy tenderness shall have made the world great, then, children like
thee, will all men smile in the face of the great God.
But to advance now to the highest point of this teaching of our Lord:
"He that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me." To receive a child
in the name of God is to receive God himself. How to receive him? As
alone he can be received,--by knowing him as he is. To know him is to
have him in us. And that we may know him, let us now receive this
revelation of him, in the words of our Lord himself. Here is the
argument of highest import founded upon the teaching of our master in
the utterance before us.
God is represented in Jesus, for that God is like Jesus: Jesus is
represented in the child, for that Jesus is like the child. Therefore
God is represented in the child, for that he is like the child. God is
child-like. In the true vision of this fact lies the receiving of God
in the child.
Having reached this point, I have nothing more to do with the argument;
for if the Lord meant this--that is, if this be a truth, he that is
able to receive it will receive it: he that hath ears to hear it will
hear it. For our Lord's arguments are for the presentation of the
truth, and the truth carries its own conviction to him who is able to
receive it.
But the word of one who has seen this truth may help the dawn of a like
perception in those who keep their faces turned towards the east and
its aurora; for men may have eyes, and, seeing dimly, want to see more.
Therefore let us brood a little over the idea itself, and see whether
it will not come forth so as to commend itself to that spirit, which,
one with the human spirit where it dwells, searches the deep things of
God. For, although the true heart may at first be shocked at the truth,
as Peter was shocked when he said, "That be far from thee, Lord," yet
will it, after a season, receive it and rejoice in it.
Let me then ask, do you believe in the Incarnation? And if you do, let
me ask further, Was Jesus ever less divine than God? I answer for you,
Never. He was lower, but never less divine. Was he not a child then?
You answer, "Yes, but not like other children." I ask, "Did he not look
like other children?" If he looked like them and was not like them, the
whole was a deception, a masquerade at best. I say he was a child,
whatever more he might be. God is man, and infinitely more. Our Lord
became flesh, but did not _become_ man. He took on him the form of man:
he was man already. And he was, is, and ever shall be divinely
childlike. He could never have been a child if he would ever have
ceased to be a child, for in him the transient found nothing. Childhood
belongs to the divine nature. Obedience, then, is as divine as Will,
Service as divine as Rule. How? Because they are one in their nature;
they are both a doing of the truth. The love in them is the same. The
Fatherhood and the Sonship are one, save that the Fatherhood looks down
lovingly, and the Sonship looks up lovingly. Love is all. And God is
all in all. He is ever seeking to get down to us--to be the divine man
to us. And we are ever saying, "That be far from thee, Lord!" We are
careful, in our unbelief, over the divine dignity, of which he is too
grand to think. Better pleasing to God, it needs little daring to say,
is the audacity of Job, who, rushing into his presence, and flinging
the door of his presence-chamber to the wall, like a troubled, it may
be angry, but yet faithful child, calls aloud in the ear of him whose
perfect Fatherhood he has yet to learn: "Am I a sea or a whale, that
thou settest a watch over me?"
Let us dare, then, to climb the height of divine truth to which this
utterance of our Lord would lead us.
Does it not lead us up hither: that the devotion of God to his
creatures is perfect? that he does not think about himself but about
them? that he wants nothing for himself, but finds his blessedness in
the outgoing of blessedness.
Ah! it is a terrible--shall it be a lonely glory this? We will draw
near with our human response, our abandonment of self in the faith of
Jesus. He gives himself to us--shall not we give ourselves to him?
Shall we not give ourselves to each other whom he loves?
For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is
it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and
turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when
even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart
is absorbed in loving?
In this, then, is God like the child: that he is simply and altogether
our friend, our father--our more than friend, father, and mother--our
infinite love-perfect God. Grand and strong beyond all that human
imagination can conceive of poet-thinking and kingly action, he is
delicate beyond all that human tenderness can conceive of husband or
wife, homely beyond all that human heart can conceive of father or
mother. He has not two thoughts about us. With him all is simplicity of
purpose and meaning and effort and end--namely, that we should be as he
is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same
blessedness. It is so plain that any one may see it, every one ought to
see it, every one shall see it. It must be so. He is utterly true and
good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.
How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the
measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities!
Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne,
thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and
the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a
Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow
this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this.
Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children
and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a
fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he,
the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest
peasant who loves his children and his sheep were--no, not a truer, for
the other is false, but--a true type of our God beside that monstrosity
of a monarch.
The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of
nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall
understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in
haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the
return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity, who
rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of
his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building,
the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth
from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of
loss; the God of history working in time unto christianity; this God is
the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly
simple and devoted. The deepest, purest love of a woman has its
well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fulness
of the treasures of the Godhead, than our imagination can touch their
measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his
creatures can pass unseen; and while one of them remains unsatisfied,
he is not Lord over all.
Therefore, with angels and with archangels, with the spirits of the
just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with
the Lord himself, and for all them that know him not, we praise and
magnify and laud his name in itself, saying _Our Father_. We do not
draw back for that we are unworthy, nor even for that we are
hard-hearted and care not for the good. For it is his childlikeness
that makes him our God and Father. The perfection of his relation to us
swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for
our childhood is born of his fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith
who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his
desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low
thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to
him, "Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home."
Such a faith will not lead to presumption. The man who can pray such a
prayer will know better than another, that God is not mocked; that he
is not a man that he should repent; that tears and entreaties will not
work on him to the breach of one of his laws; that for God to give a
man because he asked for it that which was not in harmony with his laws
of truth and right, would be to damn him--to cast him into the outer
darkness. And he knows that out of that prison the childlike,
imperturbable God will let no man come till he has paid the uttermost
farthing.
And if he should forget this, the God to whom he belongs does not
forget it, does not forget him. Life is no series of chances with a few
providences sprinkled between to keep up a justly failing belief, but
one providence of God; and the man shall not live long before life
itself shall remind him, it may be in agony of soul, of that which he
has forgotten. When he prays for comfort, the answer may come in dismay
and terror and the turning aside of the Father's countenance; for love
itself will, for love's sake, turn the countenance away from that which
is not lovely; and he will have to read, written upon the dark wall of
his imprisoned conscience, the words, awful and glorious, _Our God is a
consuming fire_.