2. But when the prophet tells us that in the Kingdom of Christ a little child leads the wolf and the leopard and the lion, as well as the lamb and the kid and the calf, he cannot simply mean that an innocent babe may have more power over the brutes than a grown man. He also means, no doubt, that in proportion as Christ reigns on the earth the primal order will be restored ; that men, reconciled to God and to each other, will also be at peace with all the forces of Nature, will rule over them, and bend to their service even those of them which are the most fierce, hostile, and untamable, and thus regain all, and more than all, that Adam lost.
3. We need not cling too closely to the literal words and circumstances. The leadership of the little child may represent for us those simplest principles and powers of life to which men are often so unwilling to submit, but in submission to which all the best life comes ; in submission to which alone the complete life of man can ever come. The familiar interpretation, which takes the wild beasts as symbols of the savage passions of men, is a permissible application of the words of the prophet, though not a direct interpretation. If the simplicity, tenderness, and playful- ness of the kid and the lamb rise to their highest expression in men, so also do the cunning and fierceness of the wolf and the
ISAIAH 141
leopard. Taking them thus here, the prediction is that under the rule of Christ even the most unruly appetites, even the most cruel passions of humanity shall be chastened into harmony with its gentler attributes, and men shall be led along the path of peace, following in the footsteps of a little child.
H There is a certain valley in the North where a rude path, hardly distinguishable at the best of times, leads through dangerous moss-hags right across the centre of a morass. In rainy weather the track would be wholly obliterated but for the little footprints of a band of children who go to school that way. Many a traveller has found his path safely through the Slough of Despond by following in the children's footsteps.^
II.
What are the characteristics of a little child ?
I. Trustfulness. — Every reasonable man has some general conception, more or less clearly realised, about the humanity of which he is a part. He either holds that mankind is trustworthy, with frequent flagrant exceptions of falseness and deceit ; or else he holds that mankind is base and deceitful, with the occasional intrusion of an upright and honest man. If he holds the first idea, he will be wisely trustful ; he will feel that the safest attitude towards men is confidence, combined with such a reason- able watchfulness as shall keep him from being a foolish and easy dupe. If he holds the other idea, he is suspicious, he distrusts everybody at the first meeting. The first is the attitude of youth. And I ask you to remember that practically no man has largely led or ruled the world without it. Christ Jesus had it perfectly. How gloriously He trusted men. The fervour of His terrible denunciations of the wicked gets its vividness from the background against which it stands of honour for and con- fidence in the soul of man. And the whole Bible, with its large, unguarded, unsuspicious utterance of God to man, laying itself open to a thousand misconceptions, always trusting itself cordially to men's wish to understand it — there could be nothing like the Bible, with its regal influence, to illustrate how all true leadership of men has for its first principle confidence in the men it tries to lead.
1 J. Kelman, in The Expository Times, xvi. p. 544.
142 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
IF " Cau I go and help grandpa along the walk, mamma ? " " Help him ! " laughed G-uy, before mamma could answer. " Why, you're a little tot of a girl, Bertha, and grandpa is very tall. He's deaf as a post, too."
" Yes, dearie, you can go," said mamma, as quietly as though Guy had not said a word.
" And I can make him hear with my hand," smiled Bertha.^ 2. Goodness. — This is the principle of absolute morality, the principle that the right is to be done simply because it is the right. " Honesty is the best policy," says experience, trying with laborious ingenuity to disguise its conscience in the robes of selfishness. " Honesty is right," says the child and the child-like community. There is room for the exercise of simple goodness ; there is need for it. For it has come to this : that a man who, in a mixed company of practical men, debating what is profitable and what will pay, says quietly, " We must do this, whether it pays or not, for it is right," makes a stir run through the company as if a breath out of the fresh open heaven blew in through the suddenly opened window of a close and overheated room.
1[ When the news was brought to the Princess Victoria that her uncle was dead, and that she was no longer Princess but Queen — " I will be good," she said. What more could she have said, or better ?