lilili-s' disiiute (•oiicciinii- i,ir.cdriirr , \l k '.)■■'■■" and j.aivilleU) furtliLT briii-sonl lli.- .jiialil i.-s of child- liood which were most piecioiis in His eyes, and
CHILDEEN
CHILDREN
301
the value and importance He attached to little children themselves. The little one He called to Him and so lovingly embraced (St. Mark's special touch again), was I'leld up to the disciples as an example and guide to greatness. To be great in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18'- •■) it was necessary to have a spirit of simplicity and humility such as was seen in the child in whom self-regard and self- seeking had as yet no place. It is one of our Lord's great paradoxes. To be childlike is to be truly great. The same truth is emphasized in a saying which in varying form is found twice over in each of the Synoptics— the man who wishes to be first shall be last ; the man willing to be least shall be great. We here learn further how Jesus regards little children as in a real sense belonging to Him. To receive a little child as belonging to Him, bestowinji loving care upon it, is a high service rendered to Him and to God by whom He was sent. In Jit 10^""^- the importance attached to such service is strikingly expressed in the pro- gressive series in which Jesus promises a reward to those who thus receive His messengers— a pro- phet, a good man, ' one of tliese little ones.' It is most natural to understand that in using such an expression as the last our Lord actually referred to some children who weie hard by when He was speaking. And as here, so in the more extended sayings in Mt 18, wliatever the reference to child- like and lowly -minded disciples in general, the words of Jesus must apply to children themselves. The terrible warning of Mt IS" applies to those who hinder such little ones in relation to the king- dom. Though it is not expressly so stated, what is said about receiving children suggests that such a wrong done to any child is as a wrong done to Christ Himself. The preciousness of a little child in the sight of 'our Father in heaven' is emphatically asserted by Jesus in Mt IS'""". The children's angels, He says, are ever in the presence of God (v."). Whether this remarkable saying be understood as referring to guardian angels or to representative angels (in some way corresponding to the Zoroastriau /j-«iv(.s7((.v or 'spiritual counter- parts'—see art. by Dr. J. H. M.pultun in Journal of Thcol. Studies, July I'.Hi-J), it clc'irly declares that no little one is an object of inditierence with God, no wrong inflicted upon a child can escape His notice. The closing saying of this group (w.^^-hj embodies the illustration of the one stray sheep, found in another connexion in Lk 15, and teaches that, whatever ruin may befall ' one of these little ones,' it is not a matter of the Divine pleasure and ordination that even one such should be ' cast as rubbish to the void.' See also art. Childken, which is written from a difi'erent standpoint.
Literature.— The various Lives of Christ (Edersheini, Keim, Didon, Farrar, Andrews, D, Smith, etc ) ; artt. Boyhood, and Education ; cf . art, ' Education ' in Hastings' DB and the Encyc, Biblica; Brough, Childhood and Youth of our Lord; G. A. Coe, Education in RHiijion and Morals, 1904 ; S. B. Haslett, Pedaftogical Bible School, 1905 ; R Rainy, Sojottrning with God (1902), p. 161 ; Donehoo, Apocryphal and Lecjendary Life of Christ ; Ramsay, Education of Christ ; Schiirer, HJP ; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, ii. 48 £f. ; G. B. Stevens, Theology of
the NT, pp. 81, 93. J. s. Clemens.
CHILDREN.— In the regeneration of society which has been wrought by the forces brought into the world by Christianity, the family, of course, has had its part. Or rather, since to Jesus also the family was the social unit, this regenera- tion began with the family and spread outwards from it. The emphasis laid by our Lord on the institution of the family deserves even to be called extraordinary. Not only did He habitually ex- hibit sympathy with domestic life in all its phases, and particularly reverence for women and tender- ness for children : and not only did He adopt the vocabulary of the family to express the relations
subsisting between Himself and His followers, and even as His choicest vehicle for conveying to them a vitalizing conception of their relations to God, 'from whom,' as that one of His servants who best represents His teaching in this aspect of it declares, ' every family in heaven and on earth is named' (Eph 3"); but, deserting His customary reserve in dealing with social institutions, in the case of this one alone did He advance beyond general principles to specific legislation. (Cf. F. G. Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 145 ft'.).
This specific legislation does not directly con- cern children. It is true that childhood owes as much to the gospel as womanhood itself (cf. e.g. Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity/ with Heathenism, p. 182). And the causes of the great revolution which was wrought by the gospel in the condition of children and the estimate placed on childhood, are undoubtedly rooted in the life and teaching of our Lord, and are spread on the pages of the Gospels. But we shall search in vain in the re- corded teaching of Jesus for either direct legisla- tion, or even enunciation of general principles regulating the relations of jiarents and children, or establishing the position of children in the social organism. He has left us no commandments, no declarations, not even exhortations on the subject. He simply moves onward in His course, touching in life, act, word on the domestic relations that were prevalent about Him, and elevating and glorifying everything that He touched. Thus He has handed down to us a new ideal of the family, and lifted to a new plane our whole conception of childhood. (Cf. Shailer Mathews, The Social Teachim of Jesus, p. 101 ft'. ).