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unto me,' He says ; 'forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.' And then proceeding Avith the solemn 'Verily' — 'Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein' (Mk lO"- '=, Lk 18'«- " ; cf. Mt ig'-").
Wherein this childlikeness, in which alone the kingdom of God can be received, consists, lies on the face of the narrative. Certainly not in the innocence of childhood, as if the purpose were to announce that only the specially innocent can enter the kingdom of God. Our Lord was accus- tomed to declare, on the contrary, that He came to call not the righteous but sinners, to seek and save that which was lost ; and the contradiction with the lesson of the publican and the Pharisee praying in the temple, which immediately pre- cedes this narrative in Luke, would be too glaring. But neither can it consist in the humility of childhood, if, indeed, we can venture to speak of the most egoistic age of human life as charactei- istically humble ; nor yet in its simplicity, its art- lessness, ingenuousness, directness, as beautiful as these qualities are, and as highly esteemed as they certainly must be in the kingdom of God. We can- not even suppose it to consist in the trustfulness of childhood, although we assuredly come much nearer to it in this, and no image of the children of the kingdom could be truer than that afforded by the infant lying trustingly upon its mother's breast. But, in truth, it is in no disposition of mind, but rather in a condition of nature, that we niust seek the characterizing peculiarity of these infants whom Jesus sets fortli as types of the children of the kingdom. Infants of days (fipirpv, Lk 18'=) have no cliaracteristic disposition of mind ; and we must accordingly leave the subjective sphere and find the childlikeness which Jesus presents as the condition of the reception (not acquisition) of the kingdom in an objective state ; in a word, in the helplessness, or, if you will, the absolute dependence of infancy. What our Lord would seem to say, therefore, when He declares, ' Of such is the kingdom of God,' is, briefly, that
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those of whom the kingdom of God is made up are, relatively to it, as helplessly dependent as babies are in their mothers' arms. The children of the kingdom enter it as children enter the world, stripped and naked, — infants, for whom all must be done, not who are capable of doing.
There was another occasion on which even more formally Jesus proclaimed to His disciples child- likeness as the essential characteristic of the chil- dren of the kingdom (Mt W-', Mk 9^", Lk 9«"). The disciples had been disputing among them- selves who of them should be greatest. Jesus, calling to Him a little child, placed it in their midst and said, ' Verily I say unto you. Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.' There could not have been uttered a more pointed intima- tion that the kingdom of heaven is given, not aeguired ; that men receive it, not deserve it. As children enter the world, so men enter the king- dom, with no contributions in their hands. We are not, indeed, told in this narrative, in express words, that the child thus made the type of the children of God was a ' newborn baby ' (/3pe(/ios) : it is called only a ' little child ' {iraidiov). But its ex- treme infancy is implied : Jesus took it in His arms (Mk 9^'') when He presented it to the observation of His disciples ; and we must accordingly think of it as a baby in a baby's helplessness and de- pendence.
We do, to be sure, find in our Lord's further words a requisition of humility (Mt 18^) : ' Who- soever then shall humble himself like this little child, tlie same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.' To become like a little child may cer- tainly involve humility in one who is not a child ; and it is very comprehensible that our Lord should therefore tell those whom He was exhorting to approach the kingdom of heaven like little chil- dren, that they could do so only by humbling themselves. But this is not the same as declaring humility to be the characteristic virtue of child- hood, or as intimating that humility may ground a claim upon the kingdom of heaven. Wliat our Lord seems to tell His followers is that they cannot enter the kingdom He came to found ex- cept they turn and become like little children ; and that they can become like little children only by humbling themselves ; and that tlierefore when they were quarrelling about their relative greatness, they were far from the disposition which belongs to children of the kingdom. Humility seems to be represented, in a word, not as the characterizing quality of childhood or of childlikeuess, but rather as the attitude of heart in which alone we can realize in our consciousness that quality which characterizes childhood. That quality is conceived here also as helplessness, while childlikeness con- sists in the reproduction in the consciousness of the objective state of utter dependence on God which IS the real condition of every sinner.