From the point of view thus revealed in object- lesson and discourse, it was natural for our Lord to speak of His disciples as ' babes.' ' I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and eartli,' He cries on one momentous occasion (Mt 11-^, Lk 10-'), ' that tliou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes' (yTjirloit, the implication of which is precisely weakness and neediness). And then He proceeds with a great declaration the very point of wliich is to contrast His sovereign power with the neediness of those whom He calls to His service. SimUarly as the end approached and the children {waiSes) in the temple were greeting Him with hosannas. He met the indignant challenge of the Jews with the words of the Psalmist: 'Yea, did ye never read, Uut of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou
hast ordained praise ? ' (Mt 21'*). The meaning is that these childish hosannas were typical of the praises risin» from the hearts of those childlike ones from whose helplessness (because they owed much to Him) His true praise should spring.
From the more general view-point of atiection our Lord derived the terms by which He expressed His personal relations to His followers, and a large part of the vocabulary of His proclamation of the kingdom of God is drawn from the relationships of the family. His disciples are His ' children ' (riKva, ilk 10-^), or with increasing tenderness of expres- sion, His ' little children ' {reKpia, Jn 13»), His ' babies' {iraiSia, Jn 2P), and perhaps with even more tenderness still, simply His 'little ones' {ol /uKpoi, Mt W^ etc., but see art. Little Ones). Similarly the great King, whose kingdom He came to estab- lish, is the Father of His people ; and they may therefore be free from all fear, because, naturally, it is tlie good pleasure of their Father to give the kingdom to them (Lk 12^-). Every turn of exines- sion is freely employed to carry home to the hearts of His followers the sense of the Fatherly love for them by Him who is their King indeed, but also their Father which is in heaven (Mt 516- «.«
(Jl. 4. 6. 8. 9. 1... 15. 18 632 7II 1020. 29 13B 23», Mk 11=«, Lk
636 1113 1-230. 32_ Jn20>'); and they accordingly His sons (MtS'--^, LkSO**), His children (Jn P" IV^), and therefore heirs of His kingdom. In this re- presentation, which finds its most striking expres- sion in such parables as that of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15'"'), it is, to be sure, rather the relationship of father and child that is emphasized than the tenderness of the age of childhood. Neither is it a novelty introduced by our Lord ; it finds its root in Old Testament usage. But it is so cliar.irttTi^tic (if our Lord's teaching that it may faiily lie -aiJ that the family was to His mind the nraii'-t "f huiiiaii analogues to the order that ob- tains in thi' kmydom of God, and the picture which He draws of the relations that exist be- tween God and His people is largely only a ' trans- figuration of the family.'
Such an employment of the relationships in the family to figure forth those that exist between God and His people could not fail to react on the con- ceptions which men formed of the family relation- ships themselves. By His constant emphasis on the Fatherhood of God, and by His employment of the helplessness of infancy and the dependence of childhood as the most vivid emblems provided by human society to image the dependence of God s people on His loving protection and fostering care, our Lord has thrown a halo over the condition of childhood which has communicated to it an emo- tional \alue and a |)vc(ii)n~ness, in the strictest si'ii-r, new in thr w.'iM. In tlie ancient world, cliiMnii. tliimjh liy tln'ii innocence eliciting the alii'clion, and liy tlii/ir weakni'ss appealin" to the sympathy, of their elders, were thought or chiefly as types of immaturity and unripeness. The Chris- tian world, taught by its Lord, reverences their very helplessness as the emblem of its own condi- tion in the presence of God, and recoOTizes in their dependence an appeal to its unselfish devotion, that it may be an imitator of God. This salutary respect and consideration for childhood has no doubt been exaggerated at times to something very mucli like worship of the childlike ; and this tendency has been powerfully fostered by the preva- lence in sections of Christendom, since the 14th cent., of an actual cult of the infant Saviour (cf. E. Martinengo-Carresco in The Contemporary Review, Ixxvii. 117, etc.), and the early rise and immense development in the same quarters of a cult of the Madonna, to the tender sentiments underlying wliich all the resources of the most passionate devotion, the most elevated literature, and the most
CHILDREN OF GOD
CHILDREN" OF GOD
perfect art have been invoked to give widespread influence (see especially Zockler, art. Maria die Mutter des Herrn in PRE^, xii. 309, etc., who gives an extensive classified bibliography. Cf. in general H. E. Scudder, Childhood in. Art, also in The Atlantic Monthly, Iv. and Ivi.). Such ex- aggerations cannot, however, obscure the main fact that it is only from Jesus that the world has learned properly to appreciate and wholesomely to deal with childhood and all that childhood stands