Only two OT passages suggest themselves as offering natural points of departure for the framing of sucli a phrase as our Lord employs. The one of these is Is 60-- and the other Zee 13^. In the former, the terms employed, from which our Lord's jilirase may have been derived, are pf)r\ in the first clause and -\'v.^^^ in the second. In the latter tiie Hebrew term employed is Q'-!i;>n, translated in the LXX 01 fiiKpoi. Both passages are Messianic, though only Zee 13'' is adduced in the NT and given explicit application to Christ (Mt 2Q^\ Mk U~^). In neither is there any allusion to children ; but in botii the reference of the diminutive term is to the smallness
of the beginnings out of which the Lord in the days of the coming blessing shall recreate His Church. If we may believe that the Master had these passages in mind Avhen He called His disciples 'these little ones,' then the application of the term to them obviously meant to point them out as those ' little ones ' who, Zechariah had promised, should be relined as silver and tried as gold, only that they might for ever become the Lord's people ; who, Isaiah had promised, should be the unassuming nucleus out of which by gracious expansion should be developed the newly created city of God which should be to Him an everlasting possession. The consonance of this implication of the term with all the allusions of the contexts in which it occurs, and with all the declarations concerning His ' little ones ' which our Lord makes, lies on the face of things. And on its assumption all the peculiarities of the form and use of the phrase at once find an adequate explanation.
3. If, now, we ask why and with what meaning our Lord designated His disciples ' these little ones,' a twofold answer seems indicated. It is on the one side His chief Messianic designation of His followers : it is on the other side the chief of His hypocoristic designations of them. Other desig- nations of each order exist. When Jesus speaks of His followers as ' children of the kingdom,' for example. He is applying to them a Messianic designation ; or, to confine ourselves to the circle of ideas most closely related to the passages of the Old Testament supposed to be in His mind in the instance holding our attention, when He calls them His 'sheep' (Mt 26^^) or more pointedly His 'little fiock' (Lk 12^-), these are Messianic designations which He is applying to them. Similarly His language with reference to them was full of hypo- coristics. They were not merely His ' children ' (Mk 102^ Jn 2P), but His 'little children' (Jn W^). They were not merely His ' flock ' (Mt 26^\ Jn W), but His 'little flock' (Lk 12^2). They were not merely His ' sheep ' (Mt 10^), but His ' little sheep ' ( Jn 10^- 1") ; not merely His ' lambs ' (Lk W), but His 'little lambs' (Jn 2V% In the designation ' little ones ' both these lines of expression reach their height. In calling His dis- ciples the 'little ones' of Is 6O22, Zee 13^, He points to them as the true seed of the Kingdom, the branch of God's planting, the work of His hands in which He shall be glorified (cf. Schwartz- koptt; The Prophecies of Jesus Christ, pp. 199-202). In calling them ' little ones ' (ol fUKpo'i) He ai^ijlies to them the hypocoristic by way of eminence, — so pure a hypocoristic that the very substantive is lacking, and nothing persists but the bare endearing diminu- tive. There is combined, therefore, in this desig- nation the expression of our Lord's deep-reaching tenderness for His disciples and the declaration of His protecting care over them as ' the remnant of Jacob.' The ordinary suggestions of the meaning of the phrase as applied to the disciples may doubt- less be neglected as artificial. Reuss, for example, thinks they were called ' little ones ' because they were drawn from the most humble, the least dis- tinguished section of society ; de Wette, because they were despised and meanly esteemed for Christ's sake ; Dr Riddle, in recognition of their Aveakness in themselves in the midst of the per- secution of the world. These are all secondary ideas. Primarily our Lord's disciples were called by Him ' little ones ' because this was the natural utterance of the tenderness of Jesus' love for them, and the strongest mode of expressing the glorious destiny that was in store for them. The passages in Avhich the epithet occurs are full of the note of pledged protection, and they run up into that marvellous declaration that no man and no thing can snatch them out of the Father's
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hand. We shall not go far wrong, then, if we say suuply that our Saviour calls His disciples 'these little ones' because He thinks of them as the peculiar objects of His protecting care, and sees in them already of the travail of His soul that He may be satisfied. The greatness of His love for them, the greatness of their significance as tiie seed of the Kingdom, — these are the two ideas that combine in this designation.