Mark 9:36-37

CHRIST IN THE CHILD

‘And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me.’

Mark 9:36

As Christ’s days on earth, so now, He comes to us under various forms—as babe, as youth, as man, as a spiritual presence. Consider to-day His coming as a child. Notice:—

I. To receive a child in Christ’s name is to receive Christ.—He who receives a child, receives Christ under the veil of childhood. Your own nursery, in this light, may be as sacred a place as the inn at Bethlehem; they who take up their own treasure, in Christ’s name, as Christ’s disciples, certainly have hold of Christ. This word out of Christ’s mouth, like a two-edged sword, cuts through and cuts away a whole entanglement of sophistry and error. A mother’s heart is the best place to seek for a comment on Christ’s words. She knows that infancy is the time of innocence; she can fondle her infant in Christ’s name, and see His innocency reflected in it. This view has a bearing on education. So much depends upon what you have to educate. If an infant is like the Infant Christ, you will give it one kind of education, if it is like a half-hatched basilisk, your training must of necessity be different.

II. What it is to receive a child in Christ’s name.

(a) As His representative should receive him. To act as He would act in the like case (Cf. Mark 10:13, etc.). How often when confronted with children we resemble rather St. Peter than Christ! They distract the attention, and we have more important matters to attend to! Can anything be more important? Trees, no doubt, are greater things than seedlings, but the gardener who postpones attention to his seedlings in order that he may prune and guard his trees, will find the seedlings sustain more hurt than any good to his trees can compensate. Trees will endure delay, but the same delay may kill seedlings. Children are the seedlings of humanity; and as such Christ would have you treat them. You can do more good through them than is possible if their claims should be ignored.

(b) To receive him as himself Christ’s representative. Respect and reverence due to children on this ground. We have as much to learn from them as they from us; nay more, for they are more like Christ than we are. Many things hidden from the wise and prudent have been revealed to babes. They who would learn to follow the Lamb must be content that a little child shall lead them.

Illustration

‘Christ’s words about children are not metaphor, but fact; it is for us to reverence children that we may again become like them. If we do not thus reverence childhood, and Christ under the veil of childhood, what do we but reject Christ, and offend those who represent Him? True, we may have to rebuke, or even punish children, as a means of guarding them from evil; but, with love to temper and direct the discipline, this cannot do them hurt. Thoughtlessness, neglect, caprice, impatience, selfishness in some one of its many forms—this it is which offends the little ones, and tends to make them unchildlike. It is not love that spoils, it is carelessness and lack of love. Remember, it is Christ through children Who appeals to us for help and sympathy.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE CHILD IN THE MIDST

I. Take care of the child.—Receive, help, cherish, or protect a child, make the way of gooduess easy to him, and shield him from evil, and Christ declares that inasmuch as you have done it to the least of all His little ones, you have done it unto Him. On the other hand, offend any such child, that is to say, hinder or mislead, spoil or degrade him in any way; do anything to rob a child of any of these Divine gifts, rob him of his innocence or trustfulness or his guileless heart, and sow the seeds of evil habits or tastes in their place, and you know the denunciation or curse which the Divine voice has laid upon you for your evil deed. A child is a living symbol of that which draws to us the love of Christ, and we cannot doubt that he is so by virtue of his innocence, his obedient spirit, his guilelessness, or simplicity of character, his trustfulness, and by all the untarnished and unspoilt possibilities of goodness in him.

II. A new force in our own lives.—As we contemplate such a scene as this in our Lord’s life with the little child in the midst, and listen to the Saviour’s words, all the commands and injunctions to keep innocency, to keep the spirit of obedience, to keep a guileless and trusting and loving heart, gain a new force. They seem to speak to us with new voices; for if the true life—the life that has in it the hope of union with Christ—must be a life endowed with these gifts, whether in youth or age, what a blessed thing it will be for you if you have never lost or squandered them!

III. A keener interest in social duty.—And if we turn our thoughts from our own separate personal life, and look for a moment at our duty as members of society, how this picture of Christ embracing the little child, and blessing those who receive or help one such should stir us to new and keener interest in social duty! Does not this example and teaching of the Lord carry in it the condemnation of a great many of our traditional notions about our duty to the young? We see the Lord’s tenderness and love and care for the little child; we see how He values the childlike qualities, and how He enjoins the nursing and the cherishing of these. If, then, we have really learnt the lesson which He thus presses upon us, we shall feel something like reverence for every young life as it begins its perilous and uncertain course on the sea of man’s experience.

Bishop Percival.