MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 10:13-16
(PARALLELS: Matthew 19:13-15; Luke 18:15-17.)
Children welcomed to Christ.—Infant baptism was assuredly in the mind, in the will, and in the intention of Christ at that moment. In fact, was it not baptism, only without the water? Where He stood visibly in all His grace and power, the emblem and the instrument were not needed. We now want the help and assurance of the external symbol. But if some say, “Is not the base too small for the superstructure? The record is so very simple here, and we only read of it but once,” I answer, Every incident in Christ’s life was intended to be a germ of great thought, of deep principle, and of extensive duty. And if it were only once that Jesus blessed the little children, as often as the children were brought to Him so often He blessed them.
I. The danger and sin of standing in the way of children coming to Christ.—
1. I do not speak now of those who, upon a principle in their own minds, do not bring infants to holy baptism: they are acting conscientiously; and doubtless their sin of ignorance is pardoned, and their children may not be suffered by a loving Father to miss the grace which He had willed to give them.
2. There are persons who, believing the baptism of infants to be according to the mind of God, nevertheless, from idolence or thoughtlessness, neglect that holy rite.
3. Perhaps few persons are aware of the extent to which children, even very young children’s minds, are capable of being affected, prejudiced, distorted, injured, by the conversation which they hear. You talk before a child lightly and falsely upon religious and moral subjects. You mean no harm. You do not remember a little child is present; and you do not recollect how that little child is listening to and drinking in all you say. But that child cannot balance or direct or dismiss a subject as you do. It has fallen with a fearful impression. It has left a stamp and an irreverence perhaps, a doubt perhaps, a wicked imagination perhaps, which will never, never be obliterated!
4. Some cast obstacles loss offensively, but perhaps more dangerously. Whoever considers the subject must become aware how exceedingly uninviting, nay, how repulsive, religion is generally made to children. Where is that cheerfulness and that gladsomeness which a child loves, and in which real religion always consists?
II. The duty of bringing children to Christ.—If you wish a child to be really religious, you must begin with the distinctive features of Christianity, and imbue it with the gospel. I will illustrate my meaning by three examples. You desire to lay in your child’s mind the foundation of right conduct, and of a good, upright life. Tell him at once about Jesus. Tell him, “Jesus died for you, and therefore, though you are a very sinful child, God has forgiven you, and God loves you. For Jesus Christ’s sake, you are His own dear child.” Or take another instance. Your child has told a lie. What shall you do to him? Tell him, “Jesus is truth. Try to be true, that you may be like Jesus. Heaven is all truth, because heaven is all like Jesus. Go, and never be unlike Jesus again.” Or your child has fallen into any sin. Do not be afraid to say to that child at once Jesus died to wash away that sin. Go and ask Him to do it. And He will do it. He will do it instantly. He will do it perfectly, if you ask Him.
III. We ourselves must be like little children.—If it were only that we might influence children, we should cultivate a childlike spirit; for none can do good, especially to the young, but those who are very simple in their thoughts and very lowly in their ways. But in what are we to become like a little child?
1. When those little children lay in Jesus’ arms, His act came before any of their acts. It was anticipatory of what was to follow. They received what He gave them as a free gift of His. They could have no sense whatever that they deserved it. But freely as He bestowed the grace, so freely the little children took it. This is just the way to get to the kingdom.
2. A very little child never doubts where it has learned to love. It believes everything, and questions nothing. The credulity of the child is the faith of the Christian. My Saviour, my Lord, has said it. I will believe it, and ask no questions.
3. A very little child is necessarily led. It knows it cannot go alone. And we must be content all of us to be borne and carried every step. Those who get to heaven do not march in, they do not walk there: they are carried there.—J. Vaughan, M.A.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 10:13-16. The Son of Man among the children of men.—
1. As the heavenly new and fresh related to the earthly new and fresh.
2. As the humble One to the artless.
3. As the Prince of faith to the confiding.
4. As the great Warrior to the strivers.
5. As the great Hope to the hoping.
6. As the Blessed with the happy.—J. P. Lange, D.D.
Children are specially susceptible of spiritual influences.—In their case there is still—
1. Confidence instead of scepticism.
2. Self-surrender instead of distrust.
3. Truth instead of hypocrisy.
4. Modesty and humility instead of pride.—Lisco.
Mark 10:13-14. Infant baptism.—We have been accustomed to allege these words in behalf of the Catholic practice of infant baptism; and rightly, for they have been always so understood by the Church,—and the voice of the Church Universal is that of the Lord. “Baptise also your infants,” says an ancient writing, speaking the sense of the Greek Church, “and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of God. For He saith, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.’ ” And in the Latin Church of old times (as in our own), in the Baptismal Service for Infants, they read this history out of one of the three Gospels, as their Lord’s sanction of their act of charity.—E. B. Pusey, D.D.
Mark 10:14. The kingdom of heaven, or sovereignty of the Messiah, is constituted of such as the children presented to Christ. He does not say, observe, that this kingdom consists of children, but of such as children. It is therefore some similarity to that class of persons which indicates membership of the community of the faithful. In what, then, does that similarity lie? It cannot refer to age, for it is not true that infants alone are members of the Church; nor can it refer specially to the physical or external characteristics of childhood; but it refers to the following peculiarities.
1. The only prominent circumstance about an infant’s history is its birth. Nothing else has happened to it. No other event relating to it deserves notice. The grand, the sole feature to be noted is, that it was born. Of suchlike persons is the kingdom of God. What designates and marks out the subjects of this kingdom is a new birth, a regeneration. A new heart, a new spirit, a new nature, a new man—such are the expressions employed to represent their character.
2. Infants are helpless; and of suchlike persons is the kingdom of heaven, because all who enter therein must feel their inability to do anything of themselves. Their sufficiency must be of God. They must, “as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that they may grow thereby.”
3. Infants are humble, unconscious of all pride and self-righteousness; and of suchlike persons is the kingdom of heaven, because the followers of Jesus must, like their Master, be humble and lowly of heart.
4. Infants are teachable, gentle, and easy to be entreated; and of suchlike persons is the kingdom of heaven, because all its subjects are brought to submit every high thought and lofty imagination to the obedience of Christ.
5. Infants are without moral obligation, and therefore untainted by the guilt of actual sin, unworldly and uncarnal; and of such is the kingdom of heaven, inasmuch as those who enter therein have been crucified to all sinful lusts—have put off the old man, which is corrupt—been renewed in the spirit of their minds—and put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.
6. Infants are void of offence towards man; and of suchlike is the kingdom of heaven, because those who enter therein are “in malice children,” and have “laid aside guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil-speakings,” striving to be harmless as little children.—A. Nisbet.
Mark 10:15. To receive the kingdom as a little child implies that we receive it—
1. Humbly, as the provision of Sovereignty.
2. Trustfully, as the device of Fatherly Wisdom
3. Gratefully, as the gift of Saving Love.—J. E. Henry.
Christian childhood consists in having no more pride, impurity, resentment, craft, ambition, covetousness, and knowledge of evil than children. It is this which renders us conformable, gives us admission, and unites us to Jesus Christ in His kingdom. What is here said is not by way of counsel, but it shews the absolute necessity of being such, at least in some degree, in order to be saved.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 10:16. Christ blessing infants.—What parent of us would not wish, if he might, that our Saviour should lay His hand upon his child and bless it? And if His visible touch was such a source of comfort and of hope, how not and much more when He, the risen, the ascended Saviour, who from the right hand of God sheds forth His gifts abundantly upon His Church, not lays only His hands upon them, but makes them members of Himself, “members of His body, of His flesh, of His bones,” members of “His Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him which filleth all in all.” We know still less of the ineffable greatness of that we seek for than did these poor parents who sought for His bodily touch and His prayers; and the wish of those who seek for baptism for the bodily health of their children is not so far below their belief whose belief is most enlightened, as is theirs below the inexpressible reality; and so, for the comfort of us all, our Saviour herein shewed that He regarded not our merits, but His mercies—not our ignorance, but His own omniscience—not our faint wish for a blessing we know not what, but our trust in Him, our wish to have a blessing from Him, the inexhaustible Fountain of all blessedness; and grants not according to the poverty of our desires, but according to the overflowing riches of His goodness, takes our infants even now invisibly up in His everlasting arms, and returns them to us—blessed.—E. B. Pusey, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 10
Mark 10:14. Brought to Christ in childhood.—Many of the ablest and noblest of Christian teachers were brought to the Saviour in childhood. The martyr Polycarp was only nine years old when he gave himself to Christ. Matthew Henry and Isaac Watts were no older. Archbishop Fénélon was a mere child when his heart awoke to the love of God; William Channing could not remember the time when he first turned to Christ; Robert Hall was a sincere Christian when eleven years old, and became a student for the ministry when but fourteen. Baxter was only a child when he sought the Saviour; Jonathan Edwards sat at the feet of Jesus, Coleridge Patteson was devout and prayerful, Fletcher of Madeley “began to feel the love of God shed abroad in his heart”—each at seven years of age. Frederick W. Robertson became a decided and courageous soldier of Christ in boyhood; Thomas J. Comber, the heroic pioneer of the Congo, gave his heart to Jesus and devoted himself to mission work ere he was thirteen; and John Foster was not fourteen when he found peace with God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It would be easy to enlarge the list; but surely enough has been said to encourage us to lead the children to immediate decision for Christ. Let us seek to enrol them now. Let us encourage them to come, with their toys in their hands, to be blessed by Christ. The kingdom of heaven, which is open to publicans and sinners, is not closed to the little ones He loves.
Mark 10:15. Total renunciation.—A high-caste Brahmin came to receive holy baptism. He approached the font wearing the sacred thread which, among his Hindoo coreligionists, was the badge of his belonging to the “twice born,” and entitled him to little short of religious worship from those of a lower caste. But at the moment when he answered, “I renounce them all,” he stripped off the sign of idolatrous pre-eminence and trampled it under his feet.
Mark 10:16. Blessed by the good.—Says Dr. Samuel Cox: “When I was a boy, I was taken into my father’s library to be ‘blessed’ by those two great missionaries John Williams and William Knibb; and to this moment I remember how proud and happy it made me to have their hands laid on my head, and to hear the kind words they said. It made me feel very ‘good,’ at least for a little while; and I think that somehow, though I don’t at all know how that should be, I am the better for it to this day.”
“He loved little children.”—An earnest and successful minister of the gospel who died a few years ago was possessed of a beautiful ambition. Expressed in words at fitting times, it had also constant expression in his life. This is what he often said: “I should like my epitaph to be, ‘He loved little children, and tried to do them good.’ ” This single sentence sheds a flood of light on the character of the man who uttered it. Our loves determine what we are. Little children belong to the heavenly kingdom, and are therefore in the Lord’s love. A real love for little children, then, denotes a love for heavenly things. A real love is not simply a fondness for bright, pretty ways and winning graces, but a love that takes in childhood as a whole, that can bear patiently with perversity and naughtiness, that forgets self in love for the child and in desire to bring it to the best and highest place possible. A real love for children leads to just such an ambition as possessed this servant of the Lord, “who tried to do them good.”
Care for children.—A lady missionary in the East tells that one day a woman came to her with a baby, whom she had found in a ditch. The poor child had been cast out by its own father—as thousands of others in heathen countries have been—because it was “only a girl.” In begging the lady to take charge of the very unattractive object that was presented to her (it was naked and covered with mud), the woman said, “Please do take this little thing; your God is the only God that teaches to be good to little children.”