I. The Holy Spirit, in this well-known passage of St. Mark's Gospel, offers to the minds of serious persons a very affecting instance of the Divine love and condescension. We are here taught, among other things, that our gracious Master regards with approbation any attempts, made in faith and humility, to bring the young ones of His flock to the privileges and knowledge of His Gospel. He wishes children to be brought to Him from their earliest infancy. As they grow older, He would have them taught to worship the God of their fathers, not as fulfilling a questionable or irksome obligation, but with a perfect heart and with a willing mind.
II. When in former days, in the spirit of true devotion, the Jewish mothers brought their children to the holy Jesus, that He might lay His hands on their heads and bless them, some who were present were greatly offended at this, which they at once condemned as a vain, idle, and useless superstition. But the Lord seeth not as man seeth. What man pronounces to be weakness and folly, or even worse, the Lord Jesus Christ took even pains to show His approbation of. What man, in the confidence of carnal wisdom, pronounces to be mere superstition and formality; that, when practised by a heart filled with penitence, lowliness and obedience, and a mere desire to do only what God commands, and to love only what He promises, that, however meanly thought of in this miserable world, He, the Great Almighty Father will, we doubt not, pour down His choicest blessings on. To seek God in the way of His ordinances, and not in ways of our own choosing, must always be the safest course. To do this can never be dangerous; to do other than this, can never be safe.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. x., p. 275.
Reference: Mark 10:16. Outline Sermons to Children,p. 149.