A Christian must be like a little child. There is very great cause why we should press this thought upon ourselves now. For we are fallen on most unchildlike days. The very children are not childlike. An age partially, but not entirely educated rather, but not very, learned, an age of transition, an age proud of its science and its talent, a fast age, can never be a childlike age. Look at some of the features of the little child which we have to copy.
I. As respects faith. No one can have had much to do with a very young child without being struck with the particular character of its trust. The chief reason why a child's trust is so great is that it has nothing to do with the intellect: it is simply affection; it believes because it loves, and leans because it is fond. There is a great deal of true philosophy here. Faith is a feeling of the heart, and the more you love the more you will believe. Hence the large faith of a little child. You cannot know infinitely, but you can love infinitely. If the faith be in proportion to the knowledge, it can never be very great. If the faith be in proportion to the love, it will be exceedingly great.
II. Little children live in the present moment. They have few memories, and what future there is, is all sunny. A child's joy is always longer than a child's sorrow. I wish we could all do the same have very few retrospects, and no dark anticipations, and no anxieties. Then what energy it would give, what ecstasy to today's duty, today's cross, today's pleasure, and how free the soul would be for the real tomorrow of eternity.
III. A child's mind has a wonderful power of realization. Whatever is said to it, it does more than picture it; it makes substance of it, and immediately it becomes a living thing to the child. And this is just what we ought to do about the invisible world. The unseen is really more than the seen. And yet, who treats what he cannot touch and see as he does the material world around him? To whom is heaven like an estate of which he has just got possession a little way off, who holds the protection of angels as if he saw an army about him? Who looks for the Advent as he expects the return of a friend?
IV. A little child is a thing new-born. So it must be with you. Ye must be born again.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,7th series, p. 136.
References: Matthew 19:14. L. D. Bevan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 280; R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons,vol. iii., p. 154; W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 494.