The Ministry of Children by Frederick Lynch

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 10, 1907

The Ministry of Children

By Frederick Lynch

AFTER all, are not children the real teachers? Do we not learn more from them than we give? Do there not come to us from our association with them the finest and sweetest qualities of manhood? The Master recognized this, and on more than one occasion set up a little child in the midst of the people, and said that if they would enter the kingdom of heaven, they should become as this little child. And the poets and seers have always seen this. Wordsworth's poetry is full of it, and there is nothing sweeter in Longfellow than the lines beginning,—

“Come to me, O ye children! For I hear you at your play, And the questions that perplexed me Have vanished quite away. “Ye open the eastern windows That look toward the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows, And the brooks of morning run.”

See how true this is, and what enviable things children have to teach us. For instance, one can not be much with children without seeing that the faith element is strong and shining and the secret of their joyous living.

Another engaging trait of childhood is its eagerness. It is full of zest for new things. Its forever open-mindedness to new truth, its eager anticipation of big things to come, its curiosity, its insatiable seeking of knowledge, is its most charming quality. Then, too, it is free from fixed, preconceived ideas.

This trait, of all others, is very hard to keep, yet it is the one quality that makes manhood full of intense interest to one's self, and makes one an inspirer and leader of other lives. What is more refreshing than to see a man approaching every new day with all the eager interest of a child to see what it will bring forth, with open mind for every new truth of God?

But we lose this power so soon. We grow blasé and cynical. We become soured with life. We grow indifferent to the changing world. We lose the faculty to enjoy unreservedly and deliciously the things which in youth made our pulses leap and our hearts bound. Nothing can now unlock again those great fastnesses of the soul. It is life's tragedy. An old man, bemoaning this, told me that when he first, as a young man, stood on the Gorner Grat and looked over those immense fields of ice and snow, and those great rock bastions, rising right into the face of heaven, he wept with uncontrolled tears, like a child; but forty years after, it was all only rock and snow. Another man told me that the first time he saw the ocean, he was as one exalted; but now it is only salt water. Another man told me that once great music swept him off on its golden wings into the infinite heavens; but now it was only sound, and often fury. Neither the mountains, nor the sea, nor the symphony had changed; alas, the soul had lost its childlikeness. But to lose that is to lose the kingdom of heaven, said the Great Teacher. If we are in danger of losing it, let us go out and play with the children till it comes again. It is an awful thing to lose. It is too much like losing one's soul. It is said of Piers, the plowman, that all through his old age there was “a great light of wonder in his face.”—Frederick Lynch.