AS A LITTLE CHILD by Spurgeon

S. D. A. Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 26, 1881

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 20

AS A LITTLE CHILD.

By Spurgeon

“Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein.” Luke 18:17.

It is pretty clear that the disciples thought the children were too insignificant for the Lord’s time to be taken up by them. If it had been a prince who wished to come to Jesus, no doubt Peter and the rest of them would have diligently secured him an introduction; but, you see, these were only poor women, with babies, and boys, and girls. If it had been an ordinary person, like themselves, they would not have repelled him with rebuke. But mere children! Sucklings and little children! It was too bad for these to be intruded upon the great Teacher. A word is used about the youthful applicants which may signify children of any age, from sucklings up to twelve years; surely, Jesus had worry enough without the intrusion of these juveniles. He had higher subjects for thought, and graver objects of care. The children were so very little, they were quite beneath his notice. So the disciples thought in their hearts. But, brethren, if it comes to a matter of insignificance, who among us can hope to win the divine attention? If we think that children must be little in his sight, what are we? He taketh up the isles as a very little thing; the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers; yea we are all as things of naught. If we were humble, we should exclaim: “Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” If we dream that the Lord will not notice the little and insignificant, what think we of such a text as this? “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” Doth God care for sparrows, and shall he not care for little children? The idea of insignificance must be set aside at once. “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly.” But are little children so insignificant? “Of such is the kingdom of God.” Call you these insignificant? Children, who are the most numerous company in the army of the elect, dare you despise them? I might turn the tables, and call the adults insignificant, among whom there can be found no more than a small remnant who serve the Lord.

Besides, many children are spared to grow up to man’s estate, and, therefore, we must not think a child insignificant. He is the father of the man. In him are great possibilities and capacities. His manhood is as yet undeveloped, but it is there, and he who trifles with it mars the man. He who tempts the mind of a boy may destroy the soul of a man. A little error injected into the ear of a youth may become deadly in the man, when the slow poison shall at last have touched a vital part. Weeds sown in the furrows of childhood will grow with the young man’s growth, ripen in his prime, and only decay into a sad corruption when he himself declines.

On the other hand, a truth dropped into a child’s heart will there fructify, and his manhood shall see the fruit of it. Yon child listening in the class to his teacher’s gentle voice, may develop into a Luther, and shake the world with his vehement proclamation of the truth. Who among us can tell? At any rate, with the truth in his heart, he shall grow up to honor and fear the Lord, and thus shall he help to keep alive a godly seed in these evil days. Therefore, let no man despise the young, or think them insignificant. I claim a front place for them. I ask that, if others are kept back, at any rate their feebleness may make room for the little ones. They are the world’s future. The past has been, and we cannot alter it; even the present is gone while we gaze on it. But our hope lies in the future; therefore, by your leave, sirs, room for the children, room for the boys and girls.

Again, I suppose that these grown-up apostles thought that the children’s minds were too trifling. They are at their play and their childish mirth; they will regard it only as a pastime to be folded in Jesus’ arms; it will be mirth to them, and they will have no idea of the solemnity of their position. Well! well! trifling, is it? Children are said to be guilty of trifling! O, sirs, and are ye not also triflers? If it comes to an examination upon the matter of trifling, who are the greatest triflers, children or full-grown men and women? What is greater trifling than for a man to live for the enjoyment of sensual pleasures, or for a woman to live to dress herself and waste her time in company? Nay more, what is the accumulation of wealth for the sake of it but miserable trifling—child’s play without the amusement? Most men are triflers on a larger scale than children, and that is the main difference. Children, when they trifle, play with little things,—their toys, so breakable, are they not made on purpose to be trifled with and broken? The child with his trifles is but doing as he should.

Alas! I know men and women who trifle with their souls, and with Heaven and Hell and eternity; they trifle with God’s word, trifle with God’s Son; trifle with God himself! Charge not children with being frivolous, for their little games often have as much earnestness about them, and are as useful, as the pursuits of men. Half the councils of our senators and the debates of our parliaments are worse than child’s play. The game of war is a far greater folly than the most frolicsome of boyish tricks. Big children are worse triflers than the little ones can ever be. Despise not children for trifling when the whole world is given to folly.

“Ay,” said they, “but if we should let the children come to Christ, and if he should bless them, they will soon forget it. No matter how loving his look and how spiritual his words, they will go back to their play and their weak memories will preserve no trace of it at all.” This objection we meet in the same manner as the others. Do not men forget? What a forgetful generation do most preachers address! Verily this is a generation like to that of which Isaiah said, “Precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little.” Alas, many of our hearers must have the gospel preached to them again and again and again, until the preacher is well-nigh weary with his hopeless task; for they are like to men who see their natural faces in a glass, and go their way to forget what manner of men they are. They live in sin still. The word has no abiding place in their hearts. Forgetfulness! Charge not children with it lest the accusation be proven against yourself.

But do the little ones forget? I suppose the events which we best remember in advanced age are the things which happened to us in our earliest days. At any rate, I have shaken hands with gray headed men who have forgotten nearly all the events which have intervened between their old age and the time of their childhood; but little matters which transpired at home, hymns learned at their mother’s knee, and words spoken by their father or sister, have lingered with them. The voices of childhood echo throughout life. The first learned is generally the last forgotten. The young children who heard our Lord’s blessing would not forget it. They would have his countenance photographed upon their hearts and never forget his kind and tender smile. Peter and James and John and the rest of you are all mistaken, and, therefore, you must suffer the children to come to Jesus.

Perhaps, too, they thought the children had not sufficient capacity. Jesus Christ said such wonderful things that the children could not be supposed to have the capacity to receive them. Yet, indeed, this is a great error, for children enter readily into our Lord’s teaching. They never learn to read so quickly from any book as from the New Testament. The words of Jesus are so childlike and so fitted for children that they drink them in better than the words of any other man, however simple he may try to be. Children readily understand the child Jesus. What is this matter of capacity? What capacity is wanted? Capacity to believe? I tell you children have more of that than grown-up persons. I am not now speaking of the spiritual part of faith; but as far as the mental faculty is concerned, there is any quantity of the capacity for faith in the heart of a child. His believing faculty has not yet been overloaded by superstition, or perverted by falsehood, or maimed by wicked unbelief. Only let the Holy Spirit consecrate the faculty, and there is enough of it for the production of abundant faith in God.—Spurgeon.